Uwe Schwarz
Project Manager
I connect technology, people, and business goals – acting as the bridge between teams, stakeholders, and systems. Whether it's IT security, networking, high-availability infrastructure, or email solutions, I take ownership, lead complex projects, and ensure the results are not just technically sound, but strategically aligned and built to last.
Availability
75% available · 100% from 2027-01-01
🛡️ GDPR🤖 AI🤝 Human API📡 networking💡 strategy🔐 securityAbout Me
With over two decades of hands-on experience in IT and project leadership, I specialize in building secure, scalable, and future-ready systems. From high-stakes data center migrations to evolving security strategies for regulated industries, I’ve led diverse teams and initiatives that drive tangible business outcomes.
I act as the bridge between technical complexity and strategic clarity. Whether I’m aligning teams on a security roadmap, modernizing infrastructure, or translating compliance requirements into real-world action, I bring a clear head, calm hands, and a passion for connecting the dots between tech and people.
Outside the day-to-day, I stay curious. I’m particularly fascinated by AI and its potential to enhance everything from cybersecurity to user experience. I enjoy experimenting with new tools, self-hosted solutions, and smart workflows – always with an eye on what’s practical, elegant, and secure.
Experience
Key Projects
Major technical and organizational engagements with high responsibility.
A curated selection of multi-month and multi-year work; further details on request.
Technical Program Lead IPv6 Migration
Deutsche Rentenversicherung (RP, BW)
- Technical program ownership for the IPv6 migration at DRV RP and DRV BW, with a focus on migration planning, execution structure, and cross-functional technical coordination.
- Designed and implemented an operational control model with dashboard, action board, KPI portfolio, risk register, and decision index to translate technical topics into structured delivery artifacts.
- Coordinated technical groundwork for architecture and rollout across IPv6 addressing, segmentation, dual-stack target design, test-lab planning, and cross-team dependencies.
- Supported security- and compliance-related requirements in the context of BSI, NIS2, and critical infrastructure, translating them into traceable evidence, risks, and management reporting.
- Achievement: Established a reusable intake-to-governance workflow for systematically capturing technical actions, risks, open issues, and evidence requirements.
- Achievement: Created an operational baseline for technical program execution with measurable KPIs, clear ownership, and transparent decision support.
Technical Subproject Lead Data Center Migration & Backup Modernization
Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG
- Technical subproject ownership within the data center migration, focused on Solaris, Linux, storage, and backup environments.
- Designed, modernized, and implemented the enterprise backup platform based on Rubrik Security Cloud, coordinating across operations, security, and recovery requirements.
- Contributed to the evolution of the Solaris infrastructure and the phased replacement of legacy systems with modern, cloud-ready target architectures.
- Supported the technical renewal of the network infrastructure toward a segmented, security-oriented architecture with clearer operational and protection boundaries.
- Achievement: Established a modernized backup baseline with improved data protection, compliance, and recoverability across multiple business units.
- Achievement: Contributed to the technical preparation and coordinated execution of the relocation of two data centers, with minimized downtime and aligned infrastructure dependencies.
Information Security Engineer & Compliance
Threedium Ltd.
- Advised on and implemented information security measures across technical security controls and organizational security requirements.
- Supported the DevOps team on security-related topics, operational hardening measures, and the integration of security requirements into existing platform and deployment processes.
- Integrated services into the existing SSO infrastructure to standardize authentication, access control, and user management across multiple platforms.
- Supported audit and certification readiness for SOC 2 and ISO 27001, including control mapping, evidence collection, and coordination of technical and organizational measures.
- Advised on GDPR requirements and introduced retention rules, data protection policies, and related organizational controls.
- Introduced and evolved security policies and baseline controls to strengthen the organization's overall security posture.
- Achievement: Implemented IT security measures that supported a SOC 2 audit with zero non-conformities and helped secure key client requirements.
- Achievement: Integrated SSO infrastructure across multiple platforms, improving security, access consistency, and user experience.
- Achievement: Contributed to successful ISO 27001 certification within a tight timeline through structured implementation of requirements, controls, and evidence.
Security Engineer & Incident Response
Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG
- Provided security consulting and technical support across information security, with a focus on server, network, and infrastructure security.
- Supported strategic and operational activities during a major security incident, including coordination of response, containment, and recovery.
- Developed and refined security policies, technical concepts, and implementation-oriented security standards.
- Automated vulnerability and incident management to improve structured intake, prioritization, and handling of security-relevant events.
- Supported the build-out and evolution of IT architecture and security strategy, particularly in network architecture, cloud infrastructure, and firewall design.
- Prepared and supported penetration tests across network, cloud, application, and Active Directory environments.
- Held operational responsibility in the SOC environment, focusing on security monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvement of analysis and escalation processes.
- Performed security audits and provided security oversight for application and network migrations.
- Technical focus on Linux and networking, complemented by security consulting for Windows, Azure, and application development environments.
- Advised on data protection, audit, and certification requirements, including ISO 27001, BSI baseline protection, NIST, and MITRE.
- Achievement: Contributed to the coordinated response to a major security incident, with a focus on damage containment, recovery, and operational stabilization.
- Achievement: Developed and automated a vulnerability management approach, improving response times and transparency in incident handling.
- Achievement: Implemented security policies and technical security standards that were later adopted as reusable best practices across the organization.
Lead Infrastructure Engineer
Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG
- Handled technical coordination and resource planning for a small infrastructure team.
- The team’s scope covered Linux-based platforms for email, cloud storage, load balancing, proxy, and DNS.
- Analyzed, troubleshot, and sustainably stabilized complex email infrastructures.
- Provided consulting and technical implementation across IPv6, security, and highly available infrastructure systems.
- Held technical subproject responsibility for a data center relocation, including migration and rebuild of applications and server infrastructure into redundant, highly available target environments.
- Achievement: Contributed to the coordinated execution of a successful data center relocation with aligned infrastructure dependencies and stable operational transition.
- Achievement: Introduced IPv6 in the enterprise environment as part of the long-term modernization of the network infrastructure.
- Achievement: Improved team throughput and operational stability through automation and more structured resource coordination.
System Architect Email Archiving
Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG
- Product Owner and system architect for the enterprise-wide email archiving platform, including requirements management, technical roadmap, and long-term evolution.
- Led the design and implementation of a legally compliant archive for more than 50,000 users, ensuring immutable retention, auditability, and long-term maintainability.
- Introduced scalable storage, redundancy concepts, monitoring, indexing and full-text search to enable efficient retrieval of historical correspondence.
- Close collaboration with legal, compliance, and auditing teams to meet regulatory requirements and ensure long-term evidentiary integrity.
- Secondary responsibilities in the surrounding mail infrastructure (dovecot, postfix), Linux-based services, DNS, proxy, load balancing and cloud storage.
- Achievement: Delivered a stable, compliant archive used daily across the entire organization.
- Achievement: Established future-proof data retention strategies aligned with strict regulatory expectations.
Additional & Focused Projects
Complementary or specialized projects with flexible scope.
Specialized, flexible, or focused initiatives that complement the broader work.
Member of the Board
DEGIT AG
- Information Security Officer and Data Protection and Privacy Officer.
- Access to experts from multiple fields.
- Competent and focused partner for all consulting needs.
- Building a secure and compliant IT infrastructure with a focus on modern technologies (IPv6, Zero Trust, Zero-Config VPN, etc.) and best practices.
- Responsible for corporate governance in IT security, privacy and compliance topics.
Lead Software Engineer – SchlauFabrik Training Platform
xtensible UG (haftungsbeschränkt) & Co. KG
- Designed, architected, and developed a multi-tenant training platform for compliance and AI topics with role-based access control and clear tenant isolation.
- Implemented core platform capabilities including course delivery, progress tracking, quizzes, assignments, and admin dashboards for tenant and user management.
- Implemented security-by-design using Postgres Row-Level Security, audit logging, rate limiting, and hardened authentication flows based on passkeys, magic links, 2FA, and SSO.
- Developed tamper-evident PDF certificates with QR verification, cryptographic hashing, and bulk export capabilities for audit and evidence workflows.
- Integrated Stripe billing including subscriptions, customer portal, and webhooks, and implemented tenant-based licensing models and soft-lock mechanisms for usage limits.
- Built with Next.js App Router, TypeScript, Bun, Tailwind, next-intl, Neon Postgres, Resend, and automated testing with Vitest and Playwright.
- Achievement: Built a production-grade SaaS platform focused on security, multi-tenancy, billing readiness, and auditability.
- Achievement: Connected product logic, compliance requirements, and technical implementation in a consistent platform architecture.
Founding Member & Data Protection Officer
AKTion gegen Krebs gUG
- Founding member responsible for data protection and GDPR compliance.
- Developed and maintain the organization's backend systems.
- Planning and implementing AI-supported workflows for case management.
- Responsible for IT security strategy and risk management.
- Established GDPR-compliant data protection framework from the ground up.
AI Training Platform & AI Tools Evaluation
DEGIT AG
- Design and implementation of an internal AI training platform for corporate use, focusing on compliance with the EU AI Act and practical enablement of teams.
- Evaluation and decision paper comparing leading AI and automation platforms with regard to data protection, reliability, API integration and governance readiness.
- Evaluation of emerging Agentic AI workflows for multi-step task orchestration and their integration into enterprise automation environments.
- Analyzed and benchmarked: OpenAI ChatGPT, OpenAI Open-Weight GPT-OSS, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Anthropic Claude, Apple Foundation, z.AI GLM, n8n, make.com, Zapier.
Code Review & Security Advisory
GEHR Datentechnik GmbH
- Comprehensive code review of the existing PHP application with a structured assessment of critical, medium and low-severity issues.
- Creation of a detailed review document including technical findings, recommended remediation steps, and prioritization for development teams.
- Consulting on application and infrastructure security with a focus on practical improvements, secure coding patterns and operational hardening.
- Support during the implementation phase to fix identified issues and improve overall application resilience.
Developed Solutions
Secure Email Archive
Led the coordination, architecture, and implementation of a legally compliant enterprise-wide email archiving solution for more than 50,000 users. The system ensures immutable storage of all communication for over 10 years, meeting strict regulatory and auditing requirements. Based on open-source technologies, the archive was designed with scalability, redundancy, and long-term maintainability in mind. Integrated monitoring, indexing, and full-text search enable efficient retrieval of historical correspondence.
AI-Supported Case Management
Designed and implemented a system to support the processing of cancer-related cases using AI. The platform integrates secure data handling, structured workflows, and AI-based assistance to prioritize, analyze, and streamline case management. This ensures faster response times and improved quality in handling sensitive medical and legal information.
SOC 2 & ISO 27001 Certification
Led the successful implementation of SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance frameworks, establishing robust information security policies and controls to meet industry standards and ensure data protection.
EU AI Act Training Platform
Designed and developed a modular training platform covering the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act). The course provides a structured learning path with interactive slides, voice narration, and integrated quizzes to ensure a clear understanding of the regulation’s scope, risk-based framework, and compliance implications. The platform includes five sections — from fundamentals to governance, risk categories, and real-world applications — and was built with future expansion in mind to accommodate upcoming modules on data protection, ethical AI, and technical implementation guidelines.
Zero-Config IPv6 VPN Network
Designed and implemented a secure, zero-configuration VPN network leveraging IPv6 as the foundation for global connectivity. The solution enables seamless peer-to-peer communication without manual setup, NAT traversal, or complex provisioning, while ensuring strong encryption and modern authentication mechanisms. By combining simple rules with advanced security controls, the network architecture provides resilient, scalable, and privacy-preserving access across distributed environments.
Backup Infrastructure Modernization with Rubrik
Modernized the existing backup infrastructure by implementing Rubrik's enterprise backup solution, enhancing data protection, reducing recovery times, and simplifying management across hybrid environments.
Automated Document Management with OCR and AI Categorization
Developed a private system to digitize all personal documents and letters using OCR technology. Integrated AI-based classification to automatically sort documents into predefined categories, enabling efficient search, retrieval, and archival. Additionally, implemented automated analysis to detect tax-relevant documents for income tax purposes and tag them accordingly.
Skills & Technologies
The tools I rely on to build secure and scalable IT systems
Project Management
Team Leadership
Stakeholder Communication
IT Strategy
Technical Concepts
Get In Touch
Interested in working together? Feel free to reach out!
Let's Connect
Feel free to reach out for collaborations or just a friendly hello.
Email me at
mail@uweschwarz.euPhone
+49 151 64403667