Jan Spörer's CV
Jan is a Ph.D.-level AI and software professional with experience in large corporations and startups.
Bäckerweg 10 | 57250 Netphen | Germany
jan.spoerer@whu.edu | +49 171 5395666
Professional Experience
HeizungsDiscount24 GmbH (E-Commerce) Giessen, Germany
Software & AI Developer Mar 2024 - today
- Created several React user interfaces that connect to internal databases and to the ERP system (Odoo).
- Utilized a modern cloud stack based on Amazon Web Service: AWS Lambda Functions, AWS ECR, AWS DynamoDB, AWS RDS.
- Drafted technical concepts and implementations of GenAI solutions.
- Automated unstructured data processing using AI technologies: AWS Bedrock, AWS Agents (function calling), Anthropic Claude via AWS Bedrock.
- Implemented anonymization methods for safe handling of customer data using external AI/LLM APIs.
- Categorized and visualized thousands of documents using AI function calling to evaluate process automation potential. Compared topic modeling approaches for unstructured medium-length text.
- Implemented an internal feedback platform for evaluating and tracking AI processes (React, Python Flask, DynamoDB, RDS).
- Used the Atlassian API (Jira, Confluence) to automate workflows, track progress status, and log progress.
University of St. Gallen (HSG), Chair of Data Science and NLP St. Gallen, Switzerland
Full-time doctoral candidate Oct 2023 - Feb 2024
Commerzbank AG (3 years) Frankfurt, Germany
Senior software developer in multiple divisions Aug 2020 - Oct 2023
- Divisions: DLT Lab, Equity Trading, Trade Post-Processing & Accounting, Advanced Analytics.
- Created a self-sovereign identity application based on Java Spring Boot and Angular, reducing the processing time and manual effort of Commerzbank employees’ password reset requests.
- Hosted the monthly "DLT Affiliate Call" to inform employees on DLT-related activities within the bank. Held knowledge-sharing sessions about crypto/DLT with up to 200 colleagues.
- Supervised and mentored junior software developers, integrating them with peer coding, code reviews, regular meetings, structured guidelines, and regular feedback sessions.
- Created a full-stack application (based on React.js, Python Flask, Java Spring Boot, and enterprise-internal services) that allows clients to have decentralized identity information signed by Commerzbank.
- Developed a FIX converter in Java for new FIX connections. FIX converters are used to translate financial messages from other financial companies into one's own data infrastructure. Led to faster onboarding of a new financial counterparty.
- Implemented web UIs using D3.js and React for transaction monitoring (network diagrams).
- Coordinated a request for proposal (RfP): created proposal documents, managed bidder workshops, evaluated proposals, managed internal stakeholders from different divisions, and ensured compliance with internal guidelines.
- Created a process and data landscape for enterprise-internal data flows. Communicated with various departments to collect recommendations on optimizing the data landscape. Drawn insights about the improvement potential of current data processes.
21e6 Capital AG (3 years) Pfäffikon, Switzerland
Co-founder, data engineer Jul 2020 - Sep 2023
- Established a Python-based data standardization process that aggregates data about investments, saving up to 90% of the original processing time.
- Conducted >200 due diligence calls with >100 crypto fund managers, generating >1000 new data points as the basis of the fund’s investment strategy.
- Setup of a fully regulated AIF (Alternative Investment Fund) in Liechtenstein with the aid of fund administrators, banks, and execution agents/brokers.
Freelancer (3 years) Nation-wide, Germany
Finance and data science consultant, selected client projects: Aug 2017 - Aug 2020
- Designed and implemented a live trading system.
- Performed backtests for strategies that are used by a systematic asset manager.
- Assisted with a successful capital raising process (34m EUR).
- Other selected publicly known client projects: ITSA e.V. (International Token Standardization Association), dashboards & visualizations; Rautenberg Moritz & Co. GmbH (strategy & M&A advisory); Flick Gocke Schaumburg Partnerschaft mbB (corporate valuation, option pricing)
Sinpex Analytics GmbH (1.5 years) Germany and Switzerland
Co-founder, part of the “HSG Entrepreneurial Talent” program Jan 2018 - Oct 2019
- Developed a machine learning algorithm that improves know-your-customer processes (KYC), and pitched products at large international banks.
- Conducted a KYC onboarding project with a paying client (asset manager).
Deutsche Beteiligungs AG Frankfurt, Germany
Private equity intern May - Aug 2017
- Calculated leveraged buyout models.
- Supported a successful buyout from an early stage to signing (Duagon AG).
Deloitte Consulting GmbH & KPMG AG Frankfurt, Germany
Two financial services consulting internships during the summer May - Aug 2016
Education
University of St. Gallen (HSG), Chair of Data Science and NLP St. Gallen, Switzerland
Doctor of Computer Science (Ph.D.) Aug 2020 - April 2024
- Cooperation project with a Swiss value-focused investment fund for automated decision-making using natural language processing (NLP).
- Research in the fields of NLP and computer vision. Model training, fine-tuning, Retrieval-augmented generation. Focus on financial document processing.
- Published in internationally leading academic conferences in computer science and AI. My works were in turn cited in internationally leading academic venues.
- Supervised a thesis that was published in a leading academic conference.
Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Frankfurt, Germany
M.Sc. in Applied Data Science Aug 2018 - May 2020
- Selected courses: Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP
- Cooperation project with AVS Valuation for text recognition, natural language processing.
- Won the ECB/Google Machine Learning Hackathon 2019 as part of a team of five collaborators.
- Developed quantitative trading algorithms in Quantopian.
- Master’s thesis: Backtesting of cryptocurrency trading strategies.
WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management Vallendar, Germany
B.Sc. in International Business Administration Sep 2014 - May 2017
- International management module in China.
- Student assistant for econometrics.
- Official tutor for several finance courses.
American University Washington, D.C., USA
Semester abroad Aug - Dec 2016
Software & Language Skills
General software: Office 365/Excel/VBA/Visio/Sharepoint, Google Drive/Google Sheets, LaTeX/mathtools/biblatex/knitR, GNU/Linux/Ubuntu, macOS
Sales: CRM systems/Hubspot, Dripify
Artificial intelligence, analytics, data science, & machine learning: AWS Bedrock (and various other LLM APIs), local inference/NVIDIA CUDA, Python/NumPy/pandas/scikit-learn/selenium/Quantopian/pytesseract/PyTorch, Tableau, Google Data Studio
Development tools: bash/zsh, Git/GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket, IntelliJ IDEA/VS Code
Languages and frameworks: pytest/test-driven development, Java/Spring/Spring Boot/Maven/Gradle/Tomcat/Junit, Containers/Docker/Kubernetes/OpenShift, MongoDB/Atlas Cloud, SQL/DDL/MySQL/PostgreSQL, React/JavaScript, Angular/TypeScript, R3 Corda Certified Developer (2019)/Kotlin, Ruby/Rails, Keycloak, documentation/Swagger UI/Sphinx
Development methods and concepts: CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery), cloud services with AWS/Azure/GCP, microservices, agile, scrum
Other competencies: Machine learning, natural language processing (with projects at the University of St. Gallen as part of my Ph.D., European Central Bank, and AVS Valuation
GmbH), data cleaning, exploratory data analysis (EDA), quantitative trading (with projects at several quantitative asset managers), time series analysis, clustering, traditional statistics, deep reinforcement learning
Languages: German (native, C2), English (fluent, TOEFL iBT: 112, C2)
Private Interests
- Swimming
- Nutrition and health
- Automotive technology
- Artificial intelligence, swarm intelligence, transhumanism
- Financial markets
Related
- Please find more details about my project portfolio on this page about my projects.
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