Who I Am

I’m a DevOps Engineer who builds reliable infrastructure and helps teams ship faster. I specialize in GitLab CI/CD, Unix systems, and observability stacks. Currently working remotely at VEMA eG – from my home base in Kronach, Germany, local cafés, or wherever my caravan takes me.

Unix. DevOps. Nomad.

What I Do

I solve infrastructure problems that waste your team’s time:

• CI/CD pipelines that scale – Template-based GitLab configurations that work across 50+ projects
• Observability that actually works – Monitoring setups that give real insights to your applications
• Infrastructure automation – Unix philosophy applied to modern DevOps: do one thing well, then combine them into something powerful

I believe in working examples over theoretical blog posts. Every article here includes real code, real repositories, and lessons learned from production systems.

Why I Write

This blog is my working portfolio. It documents what I’ve learned building (and breaking things) in production environments. It’s for:

• Future employers who want to see how I think and communicate
• Teams facing similar problems who need solutions that actually work
• My future self when I inevitably forget how I solved something three years ago

I write about DevOps, infrastructure, and the reality of working remotely while maintaining production systems.

The Nomad Life

I’ve been working remotely and living on the road for about 1.5 years. This isn’t a pandemic experiment or a temporary lifestyle choice – it’s the life I wanted long before I had a name for it. After my divorce, I realized I didn’t want a “standard” life. I wanted one I designed myself.

The Setup 50% home base in Kronach for my kids, 50% on the road in my caravan.

Kronach is my home base because of my kids, whom I raise 50% of the time. When they’re with me, life is grounded: school, routines, stability. I’m 100% present. When they’re not, I’m on the road – maintaining production systems from campsites, cafés or wherever I can get reliable internet (which, in Germany, is sometimes the real challenge). The caravan isn’t a backdrop for social media. It’s a practical setup that lets me work, think, and live well. On weekends and during school breaks, the kids and I travel together – exploring new places while I balance parenting with on-call responsibilities.

The Reality It’s not all sunsets and adventure. It’s finding 5G in the middle of nowhere, debugging CI/CD pipelines from a laundromat, and maintaining high-uptime infrastructure while living in a mobile one.

The Why This lifestyle has made me a more resourceful, disciplined, and focused engineer. I’ve proven you don’t need to be tied to a single location to build, operate, and improve production infrastructure. Remote work isn’t a perk for me – it’s a deliberate life design. I’ve structured my entire career around this freedom, and I’m not stepping back from that.

What I’m Building Toward

I’m moving toward consulting and architecture work – helping teams design and implement DevOps practices that scale. If you’re looking for someone who can:

• Design CI/CD systems that your team will actually use
• Implement observability stacks that surface real insights
• Communicate technical decisions clearly to both engineers and management
• Work effectively in distributed, remote-first environments

Then we should talk.

Technical Background

• Current role: DevOps Engineer at VEMA eG with around 300 employees
• Journey: Started as Linux Admin, taught DevOps practices myself and build them from scratch
• Core skills: GitLab CI/CD, Unix system administration, infrastructure automation, observability
• Certifications: GitLab Security + CI/CD, currently pursuing LFCS
• Philosophy: Clean, simple solutions built from small, composable pieces. Unix philosophy for modern infrastructure.
• Open source: All blog posts include working code in public GitLab repositories

How to Reach Me

• GitLab: gitlab.com/gion-io
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tgion
• Email: tobias@gion.io

If you’re hiring for DevOps positions, looking for consulting help, or just want to discuss infrastructure problems, reach out.

About This Site

This site runs on Hugo, hosted on FreeBSD, because I believe in the Unix philosophy: do one thing well, then combine simple building blocks into powerful solutions. Like pipes in a Unix shell, but for your infrastructure.

No tracking, no analytics, no JavaScript bloat. Just content.

High ratings on SSL Labs and Security Headers, because securing infrastructure is literally my job. (And yes, I run my own mail server. Some of us still do that.)