Benedek G. - CTO/CISO

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Budapest, Hungary

Experience

Apr 2024 - Jun 2025

1 year 3 months

Munich, Germany

CTO/CISO

Testifi GmbH

Acted as CTO, CISO and initially as Chief Architect
Established the Product Owner Group and later participated as a non-managing member to help reach consensus and steer the product roadmap
Fostered TOGAF, DevSecOps, cloud-first, API-first to build enterprise-grade software
Introduced the medallion architecture, ETL/ELT tools, and a data lakehouse, and configured required services (Confluent Cloud/Kafka, IAM, S3, Iceberg, Glue, Athena) to achieve scalable data ingestion
Created the high-level design (C4, UML) to transform the ‘Single Product’ into a scalable SaaS offering with a BYOC delivery model, and presented it as the architectural north star
Provisioned and configured all the services in AWS and Google Cloud, including Cognito, Lambdas, Amplify, Glue, Athena, API Gateway, QuickSight, GuardDuty, Route 53, CloudFront with or without CloudFormation/Terraform
Led proof of concepts and hackathons with Spring AI, LangChain4j/LangGraph4j, RAG, Neo4j, Spark, MLFlow, MCP, N8N
Coached the teams and assisted in technical implementations in development, architecture, testing, and DevOps
Hired and mentored engineering talent, including team leads and individual contributors
Created and applied required policies and documentation as CISO, enabling TISAX certification and operating it with tools like MDM, Sprinto, BambooHR, GuardDuty
Performed administrative tasks for employee onboarding/offboarding and ensured adherence to security measures and policies
Assessed dozens of tools from an InfoSec point of view for procurement, including a design system for Angular, and started the redesign of the product
Tech stack: AWS, GCP, MACH architecture, Java/Spring, ECS, RDS, OAuth/JWT, Angular, RabbitMQ/Kafka, Confluent, Selenium, Bedrock/SageMaker, Atlassian Cloud, Sonar, Trivy

Jun 2021 - Dec 2023

2 years 7 months

Budapest, Hungary

Founder CTO

OTP Bank - Otthonmegoldasok Kft.

Acted as founder CTO, CIO and CISO for a new real-estate listing portal affiliate of OTP Bank
Hired the entire IT team (~22 FTE), managed IT contracts, and evaluated service providers
Defined TOGAF’s ADM requirements and led proof of concepts
Designed and implemented portal architecture (MACH architecture, Angular front end, serverless functions, reactive Java and Golang microservices, Kafka, gRPC/Protobuf)
Configured Azure services (AKS, App Gateway, Azure DevOps, argoCD, Kustomize), AWS services (App Runner, Fargate, RDS, ALB/NLB, CloudWatch, KMS), Key Vaults, Confluent Cloud, Cloudflare, Route 53, SendGrid, Datastax with Terraform
Executed vulnerability scans and penetration tests to improve security posture
Introduced TDD/BDD, Sonar, Cypress, Allure and integrated them into CI/CD pipelines
Defined and implemented cybersecurity measures for production and back-office systems (availability zones, gateway, fallback mechanisms, response times, Terraform modifications, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Azure Workbooks)
Established FinOps to cap cloud costs and configured budget alerts and reserved instances
Created information security policies, defined processes, and configured tools to meet non-functional, DevOps, monitoring/tracing, business continuity, and fault-tolerance requirements
Improved SEO and core web vitals by structured data and infrastructure enhancements
Deployed Azure Cognitive Services and OpenAI
Successfully launched the portal in September 2022 with multi-cloud, fault-tolerant, cloud-native architecture, achieving ~4.5M monthly visitors and becoming the second most visited proptech portal in Hungary

Jun 2020 - Jun 2021

1 year 1 month

Budapest, Hungary

Solution Architecture - CoE Lead

OTP Bank / Retail Lending Tribe

Became the unofficial Chief Architect of the Retail Lending Tribe
Organized and conducted weekly architecture boards for ~110 FTEs to discuss architectural, DevSecOps, and technical issues
Introduced enterprise architecture patterns (TOGAF, C4, UML), tools and frameworks (API management, Domain Driven Design, event-driven architecture, cloud-native microservices, TDD/BDD, automated testing, non-functional requirements)
Represented the tribe in projects to replace two legacy core banking systems leveraging Temenos expertise
Designed and started development of 6+ cloud-native Spring Boot microservices with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, mvn, bash, python, Nexus, proprietary tools, Kubernetes, CA certificates, mTLS)
Created security system plans and executed tasks to eliminate risks and vulnerabilities
Consulted on processes and IT guidelines and advised on tool selection at the OTP Group level
Acted as a servant leader following the Spotify model, coaching teams and syncing with other tribes
Defined the Solution Architect career path and recommended courses across 11 countries
Tech stack: Spring Boot, Python, TDD/BDD, Selenium, Cucumber, RestAssured, OpenShift, Oracle Satellite, Prometheus/Grafana, Jenkins, Nexus, Maven, Oracle DB, Oracle Forms, Google Apigee/JWT, S3, Bitbucket, Linux, Docker

Sep 2019 - Jun 2020

10 months

Budapest, Hungary

DevOps & LiveOps Senior Chapter Lead

OTP Bank / Retail Lending Tribe

Hired a team of six application operators and led the takeover of Ops activities from a centralized team
Crafted CI/CD pipelines for legacy systems using Bitbucket, Maven, Jenkins, Bash, Python, Nexus to save hours daily
Developed scripts to automate manual tasks, monitoring scripts with basic alerting, introduced RPA tools, and centralized key vaults
Introduced Tricentis TOSCA for enterprise-grade test automation and organized infrastructure, personnel, and training for 20+ people
Deployed and configured Prometheus/Grafana on 120 servers for basic monitoring
Delivered technical presentations on Linux, SDLC, CI/CD, and DevOps toolchains
Acted as a servant leader, coaching application operators and defining their DevOps engineer career path
Documented all 14 IT systems belonging to the Retail Lending Tribe
Tech stack: Python, Jenkins, Oracle DB, Oracle Forms, Bitbucket, Linux, Docker, legacy systems

Jan 2018 - Sep 2019

1 year 9 months

Budapest, Hungary

Head of Development

Atoma Technologies / The Core Banking Group / FOT-TS Kft.

Defined the product roadmap with the Chief Product Officer
Led the architecture and redesign of the company's product into a microservice-based SaaS portal
Performed hands-on coding in Spring Boot/Java and developed proofs of concept at customer sites
Delivered presentations, on-site and online demos, and spoke at international fintech conferences
Managed a team of 20 developers, testers, and SMEs following Scrum
Tech stack: JSP/JSF, Spring Boot, jQuery, MySQL, Oracle DB, Flyway, Proxmox, VMware, Linux, HP UNIX/AIX, Bash, Jenkins, BIRT, Eclipse RAP, ELK, Docker, Ansible, Maven, REST, TestNG, Selenium, Allure

May 2008 - Jan 2018

9 years 9 months

Budapest, Hungary

Product Architect and Team Lead (Java)

Atoma Technologies / The Core Banking Group / FOT-TS Kft.

Defined the product roadmap with the Chief Product Officer
Participated in sales processes with presentations, demos, and conference appearances
Designed and developed products including UI/UX, database design, SOA/JEE architecture, and automated testing
Wrote approximately 60% of the code and coached a team of six to eight members using Scrum
Delivered and managed implementations and trainings for banks worldwide (ABN Amro, Aktia, Banesco, Bank Leumi Switzerland, Equitable Bank, Ficohsa, KBC Ireland, KBL Luxembourg, MKB Bank, Mizuho Bank)
Tech stack: JSP/JSF, Tomcat, WebSphere, Jython, MySQL, Oracle DB, Flyway, Proxmox, VMware, Linux/HP UNIX/AIX, Bash, Jenkins, Selenium

Jun 2006 - May 2008

2 years

Budapest, Hungary

Senior Software Developer

Iocom Ltd.

Responsible for server-side components of a telephony application (IndaFon) based on Asterisk PBX
Designed and developed the dial plan, custom billing, and conference call handler modules using SIP, C/C++, and Debian Linux

Dec 2003 - Jun 2006

2 years 7 months

Budapest, Hungary

Software Developer

Siemens PSE Hungary

Served as a team member and later product owner on various telephony application projects in C++ for HiPath 4000/8000 and HiQ 4200/9200 PBX models (SIP, Java, SUSE Linux)
Traveled frequently to project locations in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Nanjing, and provided on-site customer support

Sep 2001 - Jun 2003

1 year 10 months

Budapest, Hungary

Intern

General Electric - Medical Systems

Developed an automatic algorithm to determine the boundary of the left ventricle in MATLAB and ported it to C/C++
Installed the algorithm on GE’s radiography systems and achieved 2nd place at the annual Scientific Conference for Students at Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Summary

Experienced IT leader and architect who combines 20+ years of technical expertise, system thinking with business acumen across application lifecycle management, telecommunications, banking/fintech, e-commerce, and real estate industries.

My career spans from project inception through to full-scale operations with core strengths in requirements analysis, development (15+ years in Java), automated testing, cloud computing, solution and enterprise architecture, DevSecOps, and ML/AI.

Beyond my technical expertise, I bring leadership experience as CTO/CISO, driving technology strategy, digital transformation, and business alignment while building high-performing teams and fostering innovation.