/about

Christian Gehlen

I’m living near Aachen, Germany, working remotely as a Technical Product Manager in R&D. Most of my day revolves around turning complex IT requirements into actionable tasks, designing architecture for cloud-native systems, and writing structured documentation that actually gets read.

Outside of Work I’m a husband, father of four cats, centipede lover and constructor in a second-hand home from the 1960s.

Professional Work

What I do: I analyze customer requirements and translate them into actionable tasks for developers. I write documentation, define scopes, and support both software and infrastructure architecture. In short: I turn ideas into working systems — structured, traceable, and secure.

  • Telecommunications: In-depth knowledge of German provider change processes and number management (LNP/MNP, WBCI, S/PRI, WITA, TR-AAV)
  • Technology stack: Linux, Java, Docker, Oracle / PostgreSQL, REST, SOAP, Messaging
  • Automation & Infrastructure: GitOps, DevOps, Ansible
  • Documentation & Architecture: Docs as Code (AsciiDoc, Markdown), visualizations with Mermaid, PlantUML, Swagger/OpenAPI
  • Security: Thread Modelling, SSDLC, Handling of cryptographic keys, certificates, and secure communication

Private Life

  • I’m a homeowner learning that houses and gardens are never finished — just in a constant state of “almost there”.
  • I’m in the gym several times a week, making peace with gravity through weightlifting — best decision ever for an office-bound spine.
  • I’m managing a multi-cat household with colorful histories and occasional social experiments. One joined us for free with the house.
  • I study and keep centipedes, which I document over at scolohub.com. Yes, I like the weird ones.
  • I used to played bass in a black metal band, did the occasional editorial work in the EBM scene, and maintained two webzines for evil music.
  • I tinker with code and my home server in my free time: Linux, Hugo, Ansible, Python, Mermaid, PlantUML — whatever scratches the “* as code” itch.
  • I enjoy reading. Formerly I used to read a lot of fictional stories, but grew more into educational non-finction nowadays.