Karsten Samaschke

Value-Driven Serial Entrepreneur • Principal Solution Architect • Interim CTO & AI Consultant

Leading AI enablement initiatives, designing cloud-native architectures, and championing open-source solutions with a focus on digital sovereignty and no-vendor-lock environments.

Professional Philosophy

"The future has to be open-source. With AI and cloud technologies driving technological advancement, open-source frameworks and knowledge sharing must be at the core of everything we do. Only open-source and collaboration empower humanity to truly shape our technological destiny and collective future."

Challenger AI-Enabler Thought Leader Mindset-Changer Open-Source Advocate Digital Sovereignty

Core Expertise

Technical Leadership

AI/ML consultancy and enterprise enablement
Cloud-native architecture (private, hybrid, public)
Kubernetes platform development & operations
DevOps/GitOps culture establishment
Microservices & event-driven architectures

Business Leadership

Team leadership across distributed teams
Stakeholder management from developer to C-level
Strategic technology roadmapping
Fractional CTO and technical advisory

Technology Stack

AI/ML & GenAI: TensorFlow, PyTorch, LangChain, OpenAI, Claude, Llama, Hugging Face, MLflow

Hyperscaler: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud

Container & Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, k3s, Rancher, OpenShift, Helm, Istio

Programming: Java (Spring), Python, Go, TypeScript, React, Rust

Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Ansible, GitOps, ArgoCD, Crossplane

DevOps & CI/CD: GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Tekton

Data & Analytics: Apache Kafka, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Redis

Security & Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, HashiCorp Vault

Leadership Experience

VanillaCore GmbH

Founder & CEO (Since 2024)

Developing cloud-native and open-source solutions based on Kubernetes.

ESG Assistant Technologies Ltd

Founder & CTO (Since 2025)

Developing AI-powered ESG analytics platform for enterprise sustainability.

sustainical Engineering GmbH

Founder & CEO/CTO (Since 2012)

Purpose-driven organization focused on sustainable IT and ESG solutions.

Cloudical Deutschland GmbH

Founder, CTO & Managing Director (2017-2024)

Led team of 50+ across DE, IN, PL. Creator of VanillaStack and CLOPS.

Open-Source Contributions

Platform Development

Creator of VanillaStack - Enterprise-ready Kubernetes distribution
Architect of CLOPS - Cloud-Native Operations Platform
Architect and Lead Developer of ESG Assistant - Enterprise SaaS platform for ESG analytics

Community Leadership

Active contributor to cloud-native and infrastructure projects
Mentoring teams on open-source adoption strategies
Speaking at conferences about open-source innovation

Key Achievements

🏆

7x Microsoft MVP for ASP/ASP.NET

📚

Published Author with leading technical publishers

🚀

Team Leadership Successfully led 50+ person teams

💡

Open-Source Impact Created multiple platforms in production

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