Robert Sowula
Robert Sowula

Senior Platform Engineer

REWE International AG

I am currently a Senior Platform Engineer at REWE, where I am responsible for developing Go-based Kubernetes Operators and leading the Istio integration.

Experience

  1. Senior Platform Engineer

    REWE International AG
    • Designed and implemented Go-based Kubernetes Operators to automate Kafka and API-Gateway orchestration.
    • Architected and provisioned multi-cluster environments on GCP via Terraform and GitOps.
    • Led integration and operations of Istio as a service mesh in all critical production environments, enabling observability and security in thousands of workloads.

  2. Independent iOS App Developer

    Readcap
    • Created an iOS app with a microservice backend for advanced data processing and search functionality (Swift, Java, Go, Python).
    • Introduced optimized database schemas to enable efficient full-text search across 100GB of book data (Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Redis).
    • Successfully monetized the app through in-app purchases and targeted marketing.

  3. Software Developer and Scientific Employee

    INSO Industrial Software GmbH
    • Developed custom service‐oriented software solutions using Java/Spring, Kotlin and Docker
    • Integrated an extensive continuous deployment (CD) pipeline

  4. Teaching Assistant

    Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien)

    Tutor in 7 courses:

    • Advanced Software Engineering
    • Advanced Database Systems
    • Distributed Systems Technologies
    • Business Intelligence
    • Software Engineering and Project Management
    • Software Quality Assurance
    • Requirements Engineering and Specification

  5. Software Engineering Intern

    RISE ‑ Research Industrial Systems Engineering
    • Designed and implemented web‐based software solutions in Java/Spring and Angular
    • Created extensive quality assurance(QA) pipelines for the applications

  6. DevOps Intern

    BOC Products & Services AG
    • Conceptualized and deployed scalable AWS infrastructure using CloudFormation, serving as the basis for the companies migration to AWS
    • Migrated the SSO services to a replicated setup in Kubernetes, ensuring high availability
    • Contributed to several open-source projects, fixing high availability and resolving failover issues

  7. DevOps Intern

    BOC Products & Services AG
    Developed microservices and rapid deployment solutions for a scalable ELK stack under Kubernetes.

Education

  1. M.S. Software Engineering/Internet Computing

    Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien)

    GPA: 3.9/4.0

    • Main emphasis in algorithms, software engineering, and data science.
    • Master’s thesis in Music Information Retrieval (MIR).
    • Published and presented a research paper at the ISMIR 2024 conference.

  2. B.S. Software & Information Engineering

    Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien)
    • Main emphasis in formal methods, algorithms, and software engineering.
Skills
Programming
Python
Go
Java/Kotlin
Swift
C
DevOps
Terraform
Istio
Kubernetes
GCP
AWS
Ansible
Frameworks / Tools
Apache Kafka
Apache Spark
Spring
Elasticsearch
MongoDB
TensorFlow
Scikit-learn
Recent Publications
Robert Sowula, Peter Knees (2024). Mosaikbox: Improving Fully Automatic DJ Mixing Through Rule-based Stem Modification And Precise Beat-Grid Estimation. Proceedings of the 25th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR), San Francisco, USA.
DOI Code PDF Poster
Recent & Upcoming Talks
How we did not migrate to Istio Ambient mode featured image

How we did not migrate to Istio Ambient mode

How we evaluated moving from Istio sidecars to Ambient mode: a hybrid design, PoC results, why we deferred, and a live demo.

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Robert Sowula
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Read more

Certifications

iSAQB® Certified Professional for Software Architecture (CPSA-F)
iSAQB®
Issued Sep 2025
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
The Linux Foundation
Issued Nov 2025 · Expires Nov 2027
Professional Projects
Kubernetes Operator for Integration Orchestration
Go-based Kubernetes Operators for multi-cluster Kafka
  • Designed Go-based Kubernetes Operators to automate Kafka topic, user, and schema management.
  • Architected a multi-cluster environment for Kafka broker and API gateway deployments, enhancing scalability and resilience.

Technologies:

Go Kubernetes Terraform Kafka
Service Mesh Integration
Istio service mesh integration
  • Integration and operation of Istio in over 13 Kubernetes clusters and multiple VM deployments.
  • Enable advanced routing, observability, and security for 5.000 workloads, handling over 10.000 requests per second.

Technologies:

Istio Kubernetes Terraform Salt
Distributed Content Processing System
Microservice backend powering a high-traffic iOS app
  • Developed a high-performance backend to process and index 100GB+ of book content, supporting advanced full-text search and social features.
  • Designed and deployed a scalable microservices architecture, using Java, Go, Redis, and PostgreSQL, optimized for fast retrieval.
  • Implemented Elasticsearch as a full-text search engine, reducing query response times and improving user experience for thousands of active users.
  • Built a native iOS app that leverages this backend and is actively used by thousands of users daily.

Technologies:

Java Go Python Swift PostgreSQL Elasticsearch Redis gRPC
Automated music mixing through ensembles of ML models
ML based DJ mixing research, published in ISMIR 2024
  • Developed a fully automated DJ mixing system, integrating music information retrieval (MIR) techniques, machine learning models, and rule-based audio processing.
  • Designed a multi-stage pipeline that modifies song stems using source separation and DSP techniques, ensuring seamless transitions by eliminating conflicting elements.
  • Implemented a custom tempo detection algorithm, outperforming state-of-the-art methods in low error-tolerance windows for precise beat alignment.
  • Published this system through a research paper in the ISMIR 2024 journal.

Technologies:

Python C++ TensorFlow
Open-Source Contributions
Canvas 1Layer 1
Libelektra
Go-based Kubernetes Operators for multi-cluster Kafka

Elektra serves as a universal and secure framework to access configuration settings in a global, hierarchical key database. My contributions and responsibilities were:

  • RPM and DEB packaging
  • Release automation
  • Design, maintenance and development of plugins in C/C++
  • Advancement of the CI/CD pipeline and infrastructure

Technologies:

C C++ CMake/CPack Python Groovy Jenkins
View Project

Personal Hobbies

Things I enjoy outside of work.

DJ Mixing

Passionate about anything related to music and DJing. Occasionally you can find me at the decks at local clubs.

Sports

Anything that gets me moving, from spinning and hiking with friends to weightlifting and running.

Photography

Always on the lookout for the perfect shot. I enjoy capturing moments and landscapes.

Geeking Around

Lots of k8s clusters at home which I use for trying out new technologies and developing software projects.