Technical Lead & System Architect at GPORTAL · Freelance Software Engineer, DevOps & IT-Security at birkner.io
I've spent 10+ years in the hosting industry, mostly in game server hosting, where latency, uptime, and DDoS attacks are part of everyday life. I design and run platforms that orchestrate thousands of servers on bare metal and Kubernetes, with backends written in Go and deployments driven by GitOps.
My rule: software isn't done until it runs reliably, is monitored, and can be deployed without fear.
Alongside my full-time role, I take on selected freelance projects, remote or on-site in East Westphalia (OWL), Germany:
- 🧩 Software development & architecture: backends and APIs in Go, TypeScript, and Rust; system design; legacy modernization
- ☸️ DevOps: Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters, GitOps with Argo CD, CI/CD, bare-metal and cloud hosting, monitoring
- 🔐 IT security: security reviews, Linux and Kubernetes hardening, identity and access concepts, DDoS protection
- 🌐 Network & servers for SMBs: switches, firewalls, Wi-Fi, and server setups (Cisco, Juniper, Arista, UniFi)
👉 birkner.io · 📧 hello@birkner.io · 💬 Free 30-minute intro call
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| silo | Self-hosted package registry for RPM, APK, npm, pacman, and apt, written in Rust |
| go-steam | Go library for downloading Steam content and Workshop items without the Steam client |
| openshift-homelab | Run OpenShift 4 on bare metal in your homelab |
| hacs_1komma5grad | Home Assistant integration for the 1KOMMA5° Heartbeat energy system |
If my open-source projects save you time, consider sponsoring me on GitHub. It helps me keep maintaining and building new tools.
