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I like building things that make people's lives a little easier.

Freelance engineer from Hamburg, working with teams mostly on AI and cloud systems.

  • 7+

    Years of client work

  • 13

    Projects delivered

  • 8

    Systems in production

Email MeSee Recent Work

My Clients

  • Mercedes-Benz
  • Vodafone
  • Hapag-Lloyd
  • Merck
  • Deutsche Bahn
  • TECH

Selected work

A few systems where the quiet parts mattered.

2026 – present

dmTECH · Solution Architect, AI Governance & IAM

Identity & Access Management for AI Agents

A governance and architecture model that treats AI agents as real identities inside the existing enterprise IAM — each with an owner, a lifecycle, and an audit trail.

Focus

Agentic IAM, AI governance, One Identity, Identity lifecycle

Proof

Keeps agent autonomy accountable instead of letting it drift into shadow AI. The architecture and recommendations form the basis for a future agentic IAM at dm.

2025 – 2026

Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation · Lead Engineer & Solution Architect

Enterprise AI Platform & Agent Gateway

Designed and built the backend and agent gateway that lets internal teams ship their own generative AI and agent-based apps.

Stack

AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, Terraform, Step Functions, SageMaker

Proof

Technical lead for a 13-person team, 7 of them engineers. Integrates internal data and ML platforms across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

2020

Hapag-Lloyd · Data Scientist

NLP Automation for Email Processing

Built and deployed NLP models that classify incoming email across global logistics workflows.

Stack

BERT, AWS Lambda, ECS, API Gateway, DynamoDB

Proof

Processes over 190,000 emails a month in production. WirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting 2020 — 2nd place, Technology (with Ginkgo).

Reference architectures

A few systems, drawn the way I actually build them.

Real architectures from projects I have shipped, redrawn as interactive diagrams. Click any component to see what it does in the system.

View in App Store

Scales to zero

Lambdas fire on API calls and EventBridge schedules. No Kubernetes, nothing always-on, so idle time simply costs nothing.

Costs a few dollars a month

Infrastructure runs at about $2/mo for up to 15k active users. The only variable cost is the OpenAI call behind each message.

Reproducible by default

The whole stack is built as AWS CDK code, deployed from CI, so it can be torn down and rebuilt identically within minutes.

Side projects

I also like making small useful things.

This is the less formal proof: product instincts, curiosity, and the habit of finishing. Some are public, some are private, all of them taught me something.

Hello Menu

QR-based digital menu platform helping restaurants replace physical menus.

Benefits: No printing costs, Real-time updates, Mobile-friendly menus.

Visit website

Leap, Generative AI Mobile Backend

Serverless backend architecture for a generative AI mobile application.

Focus: LLM integrations, Serverless infrastructure, AI-powered mobile experiences.

View on App Store

Income Tax Calculator

Interactive tax calculator web app.

Demonstrates: Modern web UI, Data-driven applications, NextJS frontend architecture.

Try it out

Trading Bot Dashboard

Private operator dashboard for monitoring a volatility-focused trading bot.

Highlights: Supabase-authenticated operator UI, Realtime trading state surfaces, Path-integrated deployment at /apps/tradingbot.

View project

Working notes

The vibe I try to bring into a project.

Friendly, direct, useful. I like clear trade-offs, small artifacts people can keep using, and implementation that does not require a ceremonial reveal.

Discovery

Understand goals, constraints, and success criteria.

Solution Design

Define a pragmatic architecture aligned with project scope, from lightweight prototypes to scalable production systems.

Implementation

Build reliable systems using cloud-native architectures and automation.

Deployment & Knowledge Transfer

Production deployment, documentation, and support for internal teams.

Contact

Send me the messy version.

A few rough paragraphs are enough: what you are building, what feels uncertain, and what needs to be reliable.

I usually respond within 24 hours.

info@sebastiannichtern.com

No form, no funnel. Just a normal email.