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Niels Andersen
Verified Expert in Engineering
DevSecOps Engineer and Developer
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since July 30, 2024
Bio
Niels is a DevSecOps lead who has delivered numerous successful implementation and transformation projects for enterprise companies across sectors, including finance, aviation, and media. Demonstrating innovative and solution-driven expertise, he has built platforms and components, designed workflows, and onboarded projects to the DevSecOps platform. Niels helps clients set up and streamline their SDLC, gain insight into applications and processes, and design and implement improvements.
Portfolio
T-Systems International
Development
BNP Paribas CIB
Artifactory, CloudBees, Bitbucket, Ansible Tower, Ansible Playbooks, Ansible...
BNP Paribas CIB
TeamCity, Nexus, C++, C#.NET, NuGet, Microservices, Dependency Management
Experience
- Software Development - 20 years
- IT Networking - 13 years
- Infrastructure - 12 years
- CloudBees - 7 years
- Ansible - 7 years
- Artifactory - 6 years
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform - 6 years
- Bitbucket - 3 years
Preferred Environment
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, CloudBees, Artifactory, Confluence, Draw.io, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), F5 Load Balancer, Illumio, Windows Server 2016, Cisco Routers
The most amazing...
...thing I've done is build platforms and components, design workflows, and onboard numerous projects to the DevSecOps platform at banks and other companies.
Work Experience
DevSecOps Architect
2020 - PRESENT
T-Systems International
- Created an end-to-end (E2E) DevOps platform to allow the migration of the central archive system to a modern, partially cloud-based global solution.
- Adapted security aspects to externalize security and credentials management outside of code.
- Completed a 6-year migration, with the system going live last summer and the last data flows being fully migrated this summer. The migration involved 6,000+ daily users and several thousands concurrently.
Technologies: Development
DevOps Engineer & Coach
2017 - 2020
BNP Paribas CIB
- Served as a central part of a small team of DevOps, security, network, and storage experts, building a large on-premise IBM-based cloud supporting all development teams globally across the bank, comprising around 4,000 users.
- Developed the initial Jenkins CloudBees platform on top of Mesos and later the Jenkins Windows nodes setup as we migrated CloudBees to Kubernetes.
- Created the BitBucket Git platform and migrated all other repository systems and codebases onto it, including extracting all secret management into CyberArk and all large binaries into Artifactory using Git LFS.
- Built E2E Jenkins pipelines on CloudBees with two masters for each team, maintaining Chinese walls between development and operations and using discovery on Artifactory to determine when pipelines could progress.
- Integrated CloudBees with ServiceNow to ensure changes could only be made within the approved change window and credentials could only be enabled via break-glass procedures, enabling complete E2E KPI for the entire change process across all products.
- Functioned as a strong advocate for Agile methodologies, test- and behavior-driven development, and Scrum.
Technologies: Artifactory, CloudBees, Bitbucket, Ansible Tower, Ansible Playbooks, Ansible, Apache Maven, Gradle, ServiceNow, Jenkins Pipeline, F5 Load Balancer, CyberArk, Trellix EDR, Microservices, SAML 2.0, C++, C#.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, ION Trading System, Databases, SonarQube, ELK (Elastic Stack), HealthVerity ID (HVID), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
DevOps Manager, Trade Processing
2016 - 2017
BNP Paribas CIB
- Started breaking up one of the bank's largest C++ systems, replacing many layers of functionality with microservices and applying Maven-like release procedures with NuGet.
- Created deployment manifests, ensuring the correct versions of services were deployed on the correct environment among the 40. Similar models are now widely used with Kubernetes.
- Delivered work that formed the basis for inclusion in the core DevOps team later.
Technologies: TeamCity, Nexus, C++, C#.NET, NuGet, Microservices, Dependency Management
Global DevOps Manager, eRates
2013 - 2016
BNP Paribas CIB
- Migrated a large, diverse Java codebase to use Gradle, Archiva, TeamCity, Fisheye, BladeLogic, and some bespoke DevOps systems at BNP Paribas on the e-trading platform for rates, integrated with ServiceNow.
- Contributed to a real-time, high-frequency trading platform closely linked with the ION trading platform.
- Invented a method for deploying Java microservices with Gradle, overcoming a technical limitation with the classpath by moving this information into a manifest, making the apps nearly tamper-proof.
Technologies: Java 6, Gradle, Apache Archiva, Nexus, TeamCity, Atlassian Fisheye, BladeLogic, Python
Change & Infrastructure Manager, Market Risk
2009 - 2013
Deutsche Bank
- Designed and implemented the code, build, deployment, and quality gates used at Deutsche Bank, Market Risk.
- Planned and co-designed the global build factory using Java, C++, Nexus, Jenkins, and TeamCity.
- Architected the addition of a Hadoop layer on our application servers, allowing them to process big data when value-at-risk calculations were not being performed.
- Engineered blue-green infrastructure deployment of global position calculators in Market Risk.
Technologies: Java 6, C++, Nexus, Hudson, Jenkins, TeamCity, BladeLogic, Geneos, Hadoop
Release Process Manager
2004 - 2007
Thomson Reuters
- Raised and managed changes across systems worldwide, mainly in real-time delivery of RMDS/HMDS, time series DBU/cDBU, and Citrix application servers, delivering Reuters 3000 Xtra over the internet.
- Designed and built development environments for the Reuters-hosted 3000 Xtra Citrix implementation, including networks, security, and resilience using physical and virtual tech—completing the first VMware-based servers to enter production at Reuters.
- Architected and built a development portal with ASP.NET and C# to support the integration of project management and specification, design, and test cycles, integrating software like Planview and Microsoft Project as one application.
Technologies: Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS), ASP.NET, C#, Microsoft Project, Planview
Experience
Java Microservices Deployment Method
Invented a deployment method for Java microservices, which overcame an issue with the Java classpath.
Having migrated the applications to use Sonatype Nexus in front of Maven Central, our classpath often exceeded the 1,024 characters available on our TeamCity build servers. I discovered I could use Gradle to enumerate classes into a manifest, which was loaded at application startup, allowing the classpath to be as long as required. This solution removed hundreds of application crashes.
Having migrated the applications to use Sonatype Nexus in front of Maven Central, our classpath often exceeded the 1,024 characters available on our TeamCity build servers. I discovered I could use Gradle to enumerate classes into a manifest, which was loaded at application startup, allowing the classpath to be as long as required. This solution removed hundreds of application crashes.
F5 VIP Management Transfer
Used F5 features to move F5 virtual IP (VIP) management to the application team—significantly improving system reputation.
Previously, the problem was that application nodes would come online as soon as F5 load balancers saw the application port was up. However, the JBoss Application Server was still warming up, and the application was unusable. My new node control allowed the deployment pipeline to test the deployed application on each node and only turn them on when fully functional, enhancing the system's reputation.
Previously, the problem was that application nodes would come online as soon as F5 load balancers saw the application port was up. However, the JBoss Application Server was still warming up, and the application was unusable. My new node control allowed the deployment pipeline to test the deployed application on each node and only turn them on when fully functional, enhancing the system's reputation.
System in a Box Solutions
In the very early days of VMware, I designed several system-in-a-box solutions using large servers with multiple network adapters. These included lots of CPU and memory to deliver full E2E development and test environments to developers and testers. Each box used virtual networks connected to actual physical networks to be fully functional. These systems were occasionally used in production as a fallback during system releases to avoid downtime.
Chinese Wall Setup for CloudBees Rollout
Due to regulatory requirements, I had to invent a Chinese wall setup for a CloudBees rollout, ensuring that development teams could not access production systems and operations engineers could not access development or codebases.
The development teams had one master where the pipelines covered the steps from development to end of UAT and PM signoff. The operations teams also had the exact same pipelines, but with the build steps removed, which were used to deploy to preproduction for business acceptance and then to production.
In addition to the Chinese wall setup, I integrated Jenkins with ServiceNow so deployments could only run during the approved change window or using a break-glass procedure when an incident had been raised. CyberArk would then issue temporary credentials.
The development teams had one master where the pipelines covered the steps from development to end of UAT and PM signoff. The operations teams also had the exact same pipelines, but with the build steps removed, which were used to deploy to preproduction for business acceptance and then to production.
In addition to the Chinese wall setup, I integrated Jenkins with ServiceNow so deployments could only run during the approved change window or using a break-glass procedure when an incident had been raised. CyberArk would then issue temporary credentials.
Education
1990 - 1993
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Lyngby Uddannelsescenter - Lyngby, Denmark
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Jenkins Pipeline
Tools
Artifactory, Bitbucket, Ansible Tower, Confluence, Visio, Draw.io, Ansible, Jenkins, VMware, F5 Load Balancer, Apache Maven, Gradle, SonarQube, ELK (Elastic Stack), TeamCity, NuGet, Atlassian Fisheye, Hudson, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS), Microsoft Project
Platforms
Apache Archiva, Oracle, Nexus, FreeBSD, Windows Server 2016
Languages
Java 6, C++, C#.NET, Python, C#
Frameworks
Hadoop, ASP.NET
Paradigms
Microservices
Storage
MarkLogic, Microsoft SQL Server, Databases
Other
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Dependency Management, CloudBees, Ansible Playbooks, BladeLogic, VMware ESXi, IT Networking, IP Routing, Virtual Firewalls, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Illumio, Software Development, Infrastructure, Development, ServiceNow, CyberArk, Trellix EDR, SAML 2.0, ION Trading System, HealthVerity ID (HVID), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Geneos, Planview, Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), Cisco Routers
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