I am a software engineer and IT professional with a focus on object oriented development and well-proven design patterns, preferrably using Java technology and open source components.
My IT skills are built on more than 35 years of hands-on experience in programming, professional software development since 1995 and a broad academic background in mathematics, computer science and computational linguistics.
As an IT consultant one of my core competencies, besides design and coding, is the thorough analysis and understanding of customers' needs. I am experienced in working with customers on formal requirement specifications as well as refinable user stories.
The teams I work with have achieved quality results and customer satisfaction through practices like test-driven development, peer-based code reviews, controlled refactoring and other agile methodologies.
My professional experience includes software projects for large clients in business sectors like oil & gas, postal services, internet service providers, steel industry, financial institutions, government agencies and online retailers as well as various medium-sized businesses.
I have a keen interest in learning and understanding technologies as well as exploring and solving problems in fields like algorithms, mathematics and linguistics.
As a research assistant I have worked at the IBM Scientific Centre in Heidelberg and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken.
My university education included courses on teaching and I have taught classes in Mathematics and Object-Oriented Programming. I have also participated in a training program for high school teachers for one year. One of my hobbies is the art of ancient abstract board games.
I have contributed to various efforts of skill set and team development at my workplace(s), including Java certification classes, presentations on Java, Linux, Open Source, Software Engineering and automation.