Alexander Holzapfel

Vienna, Austria · email · hlz.io

Portrait of Alexander Holzapfel: black beanie, white t-shirt, looking into the camera.

Product engineer who likes owning things end to end, from the first idea to the running system. I co-founded a software and hosting company and work commercially as a photo- and videographer.

How I think

I'm at my best zoomed out: bringing together inputs that don't obviously belong together and finding the picture they form. Depth in a single technology was never the goal, and that's a choice. I notice where things are heading early, and I like arriving there before it gets crowded. It's how I ended up building Austria's first Kubernetes-as-a-Service offering.

Experience

Sep 2023 – today

Co-Founder · Code & Comments

Vienna, Austria

  • Software and hosting for small and medium sized businesses, from first commit to deployed application.
  • UI/UX design, Laravel development and cloud infrastructure in a five-person B2B company.

Jun 2020 – today

Senior Product Engineer · next layer

Vienna, Austria

  • Technical lead and product owner of Austria's first Kubernetes-as-a-Service offering: architecture, roadmap and development.
  • Automated product provisioning with Ansible, AWX and HashiCorp Vault, fronted by Laravel and Livewire.
  • Designed and built a Laravel-based time tracking application used company-wide.

Jan 2020 – today

Photographer & Filmmaker · hlz.art

Vienna, Austria

  • Music photography and video under my own brand: festivals, concerts and club events across Austria and Europe.
  • Accredited at festivals including Let It Roll. Full production pipeline from shoot to color grade.

Nov 2018 – Jun 2020

Systems Engineer · next layer

Vienna, Austria

  • Linux systems engineering.
  • Redesigned and migrated authoritative DNS infrastructure at ISP level.

Mar 2017 – Dec 2025

Founder · bitblaze

Vienna, Austria

  • Web hosting and development for small businesses: infrastructure, client projects and operations.
  • Wound down in 2025 after merging into Code & Comments.

Skills

Platform

Kubernetes · Ansible & AWX · Linux · Docker

Development

PHP · Laravel · Livewire · JavaScript · Tailwind CSS · Git

Infrastructure

DNS · Hosting · Monitoring · Backups

Creative

Photography · Videography · Lightroom · DaVinci Resolve

Languages

German

Native

English

Fluent