Christian Daniel
Cloud Solution Architect & AI Engineer with 25+ years of experience.
Who I am
Senior engineer and architect since the early 2000s. Today's toolkit: cloud-native platforms, AI architecture, and step-by-step modernisation of grown systems. The focus: bringing complete software projects to production — solo as full takeover, or integrated into existing teams: as architect, senior engineer, mentor or in an advisory role, depending on what the engagement needs.
Stubborn on hard problems, clear on decisions, honest on tradeoffs. When I start something, I bring the care the result deserves — and the willingness to think on a long timeline. That holds for a project running over quarters just as much as for anything else I take seriously.
Career
I started professionally as a Programming Analyst at a Frankfurt brokerage — securities analysis, stock exchange reporting duties, early internet migration. Then came ticket.international with point-of-sale and vending systems, followed by a move to Luxembourg with Felten S.A., where I built MES systems for biotech and cosmetics production. In 2010 I went independent — because I wanted variety, to go deeper into more topics and build a broad knowledge spectrum, instead of staying in the same narrow slice.
The common thread across the years isn't a technology, it's a stance: understand a system as it actually works, question existing solutions, domesticate new technology rather than just adopting it. Banks, industry, mid-market, enterprise, startups — every engagement taught something that stayed relevant in the next. Above all this: the hardest architecture decisions are rarely technical. They're organisational.
Roots
Where the building drive came from: Atari ST 1987, custom games in GFA Basic, a self-built Linux server as router. Tinkering turned into calling.
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Roots
Where the building drive came from: Atari ST 1987, custom games in GFA Basic, a self-built Linux server as router. Tinkering turned into calling.
Born 1980, first machine an Atari ST 520 with a high-resolution SM124 monitor. Games were scarce for the platform — so they were built, in GFA Basic. Text adventures with my own stories, Jump'n'Run clones in the spirit of Super Mario and Commander Keen, small tools that did what no product did. My father showed the first steps; the rest came from books, then local bulletin board systems, then the early internet. Lots of self-initiative back then — a constant that stayed.
When wider connectivity arrived, the first self-built Linux server moved into the basement: router and firewall in one, because the ISDN line wasn't paying for itself and household peace on the phone bill mattered. At night the modems chirped to swap files or chat with kindred spirits. While others consumed, I built — and learned that machines can do things they can't yet do, if you teach them. That tinkering turned into calling.
Milestones
A selection of the most formative engagements.
Hoffmann Group
multiple engagements, 2020 – 2026
Architecture and delivery of multiple microservice-based DataHubs (Identity, Product, Order) on Kubernetes, including SAP, PIM and CRM integration, GraphQL federation, AI integration and technical leadership.
Advastore
2023 – 2024
Architecture and performance tuning for autonomous warehouse robot swarms — Akka.NET actor systems, MQTT real-time communication, path planning.
Schneider Electric
multiple engagements, 2013 – 2014
A project that Microsoft had rated as “not feasible” planned and delivered to production — together with the team.
Quickmail
multiple engagements, 2019 – 2022
Lead architect for an end-to-end e-logistics platform including custom hardware integration.
Razorfish · McDonald's
2014, for the FIFA World Cup
Cross-platform app for the 2014 FIFA World Cup — delivered on time across all stores.
10Geeks
Co-founder
Co-founded agency. Projects for BMW and Siemens among others, multiple mobile-award nominations.
Sartorius
Enterprise project
Near-time monitoring of fermentation processes in biotech production.
“Do it right, or don't do it.”
Discipline
Early forties, desk to road bike. Constantly growing, steadily improving — standing still is moving backwards. That holds in the mountains and at the desk.
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Discipline
Early forties, desk to road bike. Constantly growing, steadily improving — standing still is moving backwards. That holds in the mountains and at the desk.
In my early forties I noticed: two and a half decades of screen work charge a price I don't have to pay. Desk to road bike. What started as ‘just get out for a bit' became systematic endurance training — not because it's fun (though it is), but because it works like everything I take seriously: consistent preparation, long timelines, clear milestones.
In summer 2025 I finished the Ötztaler Radmarathon — 230 kilometres, 5,500 metres of climbing, four alpine passes in one day. The finish itself wasn't the point. The point was the years before it: plans, setbacks, adjustments, pass tests, a five-digit kilometre count in the training log. The same anatomy I use to take an architecture project from the first sketch into production. When I start something, I bring it all — not half, not as a show.
What comes after the finish line isn't rest, it's the next goal. For 2026, two new challenges are on the calendar: FUGA300 in June, ISTRIA 300 in October — 300 kilometres each, a different format than the Ötztaler, new demands on pacing and route knowledge. No project, no knowledge base, no architectural experience allows you to simply stop.
Sport is also the tool that clears my head on difficult architecture decisions. Twenty minutes running solves more problems than two hours brooding at the desk. Efficiency, differently framed — and for years my insurance against the stress level becoming chronic.
Private
Family on the Moselle, Kubernetes cluster in the basement, smart-home with high availability — because lights can't go out when the builder is in a hotel. Same standard privately as professionally.
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Private
Family on the Moselle, Kubernetes cluster in the basement, smart-home with high availability — because lights can't go out when the builder is in a hotel. Same standard privately as professionally.
At home there's my wife, two kids, and a Kubernetes cluster that has carried the family setup for years: smart-home, media, backups, a local LLM, and the live RAG portfolio you're reading right now. The standard here is the same as professionally: platforms that survive production. Even if ‘production' this time is the living room.
The standard didn't come without tuition. The day the home server died while I was on a business trip and my family couldn't switch on the lights in the kids' rooms, it became clear: smart-homes need high availability. Lights or enterprise data hubs, the standard is the same — the system doesn't belong to the person who built it but to the people relying on it.
Then there are two kids who watch. Felicia (born 2014) programs her own games and stories in Scratch, Jona (born 2020) is into robots. Whatever I do professionally, they grow alongside it. That's a responsibility that disciplines me like no client can.