Thomas Strauß
Member of the Executive Board, Head of Software Engineering
- Excellent expertise in software architecture, architecture transformation, IT consulting, IT strategy, technology advisory, agile development, automation, software testing, cloud and DevOps.
- Solution-oriented even in critical project situations. With the mindset to pave the way to the future in a structured way.
- Has the skills to successfully implement even highly complex software projects across all lifecycle phases.
Contact Thomas Strauß at the Frankfurt am Main office
Thomas Strauß is a member of the Executive Board and Head of Software Engineering at NEXTRAIL GmbH. He has been working as a software solution architect in a leading position for decades. He is characterized by his high level of expertise in the area of business-critical, distributed, high-performance systems that are available around the clock. He has focused on the rail sector after working for well-known European companies (manufacturing, automotive).
He started his career as an application engineer at Siemens in 1998, where he was involved in the development of SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and software for test systems in production. Just a few years later, as Manager of Transactions and Data at Santander Direkt Bank in Frankfurt am Main, he took on responsibility for process design and the development of new applications in the sensitive area of document-based financial transaction systems.
In 2018, Thomas Strauß switched to the mobility sector and was commissioned by Randstad Digital to work for Deutsche Bahn, including as Lead Software Architect in the area of RIPL (traveller information platform). After the successful go-live of the project, he became involved in the implementation of ATO in the Digital Rail Germany division, where he worked in various roles.
At Randstad Digital, he was responsible for 30 employees as a disciplinary manager. As a Senior Solution Architect, he developed the company's technological and methodological strategy as a founding member of Technology Management and the Digital Solution Team.
Thomas Strauß studied computer science and legal informatics at Saarland University in Saarbrücken and holds an M.A. in information science. He supports the exchange between software experts as a lecturer and speaker at conferences and is active in training and further education.
Mr. Strauß take over, as a member of the Executive Board and department head, the development of the newly founded software engineering department at NEXTRAIL GmbH. He brings his broad and deep understanding of all aspects of software product development and application lifecycle management to our company.
Personal project references for Thomas Strauß
Autonomous Rail in the digital node Stuttgart (AR@DKS, ATO-C), DB Netz AG. Redesign of the Capacity Train Management System (CTMS).
Big data platform for traveller information (RIPL). (Deutsche Bahn, TR). Lead Developer and Software Architect for the complete rewrite of the VDV information systems.
Development of the data processing platform PaperDynamix® (TechniData Biz Solutions GmbH, Mannheim). CTO, Lead Architect.
Autonomous Rail in the digital node Stuttgart (AR@DKS, ATO-C), DB Netz AG. Redesign of the Capacity Train Management System (CTMS) The AR@DKS (ATO-C) project aims to further increase capacity on the rail network through autonomous train operation (Automated Train Operation/ATO). In addition to increasing capacity on the tracks, the operator also expects a significant increase in reliability and punctuality in passenger transport.
to achieve this goal, the Capacity Train Management System (CTMS), including all networked subsystems, is being redesigned, realized and implemented for the intelligent control of rail traffic in the Stuttgart digital hub. Systems such as train scheduling, rail infrastructure, European Train Control System (ETCS) and Automated Train Operation TrackSide (ATO-TS) are being introduced and integrated at the same time to guarantee the function of the overall system. To implement autonomous driving in the Grade of Automation 2 (GoA2) in real operation, all data from the supplying systems must flow into the CTMS in real-time and a driving operation framework must be calculated based on optimization methods.
As part of the project, Mr. Strauß was entrusted with actively supporting the integration of the CENELEC 50128 process model (based on the V-model) and agile procedures according to SAFE. He was significantly involved in the architecture of the software and the software release process for the overall system and designed and implemented the procedures for automating the system documentation. In addition, as Product Owner Implementation in the CTMS Translator team, he was responsible for interface partner communication, requirements management and the resolution of impediments with stakeholders.
Extract from the technologies and tools used:
ArgoCD, Atlassian Confluence, Atlassian JIRA, Docker, Docker Compose, Docker Registry, draw.io, Event-Streaming-Architecture, GitLab, GitLab-CI, Gradle, Grafana, Java, Jupyter Notebooks, Kubernetes, Kustomize, Loki, MQTT, NATS.io, Polarion, Prometheus, Python, Quarkus, test coverage with Cucumber Framework, Documentation with CukeDoctor and ASCIIDOC, Procedure according to MbSe, CENELEC50128, SAFE 6
To future-proof the rapidly increasing transaction volume of its travel information services to more than 4 million requests per day, the customer is subjecting the central architecture for creating traveller information to a complete rewrite. The aim is to move away from an Oracle database-centric application landscape to an event-driven microservice architecture. As the event backbone provides sufficient information, the applications are being converted from the existing Oracle database to the event streaming approach. As a rule, this meant the complete re-implementation of the specialist processes.
As lead developer and software architect in this project, Mr. Strauß was responsible for the design of the architecture and the event-driven system with microservices in Spring-Boot to handle the transaction volume of approx. 4 million transactions per day, as well as the new implementation of existing software for exchanging the timetable and the current traffic situation between transport companies by the VDV standard. In addition, in the area of business analysis, he supported the preparation of requirements for implementation in the Scrum team, the implementation of a valid documentation process, the design and implementation of a software release process for fully automated, quality-assured delivery of the software on Kubernetes on AWS.
Auszug aus den eingesetzten Technologien und Tools:
AWS (Amazon Web Services), Alertmanager, Angular, Apache Avro, Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, Apache Zookeeper, ASCII Doc, Atlassian Confluence, Atlassian JIRA, Confluent Platform (Kafka, Schemaregistry, ZooKeeper), Docker, Docker Compose, Docker Registry, Docker for Desktop, Draw. io, Event-Stream-Architektur, GitLab, GitLab CI, Gradle, Grafana, HELM, Helm Chart, Jenkins, Jupyter Notebooks, Kibana, Kubernetes k8s, Node.js, Prometheus, Python, TypeScript. Deployment auf Kubernetes on AWS mit horizontalem Autoscaling, Testabdeckung mit SPOCK Framework. E2E Testabdeckung mit FitNesse
PaperDynamix® is a data capture platform that can receive data from any source, manage it securely and store it historically. The platform is multi-client capable and allows the reliable provision of the service on-premise, as SaaS or in the cloud for several independent customers.
As a special feature, PaperDynamix particularly supports the mobile transfer of handwritten data via pen scanners with Anoto technology. The central end-user interface is a workflow-capable portal in which the user views and edits data. Universal and specialized rule sets can be configured, customized or implemented depending on the integration scenario. The platform was used by well-known customers from the manufacturing, real estate, transportation and logistics and finance sectors in the DACH region and Turkey. The project scope amounts to more than 1 million lines of code.
The tasks of Mr. Strauß were the architecture of the platform, the APIs and the definition of the design principles as lead architect. He was responsible for managing external service providers and ensuring compliance with the architecture and design principles.
Under his responsibility, several data centre platforms for development and customer systems were set up and relocated without interruption. He coordinated technical communication and variant and requirements management with the scanner hardware manufacturer Anoto to support various handwriting scanners. He was responsible for the consistent further development of the multichannel architecture with the mobile front ends PdixForms and PdixMobile, as well as the PostScript®-based prepress system Pdix CoPrA. As CTO and member of the management board, he was responsible for product management and marketing in addition to technological decisions.
