Delivery Engineer · Agile Tester · Scrum Master

Meik Minks

Quality, automation and strong teams – from the first idea to operations.

Hi 👋,

my name is Meik Minks. For 12 years I have been working as a Delivery Engineer, Agile Tester, Continuous * (everything) expert and Scrum Master on various projects all over Germany. Fortunately, I got to know and appreciate the agile way of working, and agile software development in a team, early on. I’m convinced that it brings out the best in a cross-functional, diverse group of people and can ultimately lead to a better product.

Both out of conviction and from my practical professional experience, I can say that I like being an all-rounder in software development. For me, there are no separate roles for testers, developers or administrators. The optimum is reached when these three roles are taken on fluidly by one or, even better, two people at the same time while working on an issue.

How can I help?

I’m always open to exciting teams and tasks that aim to create a cool product in the end. I actively contribute to that and, by sharing my knowledge, help achieve a better outcome for the stakeholders.

Get in touch with me anytime or follow me on Github, XING or Instagram.

Expertise

My profile:

Development and migration of (microservice) platforms: Whether on-premises or cloud-based; classic or in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform. Manual work is yesterday’s news! Infrastructure is nothing but code and that’s exactly how it should be treated. I enjoy seeing things grow and improve. Terraform and CloudFormation are my tools of choice here.
Development and design of Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment pipelines: Nothing is worse than developing something for ages without getting real feedback from customers. Pipelines help to provide services automatically and with optimal, consistent quality. They give fast feedback and are essential for finding out whether we’re heading in the right direction or not.
Experienced testing expert: In my own work I want to lead by example and write clean, readable and simple source code that is easy to maintain in the end. The right tests at the right time help me and our team instead of slowing us down or getting in our way. In pairing and in general exchange, I try to spread my “tester’s eye” and the questioning mindset a tester needs. Beyond that, fast and constantly running tests in our Continuous Delivery pipelines are indispensable for increasing quality and minimizing risk.
Developer with a focus on quality: I would never call myself a full-blooded developer, but I still like to switch to a developer’s perspective. With Ruby or JavaScript I have already built various services. For other scripting languages out there, too, I can draw on a solid base of knowledge and experience, which I’m happy to share. My “tester’s eye” is always present and watches over what’s going on.
Agile ninja: I am a Certified Scrum Master of the Scrum Alliance. From time to time, and especially with small and young teams, I can take on the role of Scrum Master. Developing shared ways of working and organizing and facilitating workshops, reviews or meetings contributes to team success. What matters most to me is that I stay close to the team and remain actively involved in the product myself.

Values

What matters to me?

All my work follows these principles:

People: Everything stands and falls with ourselves. With humanity, dignity, respect, empathy and openness, I build trust and lay the foundation for clear communication on equal footing. This creates a strong bond within our team, enables peak performance and ultimately leads to a better-quality product.
Being open minded: No project is like another, so there can be no universal solutions. Every team member is valuable and contributes their part. I always look forward to working with smart and capable people from whom I can learn something myself. I equally enjoy regularly attending conferences and meetups or organizing dojos and mini workshops within our team.
Everything is Code: Thankfully, the times when things were just quickly clicked together are over. I live by the principle “Everything is Code”. Source code is transparent, versioned, testable and reproducible. That way, every area of software development (including infrastructure) can benefit from it.
Making mistakes is allowed (and encouraged): One of the most important points is being allowed to make mistakes. They are essential for learning and moving forward. So please, please: let’s make mistakes! What matters is learning from them – as early and as quickly as possible. That’s how we become experts in our field.
Having fun: Fun and team spirit are incredibly important. A relaxed working environment and style contribute to that just as much as the after-work drink. All of this motivates me and our team to perform at our best and, in turn, leads to a better product.

Curriculum Vitae

You can find my current CV with all the details in a clear format here as a download.

References

Let’s talk!

Yes? No? Maybe? Whatever it’s about, I look forward to talking with you. Just drop me a few lines and I’ll be happy to reply.

My projects so far

Over the last few years, my work has taken me across the country and through various industries. I like to look back on the following projects.

since 10/2018: inoxio Quality Services GmbH, Germany

Product Owner of posttresor.de, the legally compliant, audit-proof and GoBD-compliant email archiving solution, as Software-as-a-Service on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a cross-functional development team
Unit and end-to-end tests with JUnit, RSpec, Cypress and Cucumber (for Spring Boot)

Role: Product Owner, Tester

#ci #cd #jvm #java #cucmber #junit #rspec #cypress #sprintboot #devops #kubernetes #team #passion

09/2020-09/2020: betaset GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Development of Grafana dashboards for business and technical monitoring of backend and frontend systems

Role: Grafana Engineer

#grafana #prometheus #mongodb #traefik #nodeexporter #docker #json #github #regex #devops

08/2020-09/2020: Saurer Spinning Solutions GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Development of a fully automated deployment of a complete IoT microservice platform (infrastructure plus frontend & backend services) for a smart factory / IoT 4.0 into a Rancher-based Kubernetes cluster (K8s) using Gitlab CI/CD pipelines
On-premises hardware (non-cloud)
2 separate environments: Dev and Live
Remote in China

Role: DevOps/Delivery Engineer

#kubernetes #k8s #rancher #gitlab #ci #cd #gitlabci #infrastructureascode #keycloak #javascript #bash #iot #microservices #elasticsearch #fluentd #kibana #traefik #haproxy #letsencrypt #docker #rke #automation #devops

07/2019-07/2020: Trip through North, Central and South America

1 year around the world with Mika and Jana

Role: Explorer, Driver, Problem Solver

#family #worldtrip #aroundtheworld #sabbatical #sun #mountains #vanlife #camper

04/2019-06/2019: Jungheinrich AG, Germany

Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud migration for the country rollout of the entire Jungheinrich web infrastructure (www. jungheinrich.*)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform
Partial migration of a Java CMS to various countries around the world on the AWS platform

Role: Knowledge Lead AWS, Delivery Engineer

#aws #cloud #terraform #ansible #docker #bitbucket #git #jenkins #infrastructureascode #ruby #bash #vault #packer #scrum #agile #devops #vagrant #rest #elasticsearch #logstash #kibana #nginx #apache #traefik #prometheus #grafana #ci #cd #automation #devops

09/2018-03/2019: Consort NT / IT GmbH, Germany

Development of an IoT platform
Continuous development of microservices on Kubernetes clusters on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Testing expert
Scrum Master of a cross-functional team of 8

Role: Technical Lead Delivery (Chief Delivery Engineer)

#microservices #continuousintegration #continuousdelivery #continuousdeployment #tdd #docker #dockercompose #vagrant #git #gitlab #artifactory #ansible #haproxy #mongodb #nginx #jenkins #rabbitmq #kibana #elasticsearch #logstash #dredd #springboot #java #jvm #groovy #ruby #rspec #python #maven #bash #jira #scrum

02/2018-08/2018: Jungheinrich AG, Germany

Cloud migrations from on-premises systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Introduction and development of HashiCorp Vault
CI/CD pipeline development
Relaunch of www.jungheinrich.com and switch from Salt to Ansible

Role: Knowledge Lead AWS, DevOps/Delivery Engineer

01/2017-02/2018: Consort NT / IT GmbH, BMW AG, Datev eG, Germany

Development of a microservice platform
DevOps and delivery development as well as consulting on various sub-projects
Continuous development of microservices

Role: Technical Lead Delivery (Chief Delivery Engineer), Scrum Master

09/2016-12/2016: SINTEC Informatik GmbH, Germany

Delivery Engineer and consultant in the development of a microservice platform in a Java and C# environment

Role: Technical Lead Infrastructure and QA, DevOps/Delivery Engineer

#microservices #continuousintegration #continuousdelivery #continuousdeployment #tdd #docker #dockercompose #git #nginx #jenkins #rabbitmq #kibana #elasticsearch #logstash #java #jvm #maven #bash #jira

01/2015-09/2016: OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Germany

Engineer in agile (Kanban and SCRUM) cross-functional teams working on the otto.de web shop platform
Further development and maintenance of the overall platform
Development of various tools and features around the overall platform
Build, deployment, configuration management, automation

Role: Ops Engineer otto.de

#scrum #kanban #microservices #continuousintegration #continuousdelivery #continuousdeployment #tdd #nagios #icinga #jvm #git #gitlab #artifactory #vault #mesos #marathon #chronos #puppet #puppetdb #hiera #facter #graphite #varnish #haproxy #mongodb #nginx #jenkins #lambdacd #kafka #redis #zookeeper #kibana #elasticsearch #logstash #sinatra #tomcat #jetty #java #groovy #ruby #rspec #python #maven #gradle #bash #docker #vagrant #virtualbox #redhat #centos #ldap

10/2012-12/2014: ALSTOM Transport Deutschland GmbH, Germany

Test designer & test manager for train control software
Cross-level test execution (module, interface, integration, performance, type and vehicle tests)
Further development of the test infrastructure (introduction and development of Atlassian JIRA, Jenkins and GIT) as well as maintenance of the test systems
Coaching in agile methods

Role: Tester, Test Manager Lint & XCC

#scrum #vmodell #jira #jenkins #git #niilabview #labview #niteststand #teststand #silkperformer #casoftwarechangemanager #ccc #harvest #controlbuild

09/2011-10/2012: imbus AG, Germany

Software tester in an agile team (SCRUM) of 15 people for a nationwide test management software used for test planning, test design, test automation, test execution and reporting
Nationwide technical customer support, product consulting and coaching
Test automation with QF-Test

Role: Agile Tester

#teamlead #scrum #imbustestbench #testbench #imbusitorx #itorx #imbussigitorx #sigitorx #imbusitep #itep #qftest #qftest #python #groovy #jira #confluence #mercurial #svn #borlandcaliberrm #rationalclearquest #requisitepro #bugzilla #linux #windowsserver #oracle #mysql #mssql #eclipse #rubyonrails #css

01/2011-06/2011: E.ON Thüringer Energie AG, Germany

Responsible for test design and execution of an SAP integration with a system for managing real estate properties (Liegenschaften) – LIS
Technical and functional support of the business departments

Role: Working student / thesis student

#excel #outlook #php #jira #bash

01/2009-11/2009: Thüringer Landesrechenzentrum, Germany

Responsible for creating test specifications and test cases for a workflow-based DNS (Domain Name System) server developed in Java
Execution of integration tests and manual system tests according to specification

Role: Tester

#uml #xml #eclipse #junit #jira #java #jvm #linux #svn