About Me

In the following, I will explain what I do, how I came to this somewhat unusual hybrid engineering role and what I particularly enjoy about it.

Published

June 4, 2025

I am a German civil engineer and an R software engineer. Since my time as a data scientist I have been working with data in R, including acquisition, engineering, modeling, data visualization, and automation of all processes, much of it especially related to sports. I wrote about my experience and journey in the open-source R community with over 4,500 contributions to open-source projects on the Posit blog.

Software Engineering Experience

My software engineering experience consists of 5+ years in the field of open-source R software development. My main fields of activity include

  • API communication, response parsing and application of several statistical models (mostly boosted decision trees) related to the National Football League. Developed R package nflfastR. Includes utilities for creating and maintaining a database of NFL data.
  • Developed R package gsisdecoder, with a high efficient NFL ID decoder using C++.
  • Launched Open Source Football, a blog where analysts share NFL related articles and publish their code (in R but also in other languages like Python).
  • Launched rbsdm.com, a website that hosts several R shiny apps for advanced National Football League statistics and data visualization.
  • Monte Carlo simulation of National Football League seasons with high efficient algorithms (based on R package data.table) for tie-breaking procedures and simulation with R package nflseedR.
  • Formation of the nflverse hosting a fully automated data pipeline using GitHub actions.
  • Advanced data visualization with ggplot2 extensions ggpath and nflplotR. Also tabular data visualization with gt extensions in nflplotR.

Professional Experience

My professional experience consists of 10+ years in the field of structural engineering in Germany. My main fields of activity include

  • Structural calculations and design in concrete construction, steel construction, timber construction and composite construction
  • Dynamic calculations and wind engineering
  • Structural design of cable structures
  • Project management

Research & Teaching Experience

From 2017 to 2022, I worked as a research associate at the Chair of Concrete and Masonry Structures at the Technical University of Munich. My main fields of activity included

  • Experimental and numerical investigation of the load-bearing and deformation behavior of masonry under shear loading
  • Numerical simulation of unreinforced masonry under shear loading - development of material models
  • Teaching assistant in the Master’s degree program in Design of Masonry Structures and Tunneling

Summary

Increasing efficiency through high-performance software and automation are the things that drive me in particular. That’s what I strive for in all my jobs and activities.