Science first
Meteorology taught me to observe complex systems, work with uncertainty, and respect what the data is actually saying. That mindset followed me from the University of Bonn straight into technology.
cloud / systems
Let’s connect ↗
Cloud engineer and systems administrator with more than 25 years of experience turning complex infrastructure into reliable, automated platforms.

$ whoami
bernd — cloud engineer
$ focus
aws · automation · resilience
$ status
● ready to buildI’m Bernd Kuhlen, also known by my full name Bernhard Kuhlen. I studied the atmosphere before I studied distributed systems. Both are dynamic, both punish false certainty, and both become especially interesting when a storm arrives.

“Build it so the quiet days stay quiet—and the stormy days remain manageable.”
I connect infrastructure, operations, and product thinking — always keeping reliability, maintainability, and cost in view.
Designing secure, scalable environments with EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, CloudFormation, IAM, Route 53, CloudFront, and managed data services.
Linux, networking, DNS, Apache, TLS, VMware, storage, and the operational discipline learned from production systems.
Monitoring and dashboards with Checkmk, Nagios, Zabbix, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, and CloudWatch.
Ansible, Puppet, Python, GitLab CI/CD, AWS Lambda, EventBridge, and repeatable deployment workflows.
Team leadership, project delivery, architecture guidance, knowledge sharing, and communication in German and English.
Three systems that show how I move from a real constraint to a dependable, observable result.
AWS · PLATFORM ENGINEERING · OBSERVABILITY
A legacy WordPress site became a fast, static AWS platform with a smaller attack surface, automated delivery, and transparent visitor analytics.
Replace a maintenance-heavy CMS without losing years of material, personal character, or the ability to keep evolving the site.
Separate content from presentation, rebuild the frontend, and serve it through a private S3 origin behind CloudFront.
A responsive portfolio with controlled origin access, security headers, deployment tooling, access logs, and CloudWatch visibility.
The turning point. The goal was not merely to copy WordPress into another tool. It was to remove unnecessary runtime complexity while retaining control over design, content, and operations.
The build. The public edge terminates at CloudFront; the S3 origin remains private through origin access control. Route 53 handles DNS, response headers harden the delivery path, and repeatable deployment scripts keep releases predictable.
The feedback loop. Aggregated access data, status-code metrics, geographic reporting, and retained logs make the platform observable instead of opaque. The site itself now documents the engineering decisions behind it.
FULL-STACK · DATA VISUALIZATION · MOBILE UX
A practical training system that turns workout records and Apple Health exports into useful progress views on desktop and phone.
Bring fragmented session, volume, and activity data into one trustworthy history without slowing down workout logging.
Use validated records, import workflows, adaptive plans, and selectable daily, weekly, and monthly chart ranges.
A mobile-first training view with persistent sessions, clear volume progress, steps data, and long-range trends.
Designed around the workout. The interface prioritizes quick input on a phone while keeping deeper analysis available when reviewing progress later.
Data with context. Session metrics, total volume, steps, and time-range controls make individual workouts meaningful within weekly and monthly patterns.
Built to evolve. CSV and health-data imports keep historical information portable, while the presentation layer can gain new metrics without rewriting the underlying records.
OBSERVABILITY · OPERATIONS · AUTOMATION
What began with a computer science thesis on Nagios grew into a long-running operational discipline across on-premises and cloud systems.
Move operations from reactive troubleshooting toward early detection across increasingly diverse infrastructure.
Establish service checks, actionable alerts, dashboards, ownership, and automation as part of everyday engineering.
A monitoring practice spanning Nagios, Zabbix, Checkmk, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, and cloud-native telemetry.
Monitoring is a system, not a screen. Useful observability starts with service ownership and meaningful signals—not with collecting every available metric.
Operational learning. Incidents and capacity constraints become inputs for better thresholds, dashboards, runbooks, and architecture decisions.
From servers to cloud. The tools changed over time, but the principle remained: detect deterioration early, make impact understandable, and give responders enough context to act.
Offloaded up to 90% of origin requests and improved resilience during severe-weather traffic peaks.
90% origin traffic offloadedReduced idle capacity and hardware dependency while preparing the organization for its later cloud journey.
↓ cost and hardware footprintTwo responsive Canvas games with collision systems, procedural waves, scoring, synthesized audio, and touch controls.
2 playable gamesTwo disciplines shaped the way I approach complex problems: understanding dynamic systems and building dependable technical ones.
UNIVERSITY DEGREE
University of Bonn
UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES
Trier University of Applied Sciences · studied alongside full-time work
Two browser games built for the joy of making things move, react, and occasionally explode. Choose your mission.
A small arcade detour from the terminal. Clear the dots, avoid your tail, and see how long you can keep the system alive.
Built from my Coursera Nibbler project · Reimagined for this portfolio
A second arcade break: split the formation, dodge the dives, and survive a neon swarm that gets less polite with every wave.
Built from my Coursera Galaga project
From meteorology and C++ to infrastructure leadership and cloud engineering.
Graduated with a final grade of 1.0 and joined WetterOnline while completing my thesis.
Started my professional IT career building weather software.
Studied alongside full-time work and graduated with a final grade of 1.1.
Led the administration team and shared responsibility for 24/7 operations.
Focused on AWS architectures, automation, containers, and helping teams navigate the cloud.
Joined Covestro as a Cloud Engineer and took on the additional roles of Scrum Master and IT Escalation Manager. I also joined the Covestro AI Academy, where I build AI-powered automations and documentation agents and apply that experience to projects such as this website.
A visual journal of places, projects, people, and moments worth remembering.
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An anonymous view of where this site is being read. Only aggregated country totals are shown—never IP addresses or individual visitor histories.
Successful HTML requests within the selected map range.
All CloudFront response statuses, averaged within each displayed interval.
No request-rate history is available for this range yet.
Updated automatically from privacy-safe CloudFront aggregates.
Production stories, technical deep dives, and selected notes preserved from the original site—with enough context to remain useful today.
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Professional cloud credentials and recent AI learning, backed by verifiable records and a preserved training archive.
Credentials earned through AWS and Scrum.org, with the current status of each certification clearly indicated.
Amazon Web Services · Certificate document coming soon
Scrum.org · Issued Nov 2023 · View certificate ↗
HISTORICAL · JUL 2025Amazon Web Services · Issued Jul 2022 · View certificate ↗
HISTORICAL · MAY 2025Amazon Web Services · Issued May 2022 · View certificate ↗
HISTORICAL · DEC 2024Amazon Web Services · Issued Dec 2018 · View certificate ↗
HISTORICAL · APR 2022PSI · Issued Apr 2019 · View certificate ↗
Verified coursework completed from September 2025 through September 2026.
Credential DP9SQG9FTCBC ↗
VANDERBILT · AUG 2026Credential 2EN75A46J6MQ ↗
LEARNKARTS · JUL 2026Credential 9QZ8DPY7CXV3 ↗
EDUREKA · JUL 2026Credential 9MWEKMJBESX7 ↗
COURSERA · MAY 2026Credential CQOZOHJ40XKP ↗
COURSERA · MAY 2026Credential SGTNSFUSGK5E ↗
EDUREKA · MAY 2026Credential QGGLGI2P5PF0 ↗
SCRIMBA · MAR 2026Credential MXOLAMCWK2N4 ↗
ANTHROPIC · MAR 2026Credential 89EFIOBIXMPA ↗
DUKE UNIVERSITY · MAR 2026Credential UFPXX52NW1AM ↗
VANDERBILT · MAR 2026Credential Q6MPTND4KG5T ↗
VANDERBILT · MAR 2026Credential HJIA0UYE49PO ↗
AWS · MAR 2026Credential F1YU7L1J18N3 ↗
AWS · FEB 2026Credential ICVSPN3YIN3L ↗
COURSERA · FEB 2026Credential 8NZL4Z5C7YT0 ↗
PACKT · FEB 2026Credential 77G7YYKGN74Z ↗
JOHNS HOPKINS · DEC 2025Credential 579WBIYP93AP ↗
AWS · NOV 2025Credential 1KKJFUWFG5GR ↗
SCRIMBA · SEP 2025Credential M6VGP030T2GO ↗
AWS · SEP 2025Credential TU11BK0OWP3Z ↗
Original certificates and course records preserved from the former portfolio.