SEOlytics GmbH
Hamburg
Head of Development at SEOlytics
Head of Development
May 2015 - March 2016
11 months
Full-time
Product work
Hamburg
Relevance
Why this case matters
The case shows how problem understanding, responsibility, decisions, and implementation came together in this context.
Impact
Led the development organization, microservices architecture, and internal engineering systems such as Jira, Wiki, Jenkins, Git, Quay.io, and Nexus closer to product delivery.
What carries forward today
AI-native systems craft needs clear technical direction and teams that connect architecture, product, and execution. This case shows that leadership work before today's AI hype.
Head of DevelopmentMicroservicesDevOpsDelivery systemPlatform operationsTeam BuildingProduct DevelopmentSelenium
Defensible proof
Internal + external
Developers led
Professional and disciplinary leadership across internal and external contributors.
Microservices
Architecture shift
Moved an existing system toward a more modular architecture.
Hiring
Team building
Job postings, interviews, team restructuring, and employee development.
Toolchain
Engineering enablement
Shared responsibility for internal development systems including Jira, Wiki, SVN, Jenkins, Git, Quay.io, and Nexus.
Where this experience creates value
- For companies that do not want to separate technical leadership from product and delivery responsibility.
- For teams that need to evolve existing systems without disconnecting delivery.
Case context
Overview
SEOlytics was moving an existing software system toward microservices while the development organization also needed clearer leadership. I took professional and disciplinary responsibility for internal and external developers and connected technical direction with product development.
The transformation connected microservice architecture, team building, employee development, internal engineering systems, and operational steerability. Jira, Wiki, SVN, Jenkins, Git, Quay.io, and Nexus were not just tools, but part of whether developers could reliably find, build, test, deploy, and understand work.
Responsibility
Activities
- Team Leadership: Professional and disciplinary leadership of internal/external software developers
- Architecture Transformation: Microservices architecture, system restructuring, scalable software architecture
- Product Development: Technical responsibility for product development, maintenance, and enhancement
- Team Building: Team restructuring, job postings, interviews, employee development
- Strategic IT: Resource planning, strategic IT alignment, internal software and tool development
- Engineering enablement: Shared responsibility for Jira, Wiki, SVN, Jenkins, Git, Quay.io, and Nexus as internal development infrastructure
- Delivery and operations capability: Moved build, test, deployment, and feedback paths closer to product and team decisions
- Quality Assurance: Timeline and quality standards, Selenium-based UI/regression tests, lean development, code review
Operating mode
Methodology
- Servant Leadership: Team Empowerment, Shared Ownership, Collaborative Decision Making
- Delivery system: Use Scrum and lean development to improve transparency, feedback, and decision speed
- Technical quality: Pair programming, code review, refactoring, and quality standards as shared team responsibility
- Cloud Computing: Scalable Architecture, Modern Infrastructure, DevOps Practices
Technical context
Technology stack
The tools are not the point by themselves. What matters is which system layers had to work together.
5Areas
24Technologies
DevOps
7Docker SwarmCloud ComputingAWSDockerGitDevOpsPlatform Operations
Backend
2JavaMicroservices
CI/CD & Delivery Pipelines
4JenkinsCI/CD PipelineNexusQuay.io
Tools
3SeleniumJiraConfluence
Practices
8Project ManagementTeam CollaborationSCRUMDelivery SystemLean DevelopmentAgile CoachingDocumentationProcess Tracking
Next step
If you need similar responsibility, we can identify the next useful leverage point directly.
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