About
Self-hosting & cloud infrastructure · SaaS · Game development — a German in Bucharest
I'm Marcus — a software and infrastructure engineer based in Bucharest. I build and operate production systems for a living, and I run a professionally managed, self-hosted lab from which I host both my own products and software for my clients.
My focus is infrastructure you can actually own: self-hosting done to a production standard, with the public cloud used where it genuinely earns its place. I work the full stack — from the hardware and the network up through reverse proxies, mail, identity, CI/CD, monitoring and the application layer — and I'm equally at home on-prem and in the cloud (Azure, containers, orchestration).
A growing part of my work sits where infrastructure meets AI: self-hosted models and agent platforms, wired carefully into real workflows with sane permission boundaries. If you'd rather bring those capabilities in-house than rent them indefinitely, that's exactly the kind of work I take on.
I moved from Bremen to Bucharest, where I've settled in the Armenească quarter, and I work day-to-day in three languages:
- German — native
- English — full professional
- Romanian — and improving every month
What I do
- Managing Partner & tech lead at SOPHIA GmbH & Co. KG (since 2019) — we operate and develop the Cayoo SaaS platform.
- Co-founder of portamedia.studio (since 2018) — technical art and hands-on game development, from triple-A to indie.
- Co-founder of portamedia.com (since 2012) — development, team building, and infrastructure.
- Self-hosting & infrastructure — I design, build and run the production-grade home lab behind this site, host client and product workloads on it, and ship open-source tools such as BattleLab; most of it lives on my own git.superstatus.io.
Work with me
I help individuals and teams build infrastructure they understand, run and own. Typical engagements:
- Self-hosting & infrastructure — design, build and operate self-hosted stacks (reverse proxies, mail, identity, monitoring, backups, CI/CD) to a production standard.
- Cloud & hybrid — pragmatic Azure and container work; migrations in either direction, cost control, and getting off services you'd rather not depend on.
- AI, in-house — self-hosted models and agent platforms wired into your real tools, with clear permission boundaries and human-in-the-loop controls.
- Open-source software — deploying, integrating and maintaining OSS so your business runs on software you control.
How I got here
I started out as a 3D and VFX artist. That took me through game studios and feature-film visual effects — including a stint at Electronic Arts doing VFX and R&D for BattleForge and for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, and production work at PIXOMONDO. Game development has been the constant: 3D, technical art, realtime VFX, and eventually the engineering, DevOps and infrastructure behind shipping real software. I studied it formally too — a BA (Hons) in Media Production (2012) and an MA in Media Direction (2016), both with Hochschule Darmstadt and CIT Cork.
A few honors along the way
- Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2016 — Best Mobile Game, for Path of War
- Berlinale 2012 — CGI short film selection
- Hessen Talents 2012
- Förderpreis 2015 — for concepts improving intensive-care quality