I started my career as an ICU nurse, where I learned to stay calm under pressure and make decisions that carried meaning. That instinct followed me into software engineering, then into leadership, and now into building products of my own.
A thread through all of my work has been noticing what others had learned to look past.
That is still what I am looking for.
My path has not been conventional. I am looking for a place where that is a strength, where I have room to work with some independence, and where the work itself has a positive effect.
Based in Berlin. Open to remote and international work. English, German, French, Spanish.
A thread through all of my work has been noticing what others had learned to look past.
That is still what I am looking for.
My path has not been conventional. I am looking for a place where that is a strength, where I have room to work with some independence, and where the work itself has a positive effect.
Based in Berlin. Open to remote and international work. English, German, French, Spanish.
What do I do when the numbers are not telling the whole story yet?
Recognize the signal before it is obvious
Ran hourly neuro checks, watched ICP trends, compared vitals with the patient in front of me, and caught changes before the chart reflected them.
diagnosis
When something breaks, how do I find the cause?
Start with what changed
Checked the ventilator, reviewed medication changes, assessed secretions, and worked backwards through what had changed when something suddenly looked wrong.
communication
How do I explain something critical to someone who has never seen it before?
Put complex things into plain language
Explained machines and alarms to families in the middle of the night and gave surgeons clear updates during rounds.
execution
How do I get it right when everything is happening at once?
Stop. Breathe. Focus.
Adjusted ventilators, titrated vasopressors, drew labs, documented changes, and moved between patients without losing track of the details.
triage
How do I decide where my attention goes when every patient is critical?
Fix the most dangerous problem first
Managed four ICU patients at once, deciding who needed immediate attention and who could safely wait.
composure
When the pressure rises in the room, what matters most?
Anchor and keep direction
Stayed steady during tense moments so the room could focus on the next step instead of the stress.
Every shift began in the middle of something: competing signals, incomplete information, all at once.
The job was never to eliminate the chaos. It was to use my skills to make order from it.
The job was never to eliminate the chaos. It was to use my skills to make order from it.
Every shift began in the middle of something: competing signals, incomplete information, all at once.
The job was never to eliminate the chaos. It was to use my skills to make order from it.
The job was never to eliminate the chaos. It was to use my skills to make order from it.
I collect data, build the picture from fragments, and decide what information matters.
I trace problems back to their cause instead of reacting to the loudest symptom.
I translate complex situations into clear language for whoever needs to understand them.
I execute precisely while tracking everything else that is unfolding.
I focus attention where risk is highest and escalate before the system catches up.
I stay steady so the room can think clearly and move to the next step.
Beyond being a previous career, the ICU was where my operating system started.
ACT II
THEENG1NEER
I have spent a lot of my working life solving problems inside complex systems, first human ones, then technical ones. I wanted to engineer solutions that mattered to people, and I wanted to do it at scale.
feat: build core React product for 500K+ medical students
test: run A/B experiments on study and review flows
collab: translate research insights into frontend decisions
ship: help take the product from beta to production
product launched to 500K students
research embedded into the development process
engagement up 20% through tested decisions
Compado
Frontend Engineer → Senior Frontend Engineer
Berlin · 2019–2021Oct 2019 — Jun 2021
feat: build Vue comparison pages for high-traffic products
perf: improve page speed problems by reworking loading systems
fix: integrate SEO requirements into the frontend architecture
collab: work with Product to improve conversion flows
Lighthouse scores from 30s to 90+
organic traffic doubled
promoted to Senior Frontend Engineer
CAPinside
Senior Frontend Engineer
Hamburg · 2021Jun 2021 — Oct 2021
feat: build advisor platform for 10K+ financial professionals
refactor: modernized a fragile legacy frontend in Vue/TS
test: raise code quality and test coverage across the platform
perf: improved and stabilized load times across frontend architecture
legacy system replaced with a modern Vue 3/TS stack
team shipping with confidence, not caution
10K advisors on a stable platform
DKB Code Factory
Senior Frontend Engineer → Engineering Manager
Berlin · 2021–2024Oct 2021 — Dec 2024
refactor: rebuild the banking platform for millions of users in React/TS
test: introduce Jest and Playwright to build safety into the pipeline
collab: partner with Product to identify and address usability gaps
ship: increase speed from monthly to weekly deployments
test automation introduced across critical flows
releases moved from monthly to weekly
production bugs down 30%
team grew from 6 to 10
promoted to Engineering Manager
Each of my past roles sharpened a different part of how I think about users,gaps,and patterns.
Each of my past roles sharpened a different part of how I think about users,gaps,and patterns.
AMBOSS/Medical Content
Images on cardiology article not displaying on mobile
MED-2847
The images on the cardiology article are not showing up on my phone. Tested on iPhone 11, Safari. Other articles seem fine.
Medium
Open
Reporter
S
Sarah K.
AMBOSS · 2018–2019
HowdoIapproachabugfoundbyaccident?
I care as much about how we find problems as how we fix them.
I ask what phone, what browser. Older iOS, Safari. It is a format issue, quick to fix. What stays with me is how it reached us, through a colleague, not our monitoring. I bring it up in standup, and a few of us pull up the analytics. Nearly a fifth of our users are on configurations we are not testing against. We expand the matrix together.
AMBOSS/Medical Content
Images on cardiology article not displaying on mobile
MED-2847
The images on the cardiology article are not showing up on my phone. Tested on iPhone 11, Safari. Other articles seem fine.
Medium
Open
Reporter
S
Sarah K.
AMBOSS · 2018–2019
I care as much about how we find problems as how we fix them.
I ask what phone, what browser. Older iOS, Safari. It is a format issue, quick to fix. What stays with me is how it reached us, through a colleague, not our monitoring. I bring it up in standup, and a few of us pull up the analytics. Nearly a fifth of our users are on configurations we are not testing against. We expand the matrix together.
Direct Message
KJ
Kaschief J.3:42 PM
Before I pick this up, can we refine it a bit? It says small change, but the scope is not clear.
Compado · 2019 - 2021
HowdoIhandleunclearscope?
I make sure we understand the weight of the work before we carry it.
I look at the ticket. A title, a sentence, without much specs. I recognize the cost of ambiguity and scope early, when requirements are unclear. I push for quick refinement before sprint entry, so we size the work before it lands on someone’s desk.
Direct Message
KJ
Kaschief J.3:42 PM
Before I pick this up, can we refine it a bit? It says small change, but the scope is not clear.
Compado · 2019 - 2021
I make sure we understand the weight of the work before we carry it.
I look at the ticket. A title, a sentence, without much specs. I recognize the cost of ambiguity and scope early, when requirements are unclear. I push for quick refinement before sprint entry, so we size the work before it lands on someone’s desk.
Fund Detail v3
Dev Mode
K
Kaschief2m agoUnresolved
The new fund detail page looks clean in Figma but the data it needs does not exist in the API the same way.
CAPinside · 2021
HowdoIrespondwhendesignanddatadisagree?
I make sure what we design and what we can build are based on the same information.
I start comparing the design against the API and the mismatches keep surfacing. Fields are named differently. Data is nested where the design expects it flat. The design reflects the legacy app. The API reflects the new system. I bring it to the PO and designer and we work through it together. We adjust the design where needed, raise backend requests where needed, and leave with one aligned version instead of separate assumptions.
Fund Detail v3
Dev Mode
K
Kaschief2m agoUnresolved
The new fund detail page looks clean in Figma but the data it needs does not exist in the API the same way.
CAPinside · 2021
I make sure what we design and what we can build are based on the same information.
I start comparing the design against the API and the mismatches keep surfacing. Fields are named differently. Data is nested where the design expects it flat. The design reflects the legacy app. The API reflects the new system. I bring it to the PO and designer and we work through it together. We adjust the design where needed, raise backend requests where needed, and leave with one aligned version instead of separate assumptions.
dkb-app/frontend
feat: account settings redesign#847
frontendenhancement
Kaschief J. requested your review2 days ago
DKB · 2021–2024
HowdoIclosetheloopbeforeshipping?
I make sure the people who defined the work get to see it before it ships.
I finished a feature and tagged the designer for review. The next day, nothing. When I followed up, they had already moved on and assumed it was fine. The work was built, but the loop was still open. I pushed for a quick design sign-off before merge. It took five minutes, and it caught mismatches while they were still easy to fix.
dkb-app/frontend
feat: account settings redesign#847
frontendenhancement
Kaschief J. requested your review2 days ago
DKB · 2021–2024
I make sure the people who defined the work get to see it before it ships.
I finished a feature and tagged the designer for review. The next day, nothing. When I followed up, they had already moved on and assumed it was fine. The work was built, but the loop was still open. I pushed for a quick design sign-off before merge. It took five minutes, and it caught mismatches while they were still easy to fix.
What pulled me toward engineering was already there in nursing. ICU taught me that I liked complexity, troubleshooting, and understanding how different parts of a system affect each other.
That way of thinking carried naturally into engineering.
The rest are here if you want them.
Each project was different. The patterns were the same.
Every company had its own version of the same friction, between what was said and what actually shipped.
The more I worked across teams and systems, the more my role expanded beyond the code itself. I kept stepping into the places where alignment had broken down, where the real issue was not technical difficulty, but shared clarity.
By DKB, the pattern was clear. Some of the most persistent bugs were in the room, not the codebase. Addressing them became the work, and leadership became the natural extension of it.
By DKB, the pattern was clear. Some of the most persistent bugs were in the room, not the codebase.
Addressing them became the work, and leadership became the natural extension of it.
Empathy
Evidence
Speed
Diagnosis
Process
Testing
Architecture
Product Sense
Judgment
ACT III
THE
LEADER
Leading people turned out to be the hardest kind of debugging. And the most rewarding.
In high-stakes product environments, I helped teams align faster, narrow the real problem, and keep delivery moving when priorities shifted and confusion started to spread.
Selected scenarios
A few moments that show how I operated.
01
A deployment was drifting into private chats and guesswork.
I pulled readiness into the open, got the real ticket picture on the table, and gave the team one shared view of what could ship.
02
A small feature started turning into a much bigger refactor.
I narrowed scope, protected delivery, and split the broader technical issue into something the team could handle deliberately.
03
A broken merge risked becoming a blame spiral.
I shifted the conversation back to process, test discipline, and learning, so the issue stayed useful instead of corrosive.
What I actually did
I made complex teams move with more clarity.
My role sat at the intersection of people, systems, and delivery. I helped teams move through ambiguity without losing momentum or creating unnecessary friction.
What's actually ready
Aligned engineering, product, and stakeholders around what was actually ready, realistic, and worth doing next.
When work sprawled
Protected focus when work began to sprawl, and separated urgent delivery from larger systemic fixes.
How we talked
Pushed for directness, openness, and constructive feedback over silence, blame, or process confusion.
In practice
What I was able to improve.
01
Led and unblocked 15+ engineers across complex product work.
02
Worked on systems affecting 5M+ users, where reliability and judgment mattered.
03
Managed delivery, communication, recruitment, scope, and team dynamics in parallel.
04
Focused on clarity, not theatre — helping teams move with less friction and more trust.
I was at my best where there was ambiguity to resolve, people to align, and systems that needed steadier judgment — not more noise.
