"I am particularly impressed by the appreciation that is shown to me and my work"

What is your job like?

I see myself as kind of an "IT generalist". My work involves understanding technologies and business processes, interpreting system behaviour and being able to classify errors and their effects. So, above all, I need a very comprehensive technical and professional understanding, which I have acquired partly through my studies, but mainly through my personal interest in technology and business processes.

My team and I are responsible for the support of various systems that are used by our departments as well as customers. If a problem is detected in one of these systems, we are the first to be contacted for analysis and solution. Our first step is to use our tools to check where exactly the problem is. To do this, we check, for example, in Azure Monitoring, in Application Insights, the log files or directly on the database to see what could have led to the problem. In this way, we can determine whether it is a temporary malfunction, an incorrect entry or a bug. If this is the case, we involve our development team. The team receives a ticket from us with a precise description of the problem based on our analysis. Weighing up the risks, costs and benefits, we decide on the implementation together with the specialist department. If the correction is carried out, for example, as part of a hotfix, I support the department with the test and ensure that the system runs stably on the productive system in a hypercare phase.

Along the way, my team is also responsible for user management in many applications, organising and coordinating IT operations in its various facets such as monitoring, service level agreements, business continuity management, IT cost planning and KPI reporting.

And of course I also help our departments with usual everyday IT problems wherever I can.

As you can see, the job of an IT Operations Manager is very versatile, exciting and never gets boring.

Before you joined us, you founded a start-up. Tell us a little about this exciting time.

From my point of view, a very advantageous time for founding a start-up is right after graduation, because at that time you usually have few obligations and are used to an inexpensive lifestyle - as in my case. I started the project with a friend, and later two other team members joined. Our idea was to make industrial air pressure generation more sustainable. More precisely, to reduce the power consumption of air pressure generation in production - through certain sensors and adjustments. To systematically advance the business idea, we asked for early support from the Founders Foundation. This is an organisation that supports founders primarily with know-how and a network of contacts in order to promote the business case. For example, we had meetings with the founders of Jodel or Aklamio and got valuable tips.

Nevertheless, our idea did not develop as we had hoped. This was mainly due to the lack of scalability of our product. One reason for this is that the production facilities of our potential customers, i.e. industrial companies, are usually individual solutions and there is no uniform standard. For us, this meant that each customer would have to be regarded as a separate, very individual project. Due to this project character, we would have been more of a consultant/service provider and would not have brought a scalable product to the market as planned. We did not want to develop in this direction from the start. On the other hand, our product was also not scalable internationally, as electricity prices abroad are significantly cheaper due to lower environmental regulations and companies therefore do not see any economic need in reducing electricity consumption.

In the end, our team agreed not to push the start-up any further. Nevertheless, we learned a lot from this exciting time.

And that's how you luckily ended up with us. What do you like about working at Riverty?

I am particularly impressed by the appreciation that is shown to me and my work. I have the feeling that I am making a big contribution through my work, which of course promotes motivation and also fun. In addition, I enjoy being part of a group. For example, it is exciting to see how work processes are developed and implemented. In small to medium-sized companies, you often don't have the need to define processes, because the paths are short and concerns may be unique. With us, setting up or optimising an existing process involves several hundred to thousands of employees. Being involved in something like that is fun. I also appreciate the job security and the internal development opportunities that such a company offers.