Jürgen - February 2026 Featured Member

Welcome to our Featured Member series. This months spotlight is on Jürgen, one of our amazing MVPs and marvelous contributors.

DevCentral: To start, please introduce yourself and tell our community a little bit about you. What you do and why is it important?

Jürgen: Hi, I’m Jürgen - 46 years old and originally from southern Germany. I have been working in the IT world since 1998, and have been involved with Linux, networking, and security since 2000. When I started working with Linux, I also started scripting and programming with Perl, shell scripts, and C. I still remember wrestling with those m4 macros for Sendmail configs!

Linux has always been my home base.

Through a large webshop project around 2008, I first came across the F5 WAF, and the programmable dataplane really impressed me. I have always been fascinated by Linux, coding, and automation. I always prefer to administer via the command line and declaratively rather than via graphical user interfaces. I’m also a big fan of open source and contribute actively to the MPD ecosystem.

In my free time, I enjoy reading, building with building blocks, working on my house and garden, and pursuing my own open source projects.

DevCentral: As a Senior IT Security Consultant at Axians IT Security GmbH, what is your typical workday like?

Jürgen: My everyday work doesn’t really look like that of a “typical” security consultant. Besides consulting, I also develop and build a GitOps framework for automating F5 deployments.

As a consultant I focus on classic F5 BIG-IP technology. I cover the topics of presales, architecture, application security, GitOps, and certificate lifecycle management. Writing iRules for my customer is also part of everyday life. I still set up new F5 environments myself, of course ideally with GitOps automation, just to stay hands‑on. When I’m not working on customer projects, I spend time advancing our automation framework for F5 ADCs. I also enjoy running workshops and giving presentations.

DevCentral: Can you give us a glimpse into your technical expertise?

Jürgen: I have been using Linux since 2000, both privately and in the data center. I have configured, administered, and automated almost everything from simple mail and web servers to clusters and virtualization hosts. I also have experience in network design, routing protocols, and classic firewalls. Since the beginning of my career, I have been programming and scripting in various programming languages. In addition to this purely technical knowledge, I have also developed and implemented ITSM systems. I configured F5 for the first time in 2008, but I have only been working with F5 Big-IPs intensively since 2000. I am now a DevCentral MVP for the fourth time in a row.

In addition to F5, I now have the most in-depth knowledge in the area of automation with GitOps processes. Automating F5 with GitLab CI/CD pipelines is my current core expertise and distinguishes me from most other consultants.

DevCentral: What is a customer challenge that you have encountered and how did community help you resolve? (Does not have to be the DevCentral Community)

Jürgen: No single story comes to mind right now, but community posts in general have helped me many times when troubleshooting tricky issues.

DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, how have they helped in your career?

Jürgen: Yes, I hold the 401 Solution Expert Security certification. It’s a good way to prove my knowledge, but honestly, the MVP title is even more meaningful to me because it’s more exclusive.

DevCentral: What drew you into the DevCentral Community and what keeps you engaged?

Jürgen: I have learned and benefited greatly from DevCentral articles. Therefore, I would like to give something back, simply to be fair. Through the MVP programme, I have also established valuable contacts with other engineers.

DevCentral: Can you share with the community a time a mishap occurred and what you did to rectify it?

Jürgen: Back when I was responsible for a data center, a power supply in the central storage node failed. Since the data center was on my way home, I wanted to quickly replace it. When I reinserted the power supply, of course correctly, the redundant SAN controllers crashed both and required recovery. Hundreds of VMs went down and had to be restarted. The vendor didn’t believe me at first, but eventually reproduced the issue with that exact power supply.

Lesson learned: never rush things.

DevCentral: What is your favorite book?

Jürgen: That’s a tough question! I’ve read so many great books. My all‑time favorite is definitely The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But the Kangaroo Chronicles by Marc‑Uwe Kling must be also mentioned as one of my favorites book.

DevCentral: What are your current career and life goals?

Jürgen: Right now, I feel like I’ve pretty much arrived, both personally and professionally. So I don’t have any specific goals at the moment. But even after 25 years in IT, I still love technology and enjoy learning new things, especially around automation.

DevCentral: If you weren't in your current profession what would be your dream job?

Jürgen: Probably something completely different and much less technical, maybe something creative like writing books or designing building block sets.

DevCentral: If you had a theme song that played when you walked into a room, what would it be?

Jürgen: It would have to be something from Einstürzende Neubauten or Nine Inch Nails, my two favorite bands. Hard to pick one, so I’ll go with “Lust for Life” by Iggy Pop, specifically the Prodigy remix.

DevCentral: Lastly, what inspires you?

Jürgen: Hiking in nature, preferably where there are few people, or just pottering around in the garden.