About Me

Hey! I'm Ben and I am a self-taught software engineer from Germany. In 2017, I quit my studies in teaching and started working as a data analyst for a startup. I quickly realized that I wanted to learn how to build the software I was analyzing, so I taught myself programming. Three months later, I was offered a full-time position and never looked back.

Fast-forward to today, and I’ve had the privilege of working at

  • fino which enabled me breaking into the tech industry
  • Fraugster a fraud AI company with some of the smartest engineers I ever met
  • Semrush where I built a product from 0 to Xm ARR and became a Tech Lead

Here are a few technologies I’ve been working with recently:

  • Go
  • JavaScript (ES6+)
  • Bash
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • GCP
  • PostgreSQL
  • Google BigQuery

Where I’ve Worked

Technical Lead @ Semrush

August 2022 - Now

  • Went from 0 to Xm ARR within 18 months
  • Setup the backend infrastructure for the Enterprise Solutions product using kubernetes, docker, helm, CI/CD and GCP
  • Wrote the first and many more lines of code of the backend, building a RBAC system, a low-code SQL editor and custom ETL pipelines
  • Led the backend chapter to foster cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing within our unit
  • Mentored junior engineers who evolved into senior engineers
  • Took over the data infrastructure team and led a 6-month migration process to reduce the data gathering error rate by 90% and allow the architecture to scale horizontally

Some Things I’ve Built

  • Featured Project

    Semrush Enterprise Solutions

    As one of the first 4 engineers on the team, I built the major parts of the backend and data architecture for the Semrush Enterprise Solutions product. Besides designing the system, I mentored junior developers, led the backend chapter and eventually became a tech lead for the data management team. Our product went from 0 to Xm ARR within 1.5 years.

    • Go
    • PostgreSQL
    • Google BigQuery
    • ClickHouse
    • GCP
    • Kubernetes
    • Data Engineering
    External Link

  • Featured Project

    Fraugster API

    The production real-time API of the Fraugster payment fraud prevention solution. The API scored millions of payment transactions in less than 15ms/req. Thereby, we used advanced graph algorithms, deployed machine learning models for our ML teams and provided 99.99% uptime of the API.

    • Go
    • PostgreSQL
    • etcd
    • MLOps
    • Kafka
    • AWS
    External Link

  • Featured Project

    finoOS API Platform

    An API platform which introduced a shift to an API-first development within fino. I implemented an API gateway and a developer portal together with my team to open up new revenue streams for the company. In this process, my team drove best practices in building an designing APIs across teams in the entire company.

    • Go
    • Python
    • Kubernetes
    • Docker
    • MongoDB
    • Redis
    External Link

What’s Next?

Get In Touch

Although I’m currently not looking for any new opportunities, my inbox is always open. Whether you have a question or just want to say hi, I’ll try my best to get back to you!