I build systems that move fast and cannot be wrong. Onchain execution and settlement. Streaming platforms under real load. Agents that act without a human reading every output. Twenty-seven years of it, mostly on systems that were already in production, already critical, and already hard to change.
I am co-founder, CTO and COO of Scalytics, and Novatechflow is where I do independent architecture work.
What I work on now
Most teams shipping onchain do not have a problem another RPC provider fixes. They have a throughput, ordering and consistency problem wearing a blockchain costume. I work on execution and settlement paths, indexer architecture, reorg handling, and reconciling local state against chain truth. The same discipline applies to autonomous agents: if a system acts without supervision, the interesting question is never whether it ran, but whether it should have.
I still operate production systems myself. That is deliberate. Architecture advice from someone who has not been on call in a decade is worth what you pay for it.
Scalytics
At Scalytics we build federated data and AI infrastructure that runs analytics and models where the data already lives, across engines like Spark, Flink and SQL backends, instead of copying everything into another silo. The work centres on cross-platform execution, federated learning, and sovereign AI infrastructure for organisations that cannot hand control to a third party.
Apache Wayang
I am a PMC and committer of Apache Wayang, a cross-platform data processing project at the Apache Software Foundation, and one of the people who brought it there. My contributions focus on execution behaviour, optimisation paths and interoperability across heterogeneous backends. In practice: running one logical pipeline across multiple engines without losing control of performance or cost.
Before this
Two decades of building and operating data and streaming platforms in regulated, large-scale environments. Chief Digital Technology Architect at E.ON. Executive and architecture roles at Allianz. Director of Data Center Operations at Evariant/Healthgrades. Field engineer and architect at Cloudera. Large-scale web, data and virtualisation work at Scout24 and elsewhere. Twelve years in German Air Force logistics before any of it, which is where I learned that most outages are planning failures wearing a technical disguise.
Open source
- KafScale. Kafka-compatible streaming on S3. Stateless brokers and processors, scales horizontally without partition rebalancing pain. Docs at kafscale.io.
- LucenDEX. Non-custodial execution layer for the XRP Ledger. Deterministic routing, quoting and onchain settlement.
- kaf-s3. Kafka to S3 payload offloading for messages that do not belong in a topic.
- docAI Toolkit. Python toolkit for document processing pipelines.
- Longtime contributor across the Apache ecosystem, including HBase, Hive and Flume (former committer team).
- Everything else: github.com/novatechflow.
Press and speaking
- Author of "Enabling IoT to Establish a Sustainable Value Chain" for CIO Applications Europe, written as Chief Architect, Digital Development and Technology at E.ON.
- Interviewed by FAZ at the Google Cloud Summit London on large-scale IoT, data integration and the digital transformation of energy systems.
- Speaker at Confluent Streaming Event Munich: "Decentral energy distribution in a digital world. Why streaming changes the world."
- Speaker at DEVOPS Helsinki, The Future of Software and IoT Build USA on large-scale IoT, streaming and platform architecture.
- Workshop facilitator at The Future of Energy on integrating digital technology with legacy infrastructure.
- Interviewed by AI Pressroom on federated data processing and removing ETL bottlenecks from real AI projects.
- Co-founder of Infinite Devices GmbH, winner of the Hugo Junkers Innovation Award 2020 for applied innovation in IoT and distributed systems.
Off the clock
Electrical engineering roots, a current Maltese marine license, and field experience testing unmanned surface, underwater and remotely operated vehicles. Long-distance catamaran passages and sustainable power systems at Sailing In Style. Marine systems fail the same way distributed systems do: slowly, then all at once, and always at the least convenient moment.
Working together
If your onchain stack, streaming platform or agent infrastructure is fragile, slow, or politically stuck, that is usually when people call me. Most engagements start with a short call about the system.
Professional Experience
Co-Founder, CTO and COO, Scalytics
2022 to present
Engineering, research, product and technical strategy for federated data infrastructure and
sovereign AI systems.
Committer and PMC Member, Apache Wayang (ASF)
2020 to present
Cross-platform data processing, optimisation, multi-engine interoperability.
Advisory Board, DevNetwork Europe
2021 to present
Advising Europe's largest engineering and DevTech community.
Independent Consultant, McKinsey & Company
2020 to 2023
Renewable energy infrastructure and zero-emission fleet systems.
Chief Technology Officer, Infinite Devices
2020 to 2023
Co-founded the company and led development of Infinimesh, a cloud IoT platform. Engineering,
product, and a $1.7M raise.
Chief Digital Technology Architect, E.ON
2017 to 2020
Enterprise digitalisation, IIoT systems, analytics platforms and energy management technology.
Director of Data Center Operations, Evariant
2014 to 2016
Hadoop engineering, data security, applied research, distributed systems operations.
Senior Field Engineer and Architect, Cloudera
2013 to 2014
Designed and delivered Hadoop data platforms for enterprise clients.
Customer Operations Engineer, Cloudera
2011 to 2013
Production support across the Hadoop ecosystem.
Senior Engineer and DevOps, AutoScout24
2007 to 2010
Big data engineering, virtualisation, security, distributed backend systems.
Senior Web Architect, Sixt
2005 to 2007
Large-scale web infrastructure and deployment pipelines.
Logistics and Operations, German Air Force
1992 to 2004
Twelve years in logistics, planning and team leadership.