Martin Stühmer

Who I Am

I’m Martin, CTO at Integrated Worlds GmbH in the Stuttgart region. I’ve been building .NET systems for nearly 20 years—since Framework 2.0 when SOAP was cutting-edge and ORMs were controversial.

Today I lead technology strategy for cloud-native solutions on Azure. Before this, I was Director Consulting Services at CGI, working with enterprise teams on architecture and transformation. I’m a Microsoft Certified Trainer and IHK-certified instructor, and I maintain several open-source NuGet packages.

What I Do

As CTO, I don’t just make decisions from a distance. I write code, review PRs, debug production issues, and mentor teams. Technology leadership means staying hands-on and feeling the consequences of your choices.

As a trainer and mentor, I focus on fundamentals that outlast framework hype. Static analyzers, testing strategies, performance patterns, maintainable architecture—the stuff that actually prevents production fires.

As an open-source maintainer, I publish packages that solve problems I’ve hit repeatedly in real systems. When strangers depend on your code, you write better tests and clearer docs.

What I’ve Learned

Almost two decades means I’ve made every mistake: over-engineered systems, bet on Silverlight and WCF (oops), built “flexible” architectures that were just complicated, shipped code I’m not proud of.

Here’s what stuck:

Quality isn’t optional – Analyzers catch bugs in milliseconds, tests prevent regressions, and both are faster than firefighting
Fundamentals outlast frameworks – Patterns and principles survive; specific tools don’t always
Context beats dogma – “Best practices” depend on your team, domain, and constraints
Evidence beats opinion – Measure, benchmark, validate before deciding
Pragmatism wins – Good-enough architecture that ships beats perfect architecture that doesn’t

What I Write About

I share perspectives from production systems and real teams. I’m skeptical of buzzword-driven development and allergic to cargo-cult practices. If a trend lacks substance or a pattern doesn’t hold up under pressure, I’ll say so.

This blog is for developers, solution architects and operators who maintain production systems and care about quality, not just shipping fast.

Published blogs

247 Strangers Have Root Access to Your Production

Your organization has a thorough vendor approval process. Procurement forms. Security questionnaires. Legal reviews lasting months. Then your developers run npm install and pull 247 packages from strangers on the internet—and nobody blinks. That’s the supply chain security paradox most teams live with daily. This guide shows you how to implement Dependabot, dependency review, and SBOM generation as the defensive controls they should be—not as checkbox compliance theater.

"Just Delete the User": Famous Last Words Before the GDPR Audit

Your PM thinks erasure is a quick database DELETE. Three weeks later, you’ve found user data in seventeen places: production DB, analytics warehouse, Redis cache, Elasticsearch, backup tapes, and that legacy system nobody dares touch. “Delete” actually means orchestrating coordinated erasure across distributed systems, maintaining audit trails, notifying third parties, and proving it worked. This guide shows the fatal patterns I’ve seen fail spectacularly, then walks through proper orchestration with Azure Durable Functions, soft-delete with anonymization, verification checks, and immutable audit logs.

Why Your Azure Portal Clicks Will Fail the Next Audit

Manual portal configuration creates audit nightmares. When auditors ask “Show me your change control process,” clicking through Azure Activity Logs won’t save you. Here’s how Bicep turns infrastructure into auditable code—where Git history becomes your compliance evidence and pull requests become your approval workflow.

Stop Deploying Garbage to Production

I’ve watched “senior engineers” deploy code with failing tests because “we need to ship.” I’ve seen secrets hardcoded in workflows, vulnerabilities ignored with || true, and production deployments without a single approval gate.

Then the same teams act surprised when they get breached. Or fail an audit. Or both.

Security gates aren’t process overhead—they’re the bare minimum that separates professional engineering from reckless gambling with customer data. Here’s exactly how to build GitHub Actions pipelines that actually protect your systems.

Privacy Health Checks: Beyond Database Connectivity

Your health checks verify database connectivity every 30 seconds. Great. But do they know that 15% of your users have expired consents? Privacy compliance isn’t a documentation exercise—it’s an operational discipline. Same IHealthCheck interface, different questions. Two queries, one ratio, three possible outcomes. Here’s how to build privacy health checks that turn audit questions into dashboard demos.