Daniel Zenzen
Senior software engineer with a decade of production frontend experience (Angular, React, Vue) who moved into AI systems and infrastructure-as-code in the last few years — including applied work on real-time governance and policy enforcement for LLMs. Original training in sociology (BA Politics & Society, MA Sociology), which is where the interest in institutional governance actually comes from.
Frontend & Product Engineering
Ten years building and shipping production frontends — Angular end to end, enough React and Vue to be dangerous, state management (NgRx, Redux, signals) that needed real discipline, component architecture and design systems instead of one-off pages, micro-frontend architecture where a single app stopped fitting the org chart, testing, performance and accessibility as part of the build, not an afterthought bolted on before launch. Design was never separate from that either: years of hands-on Figma and Adobe XD work built the instinct for what belongs in front of a user — these days that shows up as reading a spec fluently, not drawing one. This is the base everything below stands on.
Core capability areas
Systems Architecture
What you build AI on top of, if it’s going to hold up — system boundaries documented arc42-style, not diagrams that go stale after the workshop.
AI Product Engineering
Designing and shipping LLM-powered products — retrieval-grounded assistants and agentic workflows that get more accurate the more they’re used.
Infrastructure as Code
Provisioning and running the infrastructure AI products depend on — reproducible, auditable, built to survive an audit, not just a demo.
Governance & Sovereignty
Building the policy layer that lets a company set its own rules for AI instead of inheriting a provider’s.
Stack
| Item | Description | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | LLM & agent integration | ai / llm |
| 02 | Retrieval-augmented generation | ai / llm |
| 03 | Self-learning vector retrieval (Postgres) | ai / llm |
| 04 | Policy & compliance engines for LLMs | ai / llm |
| 05 | Multi-provider model routing | ai / llm |
| 06 | OpenTofu | infrastructure |
| 07 | Bicep / ARM | infrastructure |
| 08 | Docker | infrastructure |
| 09 | Kubernetes | infrastructure |
| 10 | CI/CD pipelines | infrastructure |
| 11 | Azure | infrastructure |
| 12 | Self-hosted infrastructure (own cloud, Germany) | infrastructure |
| 13 | Software architecture & documentation (arc42) | infrastructure |
| 14 | TypeScript / JavaScript | frontend |
| 15 | React | frontend |
| 16 | Angular | frontend |
| 17 | Vue | frontend |
| 18 | State management (NgRx, Redux, signals) | frontend |
| 19 | Component architecture & design systems | frontend |
| 20 | Micro-frontend architecture | frontend |
| 21 | Testing (unit, integration, e2e) | frontend |
| 22 | Performance (Core Web Vitals) | frontend |
| 23 | Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) | frontend |
| 24 | Node.js | frontend |
| 25 | Design literacy (reads a Figma spec fluently) | craft |
| 26 | Technical leadership & mentoring | craft |
Experience
| Rev | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| R06 | 01.11.2022–today | Senior Software Engineer at Makonis Responsible for front-end architecture and, increasingly, for the AI systems and infrastructure-as-code behind our products — including applied work on real-time governance and policy enforcement for LLMs. I mentor junior developers and work directly with clients, turning ambiguous requirements into production systems. |
| R05 | 01.10.2016–15.10.2022 | Full-Stack Engineer at Sascha Wolff Front-end (mostly Angular) and back-end (Node.js, MongoDB) on a small, senior team — the training ground for owning a problem end-to-end instead of a single layer of the stack, across every stage of the product cycle. |
| R04 | 01.06.2018–30.03.2021 | Co-founder of BreakfastClub U.G. Financed through a one-year scholarship by Forschungszentrum Jülich, we built an application connecting local companies with breakfast providers. |
| R03 | 26.02.2017–30.03.2021 | Co-founder of Kusuri Company We adapted the PillPack model from the US for the German market. The proof-of-concept performed well; we ran into legal obstacles that ended the project. |
| R02 | 01.10.2013–30.09.2016 | Master of Arts in Sociology Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Analysis of the social structure of modern institutions and organizations. Worked as a research assistant to Dr. phil. Gallina Tasheva. |
| R01 | 01.10.2010–30.09.2013 | Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Society Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Politics and society, focused on organizational and industrial sociology. Worked as a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Joost van Loon. |
- Started building interfaces before frameworks were standard (jQuery era); lived through the full framework generation (Angular/React/Vue) since.
- Designs before building — Figma/Adobe XD are daily tools, not an afterthought.
- Now builds with AI assistance the way that generation once learned frameworks — treats it as a craft shift, not a shortcut.
- Mentors junior engineers; has been through this kind of tooling generational shift before.