Jan Spörer's CV
Jan is a Ph.D.-level AI and software professional with experience in large corporations and startups.
Hermann-Löns-Strasse 5 | 57250 Netphen | Germany
jan.spoerer@whu.edu | +49 171 5395666
Professional Experience
University of St. Gallen (HSG), Chair of Data Science and NLP St. Gallen, Switzerland
Full-time doctoral candidate Oct 2023 - Apr 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 interested employees on DLT-related activities within the bank. Held knowledge-sharing sessions about crypto/DLT with up to 200 colleagues.
- Supervised 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 D3-/React-based web UIs 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.
- Published in leading academic conferences in computer science and AI.
- 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.
- Part of the winning team of the ECB/Google Machine Learning Hackathon 2019.
- 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
Analytics, data science, & machine learning: 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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