BerufsschulCampus Schwalmstadt
Fachabitur with a focus on computer science, in Schwalmstadt, where I grew up. It opened the way to studying at a university of applied sciences.
I've built for the web for more than ten years, and since 2025 I've also built with AI agents.
I started as a working student at Main-Finanz in Frankfurt and stayed four years. From 2020 I ran Levaro, a small IT service provider, as shareholder and managing director, and freelanced as a React developer alongside. At the end of 2023 I moved to FFW, now JAKALA, to write code in a large team again. Since then I've worked on zdf.de.
I care about the parts a screenshot doesn't show: keyboard focus, what a screen reader announces, how fast the first image appears. In my lab I test how far AI agents carry real products, and what works goes into my team at work. Away from the screen, I'm at the gym or cooking.
In my lab I build my own products and test how far AI agents carry real software. Four projects so far, each with a better workflow than the last: cherish, Wünsche Zappel-Philipp, Qrate and this site.
Since December 2023 I've worked on zdf.de for ZDF, through the relaunch and beyond. In a flat team of more than 20, I worked across components and design system, player, Core Web Vitals and accessibility. I also built the AI setup that the developers in the ZDF monorepo work with.
Alongside Levaro I freelanced as a frontend developer, mostly with React. The longest ran ten months, on the customer portal of an energy service provider. Others ranged from a scroll story in more than nine countries to a real estate platform I took to go-live alone.
I ran Levaro as shareholder and managing director: the IT service provider for the Main-Finanz and Grafenberg group, plus web projects for outside clients such as yoursurance and alaiko. I led a team of two to five people, plus freelancers, some of them offshore. In 2023 I sold my shares; the company continues under different leadership.
I joined Main-Finanz as a working student in January 2016 and went permanent in April 2017. As a software engineer I built full stack: CMS-based websites, web apps and intranet software. From July 2018 I focused on the frontend, including performance, QA and onboarding new colleagues.
Information technology with a focus on internet-based systems. From 2016 I carried on in practice, at Main-Finanz.
At Raumgestalter MK in Pohlheim I looked after the company website as a part-time CMS developer, plus SEO, SEM and social media. After that, as a working student at iProspect in Wiesbaden, I ran social media campaigns and monitored their performance.
Fachabitur with a focus on computer science, in Schwalmstadt, where I grew up. It opened the way to studying at a university of applied sciences.
Fachabitur with a focus on computer science, in Schwalmstadt, where I grew up. It opened the way to studying at a university of applied sciences.
Information technology with a focus on internet-based systems. From 2016 I carried on in practice, at Main-Finanz.
My first paid web work, alongside my studies: the website of Raumgestalter MK, an interior design company in Pohlheim. [PLACEHOLDER: is "interior design" correct?]
I ran the CMS and took care of search, ads and social media too, so I saw what a website has to deliver for a business. At iProspect in Wiesbaden I then worked on the agency side, on social media campaigns and their numbers.
Both jobs were short, but they showed me I wanted to build the web, not only market it.
Main-Finanz was my first job as a developer. I started as a working student while still enrolled, and in April 2017 I was hired permanently. I built CMS-based websites, web apps and the internal intranet software, from the database to the interface.
Over time the frontend became my field: in July 2018 I became the frontend developer, responsible for performance and QA, and I onboarded new colleagues.
When I left at the end of 2019, I didn't go far: as Levaro, I stayed the group's IT service provider. Four years in one company showed me how code lives on long after its launch.
For Techem X I spent ten months extending the customer portal of an energy service provider, so property owners could handle a change of ownership online (React, Next.js, Redux, KendoReact). For the Grafenberg group I built a policy app for insurance contracts and rebuilt the intranet UI on an atomic component library.
Some projects were about pace. For Klimaschka I built a real estate listing platform alone with one designer, from the CMS structure and API to go-live, in about two months (Next.js, Sanity, maps). For Art-galerie I built a framing configurator over around 200,000 motifs with a live price, React on top of Magento 2.
Others were about precision. CWS launched its PureLine product with a scroll story in more than nine countries, which I built pixel-perfect with a design agency, using GSAP and a custom video UI. For Compass Kreuzfahrten I turned an HTML prototype into TYPO3 templates and set up the design library for the Vue booking engine.
Levaro was the IT service provider for the group I had worked in as an employee, and it took on web projects for other companies too. As shareholder and managing director I was responsible for both: the work for the group and the outside clients, among them yoursurance and alaiko.
The job changed what I did all day. Instead of writing most of the code myself, I organised and delegated: a core team of two to five, plus freelancers, some of them offshore in other time zones. Alongside it I kept freelancing as a developer, so I didn't lose touch with the code.
In 2023 I sold my shares, and another person now runs the GmbH with a different focus. I took two things with me: how to hand work over so someone else can finish it, and the certainty that I wanted to get back to development. Both matter today, with colleagues and with agents.
I joined FFW in December 2023; JAKALA had acquired the agency that April and has carried its name since 2024. My title is Web Developer, and my project from the first day has been zdf.de, ZDF's streaming portal. The frontend team is flat, and in practice everyone works at senior level. I've had a hand in almost every part of the app.
I came from four years of running a company and freelancing, and I had sold my Levaro shares. I wanted to get back to development, in a big team, on a project with weight. zdf.de had all of it: Next.js with the App Router, Linaria, GraphQL, a monorepo, and the accessibility duties of a public broadcaster. The hardest test came two weeks before go-live, when a launch-critical component turned up that nobody had planned.
zdf.de went live on 18 March 2025, and the genre bar I built in those two weeks is still part of it. Since then I've brought AI agents into the team: I built almost the whole setup in the ZDF monorepo, from agent rules, skills and commands to custom agents, MCP servers and hooks. Fewer than ten developers across several ZDF products work with it.
It started in June 2025 with cherish, a photo-sharing app for my sister's wedding. I used every tool on the market side by side, wrote prompts and one CLAUDE.md, and connected anything MCP could reach. The agents got lost in workaround spirals, and I wrote my first rule: stop after two workarounds.
In December 2025, Wünsche Zappel-Philipp brought structure: conventions, issues as work packages, CI as a gate. With Qrate in January 2026, tickets became preserved groundwork, the agents got skills and rules scoped by path, and a docs check in CI kept the documentation honest.
This site, started in September 2026, runs on a team of nine specialised Claude Code agents with a hub that plans and spokes that report in a fixed protocol. I stay in the loop: I make the decisions and review. What holds up in the lab goes into the setup my team at JAKALA uses.