Interested in the role of an SRE?
Learn a bit about Markus Kahl — OpenProject’s Senior Site Reliability and Operations Engineer — in this interview about how he approaches his top responsibility at the company: maintaining and improving (maturing) the OpenProject cloud offering.
“I’m working to improve our compatibility with other service providers. We’re solid with US-based companies like AWS, but we have customers in Germany, for instance, who prioritize data sovereignty and only host servers in Europe. To move this forward, I am working on making the infrastructure and the software work across different providers.
Part of that is also maturing other parts of our work, for instance, we needed a disaster recovery policy, so we created that. This ensures we’re prepared to act quickly and efficiently if a ransomware attack or data loss catastrophe occurs. And there are other security certifications and checklists we adhere to when working with large corporate customers.
It’s all part of the next phase of maturity and growth for OpenProject Cloud, so it’s exciting.”
5 things about Markus
🎸 What is your favorite music?
Genre: Metal, Rock, and Electronic
Band: Coheed and Cambria
Thanks to my wife: Classical
📚 What are you reading?
Current book series: The Dresden Files
Forever favorite book: The Raw Shark Texts
Learning: Technical articles about Terraform, etc.
🎮 What are your favorite activities outside of work?
Video game development
Gaming, like D&D
Sports, like Volleyball
🏫 What did you study at University?
Computer Science and AI
🗞 Where was your first job?
At 13, I worked in a kitchen washing dishes and as a paperboy—basic stuff.
I wasn’t happy with it, so at 15, I started taking software development freelance gigs!
