Professional Experience
I started working professionally during school, then worked as consultant and later founded two companies.
At the same time I enjoyed investing quite bit of my time towards volunteer work for Python core development and community organizations.
Current Positions
CEO and Chief Architect at eGenix.com
eGenix.com is an expert project, product and consulting company focusing on Python, one of the top 10 programming languages, as efficient implementation language and serving an international customer base.
Fellow of the Python Software Foundation (PSF)
The PSF is the non-profit organization which holds the IP rights of the Python programming language. It is based in the US and has several thousand members word-wide.
PSF Fellows are elected on merit. There are currently (2017) around 240 Fellows in the PSF.
Core developers are the driving force behind the Python programming language development. The status is granted based on achievements in contributing to the core language.
Past Positions
- CTO of Point Nine Limited
I worked as CTO of the Cyprus FinTech company Point Nine Limited from 2017 - 2019, helping the company to architect new systems for the company, build and lead new remote IT teams, restructure it’s AWS tech stack, modernize the technology development, documentation and deployment process.
As part of the role, I managed the 2018 GDPR implementation project, several risk assessment, due diligence and compliance processes and paved the way for Point Nine to get acquired by MUFG late in 2019 to become MUFG Investor Services FinTech.
The work covered designing a modern banking portal to unify the investment client experience, implementing regulatory reporting systems (EMIR, MIFIR), a treasury monitoring system, integration with several core banking systems (Geneva, Investran, Mantra), compliance and billing tooling, among many other things.
Chair of the EuroPython Society (EPS) Board of Directors
The EPS is a non-profit organization, which supports the European Python community and organizes the EuroPython conference series, the largest Python conference in Europe and second most important international Python conference world-wide, right after PyCon US.
I chaired the EPS from 2016 - 2021 and served on the board from 2012 - 2021.
Member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) Board of Directors
The PSF is the non-profit organization which holds the IP rights of the Python programming language. It is based in the US and has several thousand members word-wide.
Commercial projects
eGenix.com application design, project management and project work for large and small companies in the US, UK, Switzerland and Germany, e.g.
- government tax and fee collection systems
- nation wide online payment systems
- mobile network based highly scalable communication servers
- newsletter and SMS alert service solutions
- financial trading systems
- API-level integration web service engines for corporate systems
- frontend integration of systems using custom web application servers
Product development
Management of eGenix.com commercial and open-source product development:
- eGenix mxODBC, mxODBC Connect, mxODBC Zope DA for Zope and Plone, mxODBC Django Database Engine for Django (commercial)
- eGenix Web Application Server (commercial)
- eGenix mxDateTime, mxTextTools, mxTools, mxProxy, mxQueue, mxStack, mxBeeBase, mxUID, mxURL, mxNumber, mxTidy (open source)
- eGenix PyRun, pyOpenSSL (open source)
Timeline
2021
Chaired the EuroPython 2021 conference organization. The conference was held online, using the same format as the last in-person edition in Basel.
2020
Chaired the EuroPython 2020 conference organization. The conference was held online for the first time, using a reduced format, since we only had 4 months for migrating from in-person to online.
2019
Chaired the EuroPython 2019 conference organization in Basel, Switzerland
2018
Chaired the EuroPython 2018 conference organization in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 - 2019
CTO of Point Nine Limited, Cyprus.
2016 - 2017
Lead several EuroPython Workgroups to run EuroPython 2017, in Rimini, Italy.
2016 - 2021
Chair of the EuroPython Society.
2015 - 2016
Lead several EuroPython Workgroups to run EuroPython 2016, again in Bilbao, Spain.
2014 - 2015
Lead several EuroPython Workgroups to run EuroPython 2015 in Bilbao, Spain.
2013
Started offering Python coaching and training services via eGenix.com.
2012 - 2021
Member of the EuroPython Society Board of Directors.
2012
Started Python Meeting Düsseldorf meeting series together with Clark Consulting & Research.
2011
Co-organized the first PyCon DE conference in Leipzig, Germany.
2010
Continued to lead the initiative to create a German PyCon, after Holger Krekel’s initial idea at EuroPython 2010.
2010 - 2016
Member of the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors.
2002 - present
eGenix.com application design, project management and project work for large and small companies in the US, UK, Switzerland and Germany, e.g.
- government tax and fee collection systems
- nation wide online payment systems
- mobile network based highly scalable communication servers
- newsletter and SMS alert service solutions
- financial trading systems
- API-level integration web service engines for corporate systems
- frontend integration of systems using custom web application servers
2003
Co-organized the EuroPython 2003 conference in Charleroi, Belgium.
2002 - 2004
Member of the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors.
2002
Executive committee member of the first EuroPython conference in Charleroi, Belgium.
January 2000 - 2002
Project “www.steilmann.com”: First customer of the eGenix Application Server software.
Product development: “eGenix Application Server / eGenix Service Engine” - continued development of the work started as “Prometheus” under a new name: a full blown object oriented web application server based on highly efficient Open Source technologies such as Linux and Python.
2001
Founding member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF).
January 2000
Started a new company eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH with the aim of marketing and selling software, skills and services to IT companies with special focus on Python.
2000
Contract work for Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), USA, to implemented the initial Python Unicode implementation. Continued to maintain the Unicode implementation until 2011.
July 1997 - December 1999
Product development: Web application server “Prometheus”: Designed and implemented a complete framework to simplify the efforts needed to install, run and maintain web-sites that depend on highly dynamic content as well as structured information.
Project “www.lemburg.com”: Test-bed implementation for Prometheus.
1997
Python Core Developer.
1995 - July 1997
Project ‘FashionForum’, a German internet site (fashion-forum.de) devoted to fashion, hosted by Point-Of-Sale GmbH Monheim.
CGI based applications, including a proprietary small database, query facilities, access control mechanisms, hit statistic analysis tools and several web-based database end-user and administration interfaces. The project included setting up and configuring the web-server hardware at the ISP.
Project “EuroStyle” for EuroStyle GmbH Monheim (eurostyle.de).
Implementation of a small eCommerce application where customers can order products online.
1994
Started to work with Python.
1993
Formed my first company: IKDS (Information and Communication Design).
Started working as a consultant, IBM being my first customer with the aim of continuing the work on KIOSK/2 and integrating it with a new display engine.
1991, 1992, 1993
Internships at IBM Deutschland GmbH, Düsseldorf:
Design and realization of a DB/2 based employee development database (MEP/2) on OS/2 with PM-based GUI written in C.
Project work on KIOSK/2 (now called Kontoservices/2), porting a DOS based C application to OS/2. This included designing a PM-based GUI interface and a communication protocol/API to separate the display part of the application from the transaction mechanism.
1987 - 1988
Part-time job at CGI Interprogramm GmbH, Langenfeld:
Concept and implementation of an application to aid in recording and reporting working hours, written in Pascal.
Project work on ‘QUALI’ (skill database) with Adabas as database using NATURAL.