MN Mirko Nau

Cloud Solutions Architect

Mirko Nau

Cloud architectures that scale – secure, automated and cost-efficient.

I help companies move their infrastructure to the AWS Cloud and run it professionally: from strategy and landing zones to fully automated delivery with infrastructure as code.

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Liederbach am Taunus · Rhein-Main

Portrait of Mirko Nau
years of cloud experience
10+
certifications
11
industries
8

Profile

Cloud specialist with many years of project experience and a strong focus on AWS. My core work is consulting on, designing and implementing cloud architectures and operating models.

This includes analysing and selecting suitable migration strategies as well as supporting new developments and Well-Architected Reviews. Besides conceptual and structural work, hands-on tasks such as implementing infrastructure as code and introducing DevOps with CI/CD pipelines are part of my daily work.

Industry experience

  • Public sector
  • Transport & logistics
  • Energy
  • IT services
  • Manufacturing
  • Banking
  • Insurance
  • E-commerce

Languages

  • German – native
  • English – C1

Focus areas

Cloud Architecture & Landing Zones

Designing new cloud infrastructures that balance budget, business and technical requirements and future growth – including multi-account strategies.

Migration & Modernisation

Analysing and selecting migration strategies, moving existing applications to AWS and breaking up monoliths into container and serverless services.

Infrastructure as Code & DevOps

Fully automated provisioning with Terraform, Terragrunt, CloudFormation and CDK – with CI/CD pipelines, GitOps (ArgoCD) and Kubernetes (EKS).

Well-Architected & CCoE

Well-Architected Reviews, building Cloud Centers of Excellence, defining standards, and running workshops and trainings for teams.

Career

  1. since 04/2018

    Senior Consultant / Cloud Solutions Architect

    valantic Software & Technology Innovations GmbH (formerly SyroCon AG), Eschborn

    • Design and implementation of new cloud infrastructures considering budget, business and technical requirements and future expansion stages
    • Delivering landing zones and advancing existing cloud solutions
    • Building Cloud Centers of Excellence (CCoE) and training staff
    • Leading workshops for migrations, new developments and pre-sales activities
    • Technical team lead in several projects

  2. 08/2016 – 03/2018

    IT Consultant

    samecon GmbH & Co. KG, Eschborn

    • Building and managing cloud environments (AWS and Azure)
    • Automation and configuration management (Ansible)
    • Cloud migration projects of existing applications to AWS
    • Analysing and optimising IT delivery processes
    • Introducing agile management methods (e.g. Scrum and Kanban)

  3. 05/2015 – 08/2016

    IT Consultant Microsoft Infrastructure

    CGI Deutschland Ltd. & Co. KG, Sulzbach

    • Environment management: building and designing new sub-environments
    • Developing and optimising automation tasks
    • Operations and 1st/2nd level support for legacy systems
    • Integration tasks within SOA environments

  4. 01/2014 – 04/2015

    IT System Administrator

    Hessische Zentrale für Datenverarbeitung, Wiesbaden

    • Installation, configuration and monitoring of Microsoft SQL Server
    • Automation with PowerShell
    • 2nd level support according to ITIL (change, incident, problem)

  5. 09/2011 – 01/2014

    Apprenticeship as IT Specialist for System Integration

    Hessische Zentrale für Datenverarbeitung, Wiesbaden

Selected projects

A selection of client projects from recent years.

since 07/2022 Industry: E-commerce

Cloud Operations: Kubernetes platform, CCoE and multi-account landing zone

Acting as a Cloud Center of Excellence, the team provides the landing zone for a multi-account strategy as the foundation for AWS migrations. Key elements are standards based on the Well-Architected Framework and the central provisioning of EKS clusters – exclusively via infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Defining standards and guidelines for development teams, internal trainings
  • Provisioning and automating infrastructure according to the Well-Architected Framework
  • Building Terraform modules (with Terragrunt)
  • Designing and building several Kubernetes clusters incl. selection and implementation of add-ons

DevOps Engineer

  • GitLab pipelines with OIDC authentication to AWS
  • Setting up ArgoCD as the central GitOps deployment mechanism for Helm charts
  • Upgrading the entire Terraform code base to new AWS provider versions
  • AWS EKS
  • IAM Identity Center
  • Lambda
  • Systems Manager
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • Terraform
  • Terragrunt
  • Python
  • GitLab
  • ArgoCD
10/2021 – 05/2022 Industry: Transport & logistics

CrossBorder+: architecture and automation of parcel services

Monoliths are broken up and replaced by standardised services based on AWS and Kubernetes, focusing on restructuring the parcel label and routing services.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Automating and improving infrastructure according to the Well-Architected Framework
  • Migrating from CloudFormation to Terraform as the IaC standard
  • PoC for Cassandra for global replication of master data

Technical Consultant

  • Supporting the redevelopment of the parcel routing service on Kubernetes
  • Interface between business and IT for requirements
  • Evaluating business rule engines (Camunda, Drools) and database design (SQL vs. NoSQL)
  • AWS EKS
  • DynamoDB
  • RDS
  • CloudFormation
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • Python
  • Camunda
  • Drools
  • MongoDB Atlas
  • Cassandra
12/2020 – 02/2021 Industry: Energy

Building EKS & ECS infrastructure

Providing best-practice PoCs for the introduction of container services, giving staff insight into how containers and orchestration work.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Consulting on best practices for containers and security
  • Building EKS clusters (managed node groups) and ECS clusters (Fargate) with Terraform
  • Training staff on day-0 and day-1 operations
  • AWS EKS
  • ECS Fargate
  • ECR
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
01/2020 – 09/2021 Industry: Insurance

MVP and build-out of an Insurance Data Repository

Driven by Solvency II and IFRS 17, the client builds its infrastructure for new valuation models on AWS. The sub-project delivers a standardised Insurance Data Repository that processes incoming and outgoing data automatically – entirely via infrastructure as code.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Requirements engineering and MVP design
  • AWS architecture with minimal operational overhead
  • Infrastructure with CloudFormation, automation with PowerShell and Python (SSM, Lambda)
  • API Gateway with Lambdas as the central interface
  • Auditable integration of actuarial software
  • AWS Lambda
  • Step Functions
  • API Gateway
  • EventBridge
  • CloudFormation
  • PowerShell
  • Python
  • MS SQL Server
  • FIS Prophet
10/2019 – 12/2020 Industry: Banking

Container platform for microservices

As part of the IT strategy, all applications move to AWS. For several Scrum teams, an infrastructure was built to use containers quickly, automatically and cost-efficiently – including the account structure and image scanning with Clair.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Requirements engineering and PoC design
  • Standards based on best practices and company policies
  • Infrastructure entirely in Terraform
  • Fully automated account and environment rollout plus CI/CD pipelines
  • AWS ECS Fargate
  • ECR
  • Lambda
  • CodePipeline
  • CodeBuild
  • CodeDeploy
  • Terraform
  • Docker
  • Clair
08/2019 – 10/2019 Industry: Manufacturing

IIoT architecture for various use cases

For a global market leader in manufacturing, an IIoT platform based on AWS services was designed – for event handling, KPI forecasting, predictive maintenance, predictive quality, traceability and energy optimisation.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Requirements engineering and use case design
  • Proposal preparation and project planning
  • Implementation as a minimum viable product
  • AWS IoT Core
  • IoT Greengrass
  • IoT SiteWise
  • Kinesis
  • Forecast
  • QuickSight
  • OPC UA
  • MQTT
04/2019 – 08/2019 Industry: IT services

Automated provisioning of cloud environments (Genesis)

As a catalyst for new software projects, a highly available infrastructure that can be maintained without downtime is created at the push of a button, including a CI/CD pipeline for blue-green deployments – based on the AWS CDK with Java.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Architecture according to the AWS Well-Architected Framework
  • Design and implementation of the CI/CD pipeline
  • Well-Architected Reviews of the infrastructure
  • AWS CDK
  • Java
  • ECS
  • Lambda
  • CodePipeline
  • Jenkins
  • Nexus
  • Docker
08/2016 – 03/2019 Industry: Energy

Migrating existing applications from on-premises to the cloud

Supporting the DevOps team with release management and operations, and designing, planning and executing the migration of existing applications to AWS, including stabilisation after cutover.

Role & responsibilities

Cloud Solutions Architect

  • Planning, building and operating AWS environments
  • Configuration management plus technical and business monitoring
  • Cost optimisation through automated use of EC2 Spot Instances
  • AWS EC2
  • S3
  • RDS
  • DMS
  • EMR
  • CloudFormation
  • Ansible
  • Jenkins
  • MS SQL Server

Skills & technologies

AWS services

  • VPC
  • EC2
  • S3
  • RDS
  • ECR
  • ECS
  • EKS
  • Lambda
  • Step Functions
  • API Gateway
  • Route 53
  • IAM
  • SQS
  • SNS
  • EFS
  • DMS
  • CloudFormation
  • CloudWatch
  • CloudTrail
  • Systems Manager
  • Secrets Manager
  • CodePipeline
  • IoT
  • Kinesis
  • Glue

IaC, DevOps & tools

  • Terraform
  • Terragrunt
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • AWS CDK
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • ArgoCD
  • GitLab
  • Jenkins
  • Nexus
  • Ansible
  • Atlassian Stack

Scripting

  • Python
  • PowerShell
  • Bash/Batch
  • YAML
  • JSON
  • SQL

Databases

  • MS SQL Server
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • Oracle
  • DynamoDB

Operating systems

  • Amazon Linux
  • RHEL
  • SLES
  • Windows Server

Methods

  • Scrum
  • Kanban
  • ITIL
  • Technology & innovation management

Certifications

Education

  1. 05/2015 – 05/2017

    Master of Science – Technology & Management (part-time)

    Provadis School of International Management & Technology, Frankfurt am Main

  2. 10/2011 – 04/2015

    Bachelor of Science – Business Information Management (part-time)

    Provadis School of International Management & Technology, Frankfurt am Main

  3. 09/2011 – 01/2014

    IT Specialist for System Integration (vocational training)

    Werner-von-Siemens-Schule, Frankfurt am Main

Let's talk

Planning a migration or a new platform, or want your existing AWS environment reviewed? I look forward to hearing from you.

info@nau-it.com
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