Gerald Loeffler is an architect who codes and has a consultant’s
mindset: he leads and works with technical teams and organisations
creating software-intensive systems, particularly in the enterprise
integration space. In doing so he draws on his copious project and
industry experience, doing whatever it takes to consistently deliver
successful projects and products. Depending on organisational context
and needs, Gerald enjoys filling the role of architect,
technical team lead or software development
manager, sometimes combined with project
manager or Scrum master. The technology domain
he is intimately familiar with is object-oriented and functional
software development on the JVM, also in Scala or Kotlin, building on
platforms such as Kubernetes, MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, Jakarta EE,
JBoss EAP, Quarkus or Spring, for application development as well as
system integration, using microservices, web APIs, message-based
integration, ESBs, SOA and related enterprise software technologies and
software engineering practices.
Gerald holds a PhD in Bioinformatics, an accredited
MBA and an MSc in Psychology. He has
attained these certifications: TOGAF 9 Foundation,
ScrumMaster, PRINCE2 Foundation,
MuleSoft Trainer, Certified Professional for
Software Architecture, AWS Certified
Cloud Practitioner, MuleSoft Certified
Platform Architect Level 1 and Integration
Architect Level 1, MuleSoft Certified Developer - Level
2, Lightbend Certified Reactive Architect,
Kubernetes Application Developer, Apache Spark
Developer, Guidewire Technical/Integration,
Slack Certified Developer,
Salesforce Certified Platform App
Builder and Platform Developer I, Java
EE Enterprise Architect, EJB Developer,
Java Programmer, Mule ESB Developer,
MuleSoft Connector Developer, API
Designer with RAML.
Professional Experience
4/2023 – now:
Software Architect in the central architecture team,
IT−Services der Sozialversicherung GmbH (ITSV)
Jakarta EE software architecture, also on OpenShift, and guidance of a
small dev team in this space.
Contributions to Enterprise Architecture governance and standardization
efforts (situated in the central architecture team).
1/2021 – 4/2023:
Principal Architect, Head of MuleSoft Training Center for
Technical Enablement, Salesforce (initially: Principal
Technical Architect - MuleSoft Training Portfolio)
The “MuleSoft Training Center for Technical Enablement” (“Training C4E”
for short) is a dedicated global team within the MuleSoft Training
organisation that supports this organisation and specifically the
MuleSoft Training and Certification Portfolio team with technical
expertise such as product and industry insights and best practices
pertinent to the MuleSoft training portfolio.
The Training C4E comprises experienced senior professionals in all
architecture domains, including technical, solution, and enterprise
architecture. The Training C4E supports the MuleSoft Training and
Certification Portfolio team in developing the vision, the design, and
the implementation of the entire MuleSoft training portfolio. This
support consists in guidance, advice, research, analyses, enablement,
quality control, and occasional limited hands-on curriculum development
activities, and is focused on the technical, product, and architectural
content of the training portfolio. Where beneficial, enablement
activities are extended to the entire MuleSoft Training organisation. As
an expression of its goals, the Training C4E is accountable for the
technical correctness of the entire training portfolio, including all
courses and certifications. To keep the training portfolio current and
relevant, the Training C4E proposes changes and additions to the
portfolio for the consideration of the MuleSoft Training leadership.
Architecture, design and implementation of cloud-native enterprise
integration solutions for educational purposes; creation of training
courses and certifications based on or informed by these integration
solutions; enablement of MuleSoft’s global team of instructors to teach
these courses; and occasional delivery of these courses to MuleSoft
customers in EMEA and the USA. Sporadic consulting engagements in
integration architecture with MuleSoft’s clients under the banner of
MuleSoft Professional Services.
Proposal, design and development of a new training course that
teaches experienced Entperise and Solution Architects how to architect
and design API-centric cloud-native applications for Anypoint Platorm,
MuleSoft’s multi-cloud API and enterprise integration development and
deployment platform. See https://training.mulesoft.com/instructor-led-training/aparch-application-networks.
Head of Development, Cortical.io, Vienna (permanent
employment)
Growing and professionalising the software development organisation of a
start-up in the NLP and semantic text processing space, with slightly
less than a dozen data scientists and software engineers, engaged in
professional services and pre-sales customer projects as well as
internal software product development.
Creation of recruitment and people management processes and
management of the technical team accordingly.
Establishment of a project-centric organisational structure and
processes for customer projects and product development.
Steering of long-term product direction and short-term
scope of activities within this structure.
Refinement and standardisation of software engineering
practices.
Contribution to day-to-day technical activities as project
manager/Scrum master, architect and
developer.
Scala, Java, Spring Boot, Apache
Spark, AWS, natural language processing,
machine learning.
3/2014 – 10/2015:
Principal Solutions Architect EMEA, Professional
Services, MuleSoft (permanent employment through German subsidiary;
initially: Senior Solutions Architect)
Consultant in integration architecture and implementation for MuleSoft’s
clients.
Insurance company, London, 16 weeks: technical guidance to
large offshore Mule ESB development team; performance investigations and
analysis of complex service-oriented system. Mule ESB, Guidewire
Insurance Suite, Spring Framework, SOAP/WSDL, XSD, CXF, clustered
ActiveMQ, JMS, Teradata, Oracle, Java, JMX, Maven; data analysis using
Spark/Scala.
Retailer, London, 17 weeks: project management and
technical leadership, formulation of microservices-based integration
software development meta-architecture, framework and continuous
delivery pipeline and its exemplary realisation through a few production
services. Mule ESB, Spring Framework, RESTful APIs, SOAP/WSDL, XSD, CXF,
REST, JSON, JSON-Schema, SAP ERP, Java, Jenkins, SOAPUI, Maven and
plugins.
Energy utility company, Nottingham, 2 weeks: architecture
and project proposal for phased realisation of complex system
replacement initiative.
Supermarket chain, Germany, 7 weeks: enterprise integration
architecture and phased legacy modernisation concept for this
international German-owned retailer, addressing both HQ and distributed
store systems.
Media venture, Sweden, 4 weeks: performance-focused
architecture proposal, prototyping and evaluation thereof for greenfield
AWS/EC2-hosted video streaming platform. CloudHub, Amazon VPC, Amazon
ELB, nginx, RESTful APIs, JMeter; data analysis using Spark/Scala.
Insurance company, London, 10 weeks: development for a new
cloud-hosted SalesForce-to-legacy data replication solution; designed
and implemented the legacy-facing component exposing web services and
encapsulating complex data consolidation and transformation. SalesForce,
AWS-hosted iPaaS CloudHub, Spring Framework, SOAP/WSDL/XSD, CXF, JSON,
Jackson, Java, Maven.
1/2008 – 2/2014:
Senior Integration Architect EMEA, Professional
Services, Guidewire Software (permanent employment through German
subsidiary; initially: Integration Architect)
Customer-facing, project-centred delivery management, architecture,
design, development and training for integrating next-generation core
insurance systems into an organisations enterprise IT systems.
Guidewire’s Technical Lead and integration team project
manager for the inception, pre-development and early development
phases of a large-scale core insurance systems (policy, billing, claims)
replacement project at an insurance carrier in London, UK. 7 Months
duration. Large distributed development team. Java EE web profile,
Guidewire ClaimCenter, PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ContactManager and
platform APIs, Mule ESB, Axis, Oracle 12g.
Integration Architect, Guidewire’s Technical Lead
and integration team project manager for the inception and
development phases of a project replacing two claims systems of an
insurance carrier in Milan, Italy. 18 months duration, approx. 15 people
in development project team. Java EE web profile, Guidewire ClaimCenter
and platform APIs, Axis. IBM WebSphere MQ, Oracle 11g, JBoss AS.
Integration Architect, Guidewire’s Technical Lead
and integration team project manager for a project implementing
a billing system at an insurance company in Warwickshire, UK. 17 months
duration, approx. 18 people in development project team. Java EE web
profile, Guidewire BillingCenter and platform APIs, Axis. IBM WebSphere
MQ and Broker, Microsoft SQL Server, Tomcat.
Delivery of in-depth hands-on technical workshops and presentation
of various technical aspects of Guidewire software products to a wide
range of audiences in a pre-sales context.
Development of training courses targeting developers and
architects integrating with Guidewire software products, and delivery
thereof to several Guidewire customers in the USA.
3/2007 – 12/2007:
Senior Architect/Developer, ObjectLab Financial Ltd,
London (permanent employment)
Internal enterprise Java software development for a financial software
product targeted at the investment banking market.
Motivated and led the architectural refactoring of this large Java
EE application to leverage dependency injection and AOP principles using
Spring 2.5.
Added an ESB-style integration frontend to said application using
Mule 1.4 and a distributed store-and-forward messaging fabric using
ActiveMQ 4.1.1, and used this to interface with an external financial
system.
Designed and implemented a message-centric XML data export/import
sub-system using JAXB 2.1 and Dozer 4.2.
9/2006 – 2/2007:
Enterprise Architect and Team Lead Architecture
and Java Software Development, ING Direct (ING-DiBa) Austria,
Vienna (permanent employment)
Contributed to the establishment of a Java EE-based SOA and BPM strategy
and managed a team of 2 architects and 9 Java software developers (both
internal and external; hiring 4).
Augmented an existing Java-only SOA with WS-I Basic Profile
conformant web service bindings based on JAX-WS 2.1 and JAXB 2.1. Drove
the modernization and re-design of the corresponding service interfaces
and implementations.
Led architecting and implementing a complete end-to-end blueprint
for BPM (business process management) through transactional service
orchestration and human task handling with JBoss jBPM.
Improved software engineering foundations by prioritizing
fully-automated build/package/deploy, product versioning, continuous
integration and a rounded SOA-compatible automated test approach.
Argued for the extension of the principles of componentisation and
separation-of-concern beyond the Java sphere across the entire
enterprise software architecture.
6/2005 – 5/2006:
Enterprise Software Architect, ShipServ Ltd, London
(permanent employment)
Identification, evaluation and recommendation of software architectural
choices; implementation of enterprise Java software following these
architectural guidelines; supporting the IT team in the adoption of new
software development and software engineering technologies.
Comprehensive re-design of ShipServ’s software architecture around
SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) principles: WSDL-first
approach to establish a WS-I Basic Profile conformant document-centric
web service layer using JAX-WS 2.0. Re-use of the established XML
vocabularies OASIS UBL 1.0 and xAL 3.0. Java EE 5.0 on JBoss 4.
Application architect and developer for ShipServ
Pages, a web-based maritime supplier search service, as a
proof-of-concept for this architecture and a strategically important
product for ShipServ. JSF, JAX-WS 2.0, EJB 3.0, JBoss 4, Tomcat
5.5.
4/2005 – 5/2005:
Technical Architect, Enterprise Java Solution Centre,
Capgemini UK, London (permanent employment)
2/2001 – 2/2005:
Consulting Java Architect, Professional Services, Sun
Microsystems (permanent employment through Austrian subsidiary)
Advising Sun’s customers on various aspects of enterprise software
development, often as project manager, software architect,
object-oriented designer, Java developer and mentor in medium-size
enterprise software development projects at customer sites for several
months. Selected projects and roles:
Lead Architect for “T-Com ID Server”, a Liberty-compliant
identity management and Single-Sign On solution for a German telecom’s
customer-facing web applications, integrating existing identity systems.
Essen, Germany. 3 months duration, approx. 15 people in project team.
J2EE, Spring framework, Struts, SourceID Liberty client framework. IBM
WebSphere application server and MQ, Oracle 9.2 RAC, Sun Java System Web
Server, Access Manager and others.
Technical Project Manager for the largest Austrian
telecom’s 2nd-generation implementation of the “A1 Organizer”, a
multi-device (web, WAP, PDA, SMS) wireless portal. 3 month duration, 7
people in project team. Complete range of Sun Java Enterprise System 2
software products, including Portal, Application and Identity
Server.
Portal Architect for the largest Austrian telecom’s
“Vodafone Mail” portal application for mobile phone devices. 4 month
duration, 5 people in project team. System architecture, mentoring.
Developer for a large German telecom’s “Legal Mail
Interception” project in Düsseldorf, Germany. 3 month duration, 6 people
in project team. J2SE, JavaMail, JNDI; SunONE Messaging Server and
Directory Server.
Component Lead and Project Manager for the largest
Dutch telecom’s Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) implementation and
iMode-MMS-Gateway, respectively, in Den Haag, The Netherlands. 7 month
duration, approx. 12 people in project team. Prince2 project management
methodology; J2EE (EJBs, Servlets, JavaMail); LogicaCMG wireless
infrastructure products (MMSC, WSB, Wap-Gateway, Push Proxy Gateway);
SunONE enterprise software products: Application Server, Message Queue,
Directory Server.
Technical Project Manager for the largest Austrian
telecom’s “A1 Organizer” (see above). 7 month duration, approx. 13
people in project team. PRINCE2 project management methodology; J2EE
(JSPs, Servlets); SunONE enterprise software products: Portal Server,
Messaging Server, Calendar Server, Application Server, Directory
Server.
J2EE Architect for project at a large German Bank in
Frankfurt developing a distributed private banking portfolio management
system. 5 month duration, approx. 30 people in project team. J2EE (EJBs,
JMS), Swing; BEA WebLogic 6.1, Oracle 9i, IBM MQSeries.
Consultant for architecture, OO-design and prototype
implementation for high-throughput execution platform for intelligent
software agents at an Austrian start-up. 6 month duration, 8 people in
project team. J2SE; IBM DB2.
3/2000 – 1/2001:
Software Architect, Research Institute of Molecular
Pathology, Vienna (fixed-term employment)
Requirements engineering, architecture, design and implementation in
Bioinformatics software development projects:
JMIMS, an enterprise information management system for the
production and usage of cDNA microarrays in support of the in-house
microarray facility. J2EE (JSPs, Servlets), OQL; Tomcat, POET
OODBMS.
A web-based data-management system for protein sequence analysis.
J2EE (JSPs, Servlets), OQL; Tomcat, POET OODBMS.
9/1999 – 1/2001:
Contractor in object-oriented analysis, design and
implementation in Java (self-employed)
Analyst and Requirements Engineer for a workflow
project at MorphoSys AG (medium-sized German biotechnology company) in
Munich, covering the scientific core competency of that company
(antibody generation). approx. 4 month duration. Interviews, use-case
modelling, OOA, UML; Java prototype implementation.
Java Web component developer for small Austrian software
company. HTML/JavaScript, Applets, J2EE (JSPs, servlets), XML, XSLT;
Tomcat, Oracle8i; Linux.
3/1999 – 2/2000:
Software Developer and Software
Architect, Apollo Imaging, Vienna (permanent employment)
Architecture, design and implementation of client tier and
application server tier of an Intra/Internet front-end to a multimedia
database. HTML/JavaScript, Applets, J2EE (JSPs, servlets), XML, XSLT;
Apache Web Server, Tomcat, Oracle8i; Irix.
Requirements engineering, functional specification and project
management for outsourced Bioinformatics (functional genomics)
software development projects.
Data science, design and implementation of
numerical/statistical algorithms using R for the analysis of DNA
microarray data and their correlation with clinical data.
Protein and DNA sequence analysis.
2/1997 – 1/1998:
Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Research Institute of
Molecular Pathology, Vienna (fixed-term employment)
Scientific software development and data science in
Bioinformatics (Langevin and Molecular Dynamics, electrostatic potential
of proteins). Java, C++, Fortran, scientific visualization; Irix, Linux,
Windows.
12/1994 – 5/1996:
UNIX system and network administrator, Molecular
Dynamics group, Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, University of
Vienna (fixed-term employment)
Workstations by SGI, HP and Sun
10/1994 – 1/1995:
Tutorial leader for Parallel Algorithms in the Computer
Simulation of Bio-molecules at the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry,
University of Vienna (fixed-term employment)
7/1989 – 6/1994:
Contractor in software development, university tutorial
demonstrator and other part-time jobs in chemistry/biology laboratories
Education, Certification, Training
Please note that most professional certifications expire: given below
is the date of the original certification; no claim is made that these
certifications are still valid.
Master of Science (MSc) in Psychology
(Distinction) at The Open University
10/2008:
Certified ScrumMaster awarded by the Scrum Alliance
1/2008:
Guidewire Integration Certification
12/2007:
Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for the Java
Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (SCEA for Java EE 5)
5/2003 – 10/2006:
Master of Business Administration (MBA), accredited by
AMBA, AACSB and EFMD/EQUIS, at The Open University Business School
6/2004:
Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE)
(grade A), the highest level (C2) of the Cambridge exams in English for
speakers of other languages
6/2004:
Intensive 2 weeks hands-on training on Test-Driven
Development at XPLabs
4/2003:
PRINCE2 Foundation project management certification
11/2001:
Principles of Managing Iterative Development (i.e., the
Rational Unified Software Development Process) by Rational University
6/2001:
Enterprise Development with iPlanet Application Server
6.0 Enterprise Edition by iPlanet
11/1998:
Sun Certified Java Programmer 1.1
5/1995 – 7/1995:
Training and Research on Advanced Computing Systems
(TRACS) at Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) sponsored
by the Human Capital and Mobility Programme of the EU
5/1994 – 1/1997:
Doctor rerum naturalium (Dr. rer. nat., PhD) in
Bioinformatics in Prof. Steinhauser’s group at the
University of Vienna. PhD thesis entitled “The Calculation of the
Dielectric Properties of Many-Component Systems from Molecular Dynamics
Simulations”. Software development and data science in Java, C++
and Fortran.
10/1987 – 5/1994:
Magister rerum naturalium (Mag. rer. nat., equivalent to Bachelor of
Science (BSc) plus Master of Science
(MSc)) in Biochemistry at the
University of Vienna. Masters thesis in the area of Bioinformatics
entitled “Efficient and Correct Treatment of Electrostatic
Interactions in Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Hydrated
Systems”. Software development and data science in C.
9/1975 – 6/1987:
School in Vienna
Skills
Languages:
German (native), English (mastery, C2), Italian (upper intermediate, B2)
Knowledge domains:
biochemistry, bioinformatics, computational biophysics, applied
statistics, data science, machine learning, natural language processing,
mathematics, software engineering, general (P&C) insurance, project
management
Software development:
system integration, system and software architecture, service-oriented
architecture (SOA) and design incl. microservices and RESTful design,
design patterns for distributed and concurrent software, distributed and
parallel computing, object-oriented analysis and design (OOA&D),
relational database design
Selected Topics in Java Web Application Development, guest
lecture in “Web Engineering I” at the Vienna University of Economics and
Business Administration on 27 October 2008.
Enterprise Java: central concepts in Java EE 5 (German), 2-day
course at the Institute for Systems Software at the University of Linz
on 9/10 March 2006.
J2EE: Introduction, Practice and Software Architecture, 2-day
course at the Institute for Systems Software at the University of Linz
on 3/4 March 2005.
Building Web Applications in Java - Foundation and Best
Practices, power workshop at W-JAX - Conference for Web Services,
Java, Apache, XML in Munich, Germany on 4 Nov 2002.
G. Löffler, P. Steinlein, JMIMS - the Java Microarray Information
Management System, Microarray Data Standards Meeting in Heidelberg,
Germany (2000).
[13]
B. Eisenhaber, P. Bork, Y. Yuan, G. Löffler, F. Eisenhaber,
Automated annotation of GPI anchor sites: case study C.
elegans, Trends Biochem Sci., 25 (7), 340-341 (2000).
C. Stratowa G. Löffler, P. Lichter, S. Stilgenbauer, P. Haberl, N.
Schweifer, H. Dohner, K.K. Wilgenbus, CDNA microarray gene
expression analysis of B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia proposes
potential new prognostic markers involved in lymphocyte
trafficking, Int J Cancer, 91, 474-480 (2001).
BioSymphony Beans: Software Components and Data Models for
Bioinformatics, presentation with Anatoli Krassavine at Objects in
Bioinformatics Conference in Hinxton, UK, 1998.
[10]
G. Löffler, Poisson-Boltzmann Calculations vs. Molecular Dynamics
Simulations for Calculating the Electrostatic Potential of a Solvated
Peptide, Theoretical Chemistry Accounts, 101 (1-3), 163-169 (1999).
G. Löffler, A Multithreaded Java Framework for Solving Linear
Elliptic Partial Differential Equations in 3D, Scientific Computing
in Object-Oriented Parallel Environments, Lecture Notes in Computer
Science, 1343, 121 - 128 (1997).
G. Löffler, H. Schreiber, O. Steinhauser, Calculation of the
Dielectric Properties of a Protein and its Solvent: Theorie and a Case
Study, Journal of Molecular Biology, 270 (3), 520 - 534 (1997).
G. Löffler, H. Schreiber, O. Steinhauser, The Frequency-Dependent
Conductivity of a Saturated Solution of ZnBr2 in Water: A Molecular
Dynamics Simulation, Journal of Chemical Physics, 107 (8), 3135 -
3143 (1997).
O. Steinhauser, H. Schreiber, G. Löffler, W. Kleinert, Parallel
Biomolecular Simulation: Theory, Algorithms and Implementation,
Simulation Practice and Theory, 5, 573 - 603 (1997).
G. Löffler, H. Schreiber, Parallel Biomolecular Simulation: An
Overview and Analysis of Important Algorithms, High-Performance
Computing and Networking, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1067, 929 -
934 (1996).
G. Löffler, T. Mager, C. Gerner, H. Schreiber, H. Bertagnolli, O.
Steinhauser, Static and Dynamic Structural Analysis of a Saturated
Solution of ZnBr2 in Water: Anomalous X-Ray Diffraction and Molecular
Dynamics Simulations, Journal of Chemical Physics, 104 (18), 7239 -
7248 (1996).
G. Löffler, P. Maccallum, Molecular Dynamics of Solvated Proteins on
the Cray T3D: Algorithms, Implementation, Benchmarks and Results,
poster at ParCo 95 Conference in Gent, Belgium (1995).
[2]
G. Löffler, H. Schreiber, O. Steinhauser, Computer Simulation as a
Tool to Analyze Neutron Scattering Experiments: Water at Supercritical
Temperatures, Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft für Physikalische
Chemie, 98 (12), 1575 - 1578 (1994).
[1]
G. Löffler, W. Robien, Automatic Analysis of 13C-NMR-Spektra of
Mixtures, poster at CIC-Meeting in Oldenburg, Germany (1990).