Robert Bennek

Contact Details
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I am an experienced FullStack Architect leveraging enterprise architecture frameworks, doing technology scouting to enable developer and operation communities to transform towards DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering. Designing and implementing end-to-end solutions ranging from BareMetal over IaaS up to CaaS/FaaS/PaaS/SaaS platforms both on- and off-premises in the financial domain. Next to architecting IaaS and PaaS platforms I developed and drove the CaaS strategy & architecture including writing and teaching the use of Cloud Native practices and transforming distributed monoliths into micro service architectures.

As a maker I like to understand all technical details and hands-on experience is key to understanding it to a level to derive strategies and architectures.

Given my passion for technology and my maker attitude I design and engineer my own CNC milling machines including electronic components/PCBs for my hobby to build robots. This includes also developing related software ranging from embedded devices, linux kernel drivers up to my home based IaaS & CaaS/PaaS stack on a 4 server rack.

Experience

Senior Enterprise Architect

Credit Suisse AG - Wealth Management

As architect I turn divisional technical requirements into strategic and architectural requirements for our corporate IT including close collaboration during engineering phases. This also includes PoCs to evaluate new technologies together with internal and external IT-providers including end-to-end usage concepts and guidelines. I led also business case analyses for cloud migrations. Being a full-stack architect I do live-demos on new technologies and practices like GitOps/DevOps, microservice architecture, CICD and develop DSLs with full IDE support (LSP) to improve developer experience in using model-driven IaC. SaaS integrations is another activity that sees more demand.

September 2020 - Present

Senior Enterprise Architect

Credit Suisse AG - Central Architecture

During my time as central architect I was the solution architect for the Toolchain 3 which included a full RFI/RFP with 14 collaboration platform vendors to chose the strategic product. After the evaluation I architected and participated in the implementation phase helping to engineer the end-to-end automation and integration into the existing ecosystem. Following that program I worked as central architect of the IaaS platform. With Docker entering the market I architected a Docker MVP solution to bridge the time till we introduced a CaaS platform. I was tasked to develop the CaaS strategy and next to the approval I architected the platform and wrote quick-start guides and usage concepts plus live-demos of container CICD pipelines fully automated from DEV to PROD. I also started the Operator usage concept but then I was offered an internal move to the application development area to help teams to adopt all the modern Cloud Native practices.

July 2010 - August 2020

JAP Toolchain Architect

Credit Suisse AG - Java Application Platform

I joined the Java Application Platform team as toolchain architect responsible for the full automation of a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for enterprise grade hosting of mission critical banking applications including online-banking. The solution I invented is a model-driven approach that allows modelling of application topologies of distributed multi-tier applications. Using the model in a model-to-text transformation all Weblogic configuration and network-connections are generated, packaged and uploaded to a corporate definitiv software library ready to be deployed by the central software distribution system. Based on a logical topology the toolchain offers the ordering of multiple deployments to all test-stages and four major hubs worldwide. The ordering includes resource allocation for each Weblogic instance to a shared worker-node farm and an application management tool to support maintenance and operations use cases. The PaaS offering relieves developers from most non-functional requirements including load-balancing across two data-centers, PKI-based mTLS trust-chain including security and application context propagation, HA & DR application blueprints, IAM, day 1&2, maven archetypes and parent poms, horizontal scaling using Weblogic clustering, application and system monitoring, database and messaging resources and integration, XA-transaction support etc...

Next to the toolchain I also architected and engineered a Reference-Application for application developers to showcase the use of J2EE capabilities and a Verification-Suite for operations to verify worker nodes.

July 2003 - June 2010

Senior Technical Architect

Credit Suisse Group - Winterthur Insurance

In my role as technical architect I worked together with the insurance competence center to engineer new solutions for the insurance business. As part of that I architected and engineered a software collaboration platform based on a vendor product for online collaboration including SCM support and setup of a quality assurance center in Barcelona. Hiring software engineers in Spain was part of the activities. The collaboration platform and the QA-center allowed us to automate a large part of the software engineering process which today is called DevOps. I wrote some articles for the Java Magazin back then to share the experience with a wider community.

January 2002 - June 2003


Middleware Architect

Telekurs Financial Serivces

As middleware architect I lead a team of software engineers to develop a middleware distribution system for realtime market data. We started back then in 1996 with C++ but switched to Java as early adopters soon as it turned out to be more efficient to develop. The solution had to adhere to realtime constraints as end-to-end latency from the stock-exchange to the end-user display had to be below 2 seconds.

July 1996 - December 2001


Software Engineer

AEG Daimler Benz AG

After finishing my studies I started as software engineer for research & development test stands in the car industry where I was responsible for SCADA & Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) and device integration. That included all kind of field busses like CAN, Interbus, Modbus, Arcnet, RS232 and also process system based on Transputers and PLCs. I started with Windows based HMI but also HP-UX and when I got in contact with Linux back in 1992 I introduced that for both server as well as end-user systems. Given my background in software engineering I was sent as representative of Daimler Benz to the ASAM GDI (Generic Device Interface) engineering body.

July 1992 - June 1996

Education

University of Applied Sciene Konstanz

Master of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
October 1987 - May 1992

Technical Grammar School - Waldshut Tiengen

Main Subjects: Mechanical & Electrical Engineering and Chemistry
August 1984 - September 1987

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
Workflow
  • Enterprise Architecture & Governance & Strategies
  • GitOps/DevOps & 12+ Factor & Cloud Native
  • Security & Regulations & Policies et al
  • CaaS & IaaS & FaaS & SaaS & BMaaS

Interests

Apart from being a FullStack Architect, I enjoy most of my time being outdoors doing mountain biking with my family and friends.

When forced indoors, I follow my engineering passion by designing and building CNC milling machines which started as a necessity out of my interest in building robots. I build pretty much everything from mechanical parts, electronic devices including PCBs and also hack into LinuxCNC to control and automate everything

Learning .... Certifications and Tranings

  • Heavy User of PluralSight & O'Reilly Courses, Hackathons, edX et al
  • Togaf Level 2 Certification
  • J2EE Enterprise Archiect
  • Kubernetes, Docker, GitOps/DevOps, MicroService Architecture
  • MCAD, ECAD, UML ...
  • MDA, MDSD, DSL engineering