Summary

My name is Jan-Simon Baudler, leading the team of Infrastructure/DevOps/Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) professionals at a prominent Japanese logistics startup. After transitioning from a career in physics in early 2017, I have built upon nine years of applied knowledge in data, automation, and process management.

Throughout my career, the dynamic nature of the small and diverse teams I've been part of necessitated my capability to pivot between roles, including Software Architect, DevOps/SRE Engineer, Full Stack Developer, and Project Manager. This flexibility has bolstered my generalist perspective, allowing me to swiftly assimilate new knowledge and conceive creative, efficient solutions to an array of challenges.

Grounded in the principles of agile and lean management philosophies, the root of modern value stream engineering, my approach to work is centered around my core values: Contribution, Autonomy, Curiosity and Vision. I am committed to fostering transparent, adaptive environments, directing my focus towards the most suitable solutions to each unique problem at hand.

My professional interests extend towards leadership, mentoring, and teaching, aligning with my work's key focus areas. These include data-driven business processes pertaining to SRE, digital transformation, financial reporting, project management, collaboration, and transparency. I am driven by my passion for contributing, learning, and guiding others in the ever-evolving landscape of technology.

What I learn & do

Currently, my interests are centered on the concept of Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Professionally, I am honing my skills in Infrastructure-as-a-Code (IaC), while personally, I am delving into the world of Rust for my individual projects.

My fascination extends to various realms including engineering management, lean management, organizational psychology, the design of urban structures and house building, and the intricacies of electrical engineering. My appetite for knowledge is mostly satiated by consuming books and doing projects related to these domains.

Recent books are e.g. "An Elegant Puzzle" by Will Larson, "Paved Paradise" by Henry Grabar, "Organizational Citizenship Behaviour" by Dennis W. Organ and others, as well as "A Philosophy on Software Design" penned by John Ousterhout.

When I don't read or program, I organize and go on hikes and I am a regular runner (5&10km)

What I work on

Some of the more recent projects I was responsible for:

Establishing an Infrastructure/DevOps/SRE Team

I took charge of building a dedicated DevOps/SRE/Infrastructure team from the ground up, assembling a group of specialists to cater to the diverse needs of our company. This project allowed me to put my leadership and mentoring skills into action, creating a collaborative and efficient unit to streamline our operations.

Self-Service Developer Platform Implementation

A cornerstone project involved establishing a Self-Service Developer Platform featuring ephemeral development environments. This provided our developers with a dynamic and efficient workspace, increasing productivity, and reducing turnaround times for project deliverables.

Main technologies: Kubernetes, ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, Python, Django

GitOps Deployment Modernization

A key part of my project portfolio involved modernizing GitOps deployments. By leveraging the templating capabilities of Helm and Kustomize, we significantly streamlined our deployment process, improved repeatability, and boosted overall system efficiency.

Main technologies: Kubernetes, Helm, Kustomize

CI/CD Platform Transition

In an ambitious project, I led the transition from CircleCI to GitHub Actions, aiming to take advantage of the latter's deep integration with the GitHub ecosystem and its efficient workflow syntax. This switch enhanced our CI/CD capabilities, delivering better orchestration and increased developer productivity.

Main technologies: GitHub Actions, CircleCI

ETL modernization

Planned and realized the transition and extension of a resource and maintenance-intensive ETL based on Microsoft SSIS/SQL to an open-source stack based on Apache Airflow/Python/PostgreSQL to meet new requirements regarding stability, flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Main technologies: Apache Airflow, PostgreSQL, RedHat Ansible

DataOps

Built a stateless, scalable data pipeline with semi-automated deployments, virtualization, versioning, and monitoring. Made the whole stack maintainable by 1/3 of the initial team by using an industry-standard open-source stack.

Main technologies: Apache Airflow, PostgreSQL, Docker, Git, KVM

Digitalization project

Started an internal initiative to create transparency & digitalize interfaces, processes and information. Developed an own modular platform for connecting product, project and stakeholders information with financial data. Started digital project management, replaced old reporting frontend and introduced workstream collaboration.

Main technologies: Django, Kanboard, Mattermost, VueJS, Docker, Celery, Redis

Modular Self Service Platform

Replaced Longview Arcplan with a more extensible and simplified frontend based on the internally developed RiMo platform (IBM TM1 OLAP & Django).

Main technologies: Django, IBM TM1, JQuery

Data Lifecycle Tracking of Contracts and Projects

Contracts and Projects use to have quite complex lifecycles inside of companies. To be able to represent a dynamic state of them inside a database application. We used a finite state machine to be able to track the state and connect different states with data. For this, I invented several new methods on how to represent the connection of state and flow in a smart way.

Main technologies: Django, VueJS