Mike Houben

Mike Houben

Platform Engineer · Founder, Houbsi IT Services

Pfaffenhofen a.d. Ilm, Germany

Platform engineer & IT consultant. I build and operate complete IT platforms — from infrastructure and CI/CD to identity management and team structures. Pragmatic, holistic, jargon-free.

Core Competencies

Platform & Virtualization

Proxmox VE · Docker · Podman · LXC

Network & Security

OPNsense · WireGuard · VLANs · CrowdSec · Traefik

CI/CD & Automation

GitLab CI/CD · Ansible · IaC · Semaphore

Identity & Access Management

Keycloak · Authentik · OIDC · SAML · SSO

Monitoring & Observability

Zabbix · LibreNMS · SNMP · Sentry

Operating Systems

Debian · RHEL/Rocky · Ubuntu Server

Collaboration

GitLab · Mattermost · Obsidian · MkDocs · Zammad

IoT & Smart Home

Home Assistant · Frigate NVR · Thread/Matter · MQTT

Leadership & Organization

Internal infrastructure platform built & led

Lead Platform Engineering — mentoring, pair debugging, structured troubleshooting methodology

Server migration IONOS → Hetzner & IdP migration Authentik → Keycloak

Traffic analysis, capacity planning, zero-downtime rollout

Processes & structures established

CODEOWNERS workflows, service maintainer matrix, escalation paths, debugging checklists

Stakeholder communication at leadership level

Diplomatic communication, systematic feedback culture, constructive incident reviews

Homelab No blind spots — what I recommend, I run myself: from homelab to production.