Sound, Space, and Systems
Passionate people teach their passions effortlessly, and learning works best when it's peer-to-peer and practice-based.
I didn't learn to build systems in a computer science classroom. It started at 21, standing behind a mixing console at SAE Institute in Berlin, learning to shape acoustic space. I'd played bass in a punk band through my teens (music was always present) but I wasn't interested in virtuosity. What drew me was the engineering: how frequencies interact, how a mix creates dimension, how you can build an atmosphere from discrete elements.
Audio production taught me a way of thinking I didn't have words for yet. You're constantly balancing elements, finding clarity in complexity, making technical decisions that serve a feeling. After SAE, I spent several years exploring, working various jobs, including assistant roles on film sets through my father's connections as a camera operator. Those film productions taught me about collaboration under pressure, about craft, and about being present when the work demands it.
Kultstätte Keller - 2014In 2011, through friends in Berlin's cultural scene, I got involved with an empty building in Neukölln. The idea was to create space for art and community events. I started building recording studios in the basement. What we created instead was Kultstätte Keller, which grew from occasional parties into a nightclub running entertainment six nights a week. I never finished those studios. Instead, I became co-owner and operator, managing sound systems, technical infrastructure, and logistics for a space that had found its own momentum.
Running Kultstätte taught me about systems at scale: organisational, technical, human. But it also showed me the limits of a certain kind of success. By 2015, after years in nightlife, I started to notice the toll: how people age in that environment, the consumption that comes with it, the feeling that something essential was missing. I wanted to build things that lasted differently.
Around this time, I did a three-month internship at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, working under Hans Martin Buff, who would go on to win a Grammy. In those three months, I learned more about audio engineering than in my entire formal education, not because the curriculum was better, but because I was learning directly from someone deeply passionate about their craft. That experience planted a seed: passionate people teach their craft effortlessly, and learning works best when it's peer-to-peer and practice-based.
This insight became U/skillity, a platform idea I co-founded with my girlfriend: a peer-to-peer marketplace for microskills, where anyone could teach what they knew and learn what they needed. Think Airbnb, but for knowledge. The problem was, I had no real understanding of business or technology beyond what I'd picked up intuitively.
So in 2016, I completed an IHK certification in Business Administration and discovered something unexpected: I enjoyed structured learning. I'd left school early, underwhelmed and bored, but now at 30, with years of practical experience behind me, formal education felt different. I wanted more. But without an Abitur, traditional university paths were closed.
That's when I found the HEAR programme at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, a route designed for mature students entering higher education later in life. I took the entry exams, got accepted, and moved to Ireland.
The Formalisation Years
2016 - 2022
Building U/skillity — peer-to-peer learning platformIreland was hard. I studied business and marketing full-time, but found myself increasingly drawn to a computer science module I'd added, particularly Java programming, which clicked in a way the business courses didn't. The work was intense: five days of lectures, then working evenings and weekends at an Apple retail job to finance it all. But I was learning, and U/skillity continued remotely as my girlfriend and I iterated on prototypes.
After a year and a half, I discovered something interesting: because I'd been accepted to one EU university, I could transfer anywhere in Europe. I'd heard about CODE University in Berlin, a new kind of institution focused on interdisciplinary product development and applied learning. I applied, got in, and moved back home in 2018 to study Product Management.
CODE was where things started connecting. The programme emphasised synthesis: how technology, design, business, and human needs intersect. Structure, empathy, and purpose weren't separate concerns. They shaped each other. But I also needed to work. That's when I found YPTOKEY, a startup building blockchain-based IoT access systems.
I joined as a Product Owner and Frontend Developer, but quickly found myself in an unexpected role: translator. The CEO and CTO spoke different languages (one focused on business strategy, the other on technical architecture) and I could understand both. I started building React proof-of-concepts for potential customers, explaining blockchain to sales teams, and bridging the gap between vision and implementation. It was the first time I'd built something with code that mattered to a business outcome, and I was largely self-taught, drawing on the Java foundations from Ireland and resources at CODE.
When COVID hit in 2020, YPTOKEY faced financial pressure and I lost the role. I used the time to reconsider what I actually wanted to do and realised I missed programming more than product management. In early 2021, I took a Technical Project Manager role at Data4Life, a digital health company. The team was kind, but the work felt misaligned: trying to create a startup culture inside a corporate structure, working with people who fundamentally didn't want that. It clarified something important: I wanted to build, not just coordinate.
By mid-2021, I'd moved to Freiheit.software as a Frontend Developer. I loved it immediately: remote work, travelling while coding, working on real enterprise applications with React, Node.js, and TypeScript. Then something unexpected happened: the team needed full-stack support, and I got pulled into backend work. I discovered I enjoyed it even more. There was something deeply satisfying about designing systems end-to-end, thinking about architecture, data flow, and how pieces fit together logically.
When Freiheit lost a client in late 2022 and had to let me go, I used one of their former customer contacts to start freelancing. After years of employment, I thought independence might be what I needed.
Seeking Depth
I'm not starting a career at 40. I'm bringing twenty years of learning how to build things that work.
Three years into freelance work, I've learned what I don't want as clearly as what I do.
The freedom is real. I set my schedule, choose my tools, work from anywhere. But the work itself has been limiting: mostly small landing pages, WordPress customisations, design tweaks for clients who need a web presence but not a system. I've realised I don't enjoy client acquisition, and I miss the structure of regular income. But more than that, I miss deep logical work.
What I mean by that: building backends, architecting systems, solving complex problems that require sustained thought and careful design. The kind of work where you're not customising a template, but creating something with internal logic and coherence. I miss working with a team, people to learn from, to review code with, to discuss trade-offs and approaches.
U/skillity still resurfaces in my mind occasionally. Now that I have the technical skills, I sometimes think about rebuilding it properly. The idea (that passionate people teach best, and learning should be peer-driven) never really left. It's part of why I care about mentorship and knowledge sharing in teams.
In 2025, after months of job applications without success, I enrolled in the Advanced Web Development Programme at Neue Fische, an intensive bootcamp focused on modern TypeScript, backend architecture, testing strategies, and deployment workflows. It's been a way to sharpen my skills, update my knowledge, and stay current while searching.
The freelance reality — working from anywhereWhat I'm looking for is clearer now than it's ever been. I want to work on a team (ideally 10-50 people) where I can contribute as a Full-Stack or Backend-focused developer. I want to work on products that matter, with clean architecture and cross-functional collaboration between engineering, design, and product. I want to go deep into systems, databases, APIs, and infrastructure to build things that are coherent, maintainable, and grounded in real user needs.
Looking back, the path makes sense. Audio engineering taught me to shape systems from components. Kultstätte taught me to manage complexity and adapt to what emerges. Film work taught me collaboration and craft. U/skillity taught me that I care about how people learn. YPTOKEY taught me I'm a translator between disciplines. Freiheit taught me I love backend systems thinking.
I'm not starting a career at 40. I'm bringing twenty years of learning how to build things that work (whether sonic, cultural, or digital) and focusing that synthesis on software systems. I know what drives me now: clarity, depth, and work that improves something real.
If you're building products with care and looking for someone who thinks across disciplines, understands systems, and wants to go deep, let's talk.