Who am I?

I am Niklas Arft – Software Architect, DevOps Consultant, Data Engineer, and founder of SkelTech GmbH.

With over 12 years of experience, I help teams design and implement scalable, maintainable, and secure systems that support real business needs. A key part of my work is optimizing development and operations through robust CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and a mindset rooted in pragmatism and the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid).

In last few years, I’ve been focusing on modern data platforms, lakehouse architectures, and cloud-native data engineering. Whether it’s building data pipelines with Apache Spark, working with large datasets using Parquet and Delta Lake, or setting up analytics infrastructure on Azure Databricks – I help organizations turn their data into real value.

My approach is about choosing the right tools and building a mindset that supports agility, reliability, and ongoing improvement – both in software architecture and data systems.

I’m grateful to have turned my passion into my profession. That’s why I’m always curious to explore new technologies, concepts, and programming languages.

Technologies & tools I work with

Build & Deployment:
Ansible, Atlassian Stack (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket), GitLab, Jenkins, JFrog Artifactory, Maven, Nexus Repository Manager, Terraform

Cloud Providers:
Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hetzner Cloud, IBM Cloud

Containers & Orchestration:
Docker, Docker Swarm, Docker EE, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, VMWare vSphere/ESXi, Vagrant

Data Toolchain:
Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Delta Lake, Apache Parquet, SQL

Middleware & Integration:
Auth0, Keycloak, Azure API Management, IBM WebSphere Application Server, Oracle WebLogic Server, WildFly

Programming Languages & Frameworks:
Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Quarkus, Java Python, PHP, Bash, SQL, Node.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, Angular, Vue.js, React / Next.js, HTML5, CSS3

Looking for a reliable partner to support your software or data projects?
Feel free to reach out at [email protected] – I’d be happy to support you.