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Hi, I am Daniël

Daniël Franke

Freelance Systems and Software Architect

I’m a software architect and developer with over two decades of experience. I’ve worked in big coporations, startups, and am now working independently. I have extensive experience in designing distributed, scaleable, reliable systems. I also have a lot of knowledge of designing software to work in “Cloud Native” set-ups, and the management of the entire stack of those setups. I design solutions with user experience in mind, balancing performance characteristics of the system to fit user expectations. I also like to help companies and individuals reclaim their digital independence by evaluating their needs, suggesting ways to reclaim their sovereignty, and helping them execute my suggestions.

Leadership
Team Work
Creative Problem Solving
English
Dutch
German

Skills

Systems Architecture
Systems Architecture

Experienced in designing big, distributed systems, where many services and components work together to accomplish big and small tasks.
Software Architecture
Software Architecture

Extensive experience in designing applications. This includes data flow, threat modelling, scalability, and performance prediction.
Rust
Rust

Using as my main language for professional development. Capable of writing scalable, testable, and maintainable applications to specification.
Go
Go

Extensive experience in using the language in professional environments. Capable of writing scalable, testable, and maintainable applications to specification.
Linux
Linux

Decades long experience of using Linux on the desktop and server. Able to automate desktop and server installs and to do the same for needed applications and service. Experienced with configuration management, and all popular distributions.
TCP/IP
TCP/IP

Deep understanding of TCP/IP networking. Able to implement protocols in applications from an RFC.
Site Reliability Engineering
Site Reliability Engineering

Able to manage servers, services, and infrastructure as code. Have built systems to manage entire datacenters.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes

Able to deploy and manage applications running on Kubernetes. Knowledgable about the ecosystem. Familiar with the Kubernetes source code.
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL

Experienced in designing, optimising, and updating schemas for applications.
MariaDB
MariaDB

Experienced in designing, optimising, and updating schemas for applications.
Redis
Redis

Experienced in using Redis and Valkey as key-value storage for simple application, and as cache for more advanced applications.
Python
Python

Extensive experience in using the language in professional environments. Capable of writing scalable, testable, and maintainable applications to specification.
Git
Git

Extensive experience with git based development. Have used GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, and locally hosted versions.
Docker
Docker

Capable of distributing applications as multi-arch container images, built using multi-stage build process. Also experienced with other OCI container tools such as podman, cri-o, and containerd.
OpenStack
OpenStack

Able to set up, maintain, and troubleshoot OpenStack components.
Prometheus
Prometheus

Extensive knowledge of instrumenting applications for prometheus, configuring scrapers, and alerting. Also experienced with related applications like Grafana and VictoriaMetrics.
JavaScript
JavaScript

Intermediate knowledge, able to write, maintain, and deploy applications. Able to quickly learn missing knowledge like frameworks.
TypeScript
TypeScript

Intermediate knowledge, able to write, maintain, and deploy applications. Able to quickly learn missing knowledge like frameworks.
Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing

Have worked with AWS, GCP, and OpenCloud. Can easily translate concepts between them and other cloud vendors.

Experience

1
European Health Data Alliance e.V.

Apr 2025 - Present

Berlin, Germany

The EHDA is an organisation that builds dataspaces for European healthcare organisations, in order to securely exchange data between each other and patients.

Lead Architect

Apr 2025 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • Designing the EHDA vision of a dataspace.
  • Continued architecture, and development of the RUN-DSP dataspace connector.
  • Advocate for EHDA made technologies with Gaia-X and IDSA.
Health-X dataLOFT

Apr 2023 - Apr 2025

Berlin, Germany

Health-X dataLOFT is a consortium under Gaia-X that is tasked to research the feasibility of using the IDSA dataspace in a healthcare context

Lead Architect

Apr 2023 - Apr 2025

Responsibilities:
  • Design and create a dataspace based on Gaia-X and IDSA standards.
  • Evaluate this dataspace for its uses in the medical sector.
  • Design and create a light-weight, multi-tenant, standards compliant dataspace connector.
  • Design and create a mobile wallet application that allowed private citizens to securely connect to the dataspace.
2
3
ownCloud GmbH

Jan 2023 - Aug 2023

Nürnberg, Germany

ownCloud is a company that does the majority of development work of the well-known ownCloud suite, and the ownCloud Infinite Scale successor.

Freelance Software Engineer

Jan 2023 - Aug 2023

Responsibilities:
  • Redesign the oCIS telemetry architecture.
  • Heavily expand the functionality of the oCIS helm chart.
  • Implement a flow to invite users via email.
CTSB Medical GmbH

Jun 2022 - Dec 2022

Berlin, Germany

CTSB was a company that used state of the art COVID testing machines to deliver accurate, fast, COVID tests.

Architect and Developer

Jun 2022 - Dec 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Designed and implement plugins to interface with testing machines, and external APIs.
  • Designed and implement a custom flow-framework to make the aforementioned possible.
4
5
Berlin Institute for Health QUEST Center

Dec 2021 - Jun 2022

Berlin, Germany

The BIH QUEST Center develops and implements new approaches to support that biomedical research is conducted in a trustworthy manner, provides useful results, and meets ethical standards.

Freelance Developer

Dec 2021 - Jun 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Translate a mock-up application design into a production-ready one.
  • Implement the production-ready design.
  • Alter the professorship application portal to make it compatible with the new application.
Berlin Senate/Berlin Institute for Health

May 2021 - Jan 2022

Berlin, Germany

The Berlin Institute of Health tries to find technical solutions for healthcare related problems.

Lead Architect and Developer

May 2021 - Jan 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Design a system that can attest that a COVID test or vaccine document was authentic.
  • Design this system so it can work in places without internet and with limited light.
  • Design this system so that it can’t be used to track people.
  • Implement the aforementioned design.
6
7
Affinidi GmbH

Dec 2020 - May 2021

Singapore, Singapore

Affinidi is developing self sovereign identities, and the infrastructure to support them

Senior Platform Engineer

Dec 2020 - May 2021

Responsibilities:
  • Design and implement a GitOps workflow that fit the company.
  • Convert the legacy Pulumi based kubernetes setup to one based on Terraform and ArgoCD
  • Design and implement a CI/CD workflow for their applications.
iNNOVO Cloud GmbH

Dec 2017 - Sep 2020

Berlin, Germany

iNNOVO Cloud was a German private cloud provider, focused on banks, and edge computing.

Cloud Architect

Dec 2017 - Sep 2020

Responsibilities:
  • Design, implement, and deploy a self-service Kubernetes-as-a-service product.
  • Contribute to upstream open source projects.
  • Give training courses to customers and iNNOVO employees on how to use both the product and Kubernetes.
8
9
SysEleven GmbH

Jan 2017 - Dec 2017

Berlin, Germany

SysEleven is a b2b provider of various cloud solutions, including services based on their own OpenStack cloud.

Cloud Architect

Jan 2017 - Dec 2017

Responsibilities:
  • Reverse engineer the automatic OpenStack installation system.
  • Redesign the automatic OpenStack installation system, making it available to teams outside of the architecture team.
  • Design a new incident response system, making sure that any alerts were actionable, timely, and specific.
Zalando SE

Oct 2015 - Dec 2016

Berlin, Germany

Zalando is the leading European shop for shoes, fashion, and beauty products.

Senior Backend Developer

Oct 2015 - Dec 2016

Responsibilities:
  • Reduce the existing deployment system’s file distribution time from 2 hours to 5 minutes.
  • Decouple the bespoke build method from the existing deploy system, and port it to its own dedicated service so it could be used externally.
  • Design a new CI system, consisting of multiple loosely coupled microservices.
10
11
Booking.com

Jun 2012 - Oct 2015

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Booking.com is the world’s leading travel site.

Lead Python Developer

Aug 2012 - Oct 2015

Responsibilities:
  • Design and implement a fully automatic server discovery system, removing the need for manual data entry.
  • Design a REST API to expose data to non-python external applications.
  • Write a Django ORM-compatible python package that used the REST API as its backend.
  • Grow and lead a team from a one person team to one that can fulfil all the business needs.
  • Redesign and port the custom configuration management database.
System Administrator

Jun 2012 - Aug 2012

TomTom International

Nov 2010 - Jun 2012

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

AST Engineer

Nov 2010 - Jun 2012

12
13
Quanza Engineering B.V.

Apr 2005 - Oct 2010

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Senior System Engineer

Apr 2005 - Oct 2010

Siennax B.V.

Sep 2004 - Apr 2005

Amstelveen, The Netherlands

Member Configuration Management

Sep 2004 - Apr 2005

14
15
Internet Unie Services B.V.

Aug 2002 - Aug 2004

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Systems Engineer

Aug 2002 - Aug 2004

Websilon B.V./Valoris Nederland

Jan 1999 - Aug 2000

Delft, The Netherlands

Systeemsbeheerder

Jan 1999 - Aug 2000

16

Projects

BärCODE
BärCODE
Lead Architect and Developer May 2021 - January 2024

A vaccine and test result verification system that does no data collection, allows offline verification, and doesn’t require a smartphone for the data holder. Used as the official COVID passport in Berlin for 2 months.

Distributed System Go Public Key Cryptography CBOR QR BärCODE
Details
BärCODE Web Issuer
BärCODE Web Issuer
Lead Architect and Developer May 2021 - January 2024

A web based BärCODE issuer that allowed less-technical participants of the BärCODE programme to issue BärCODEs without having to transfer data to the server hosting the interface an keys.

Distributed System TypeScript" Vue WebAssembly Go Public Key Cryptography CBOR QR BärCODE
Details
BärCODE Web Verifier
BärCODE Web Verifier
Lead Architect and developer May 2021 - January 2024

A web based BärCODE verifier that any smart phone could load to verify the validity of a BärCODE. It scans a BärCODE, displays the information encoded in it, and will verify if the signature is valid and allowed to issue that code.

JavaScript Vue WebAssembly Go Public Key Cryptography CBOR QR BärCODE
Details
RUN-DSP
RUN-DSP
Lead Architect and Developer May 2025 - Present

A simple, fast, scaleable connector implentation of the IDSA dataspace connector.

Go gRPC IDSA Dataspace Protocol Dataspace Gaia-X EHDA RUN-DSP
Details
RUN-DSP S3 provider
RUN-DSP S3 provider
Lead Architect and Developer May 2025 - Present

A reference provider for RUN-DSP, using S3 as its backend. Used in all the RUN-DSP demos.

Rust gRPC S3 RUN-DSP
Details
OwnCloud Infinite Scale
OwnCloud Infinite Scale
Freelance Developer January 2023 - November 2023

A modern file-sync and share platform.

Go Helm Microservices
Star

Education
BCS
2011-2011
ITIL Certification
Fons Vitae Lyceum
1993-1997
HAVO