Resume
Lars Barkman
I am an independent consultant and solopreneur. I help enterprises design, develop, and operate digital solutions they can rely on — and alongside that work, I build and write.
That usually requires working across more than one front. A well-designed solution that does not fit how the team works still will not ship well, and a capable team without the right operating context will not deliver consistently. So I work across the whole of it — solution design, operating model, leadership, and team capability — because fixing one front rarely sticks. What that looks like as an engagement is on the work page.
Two decades of that has mostly been architecture and delivery leadership in insurance and pensions, shipping, manufacturing, and enterprise software — often in the same engagement, because the design and the organization around it tend to fail together.
- Roles
- Solution Architect · Enterprise Architect · Team Lead · Engineering Manager
- Industries
- Insurance and occupational pensions · Shipping and transport · Manufacturing · Energy and utilities · Enterprise software and IT services
- Experience
- 20+ years
- Location
- Remote, hybrid or on-site in the Stockholm region · Nordic travel a few times a month
- Languages
- Swedish · English
- Companies
- Alpha Phase Holdings AB · Alpha Phase Consulting AB · Alpha Phase Studio AB
Experience
Employments and client assignments from the last decade in full, most recent first. Earlier roles are summarized below, and work before 2005 is not accounted for here — this is the part that bears on what I do now.
Solution Architect, Enterprise Architect and Team Lead
Mar 2025 – PresentGotlandsbolaget
Three complementary roles across solution architecture, delivery leadership, and enterprise operating model design — translating business needs into deliverable technical designs, leading the IT delivery team serving Finance and HR across the group, and implementing a new IT operating model with clearer roles, governance, and ways of working.
- Member of the IT Management Team
- Designing a new IT operating model for the group
- Implementing the operating model
- Running the delivery team for shared services
- Designing solutions in the shared services domain
- Hiring for the delivery team and the management team
Zero-trust and microservice architecture, DDD · BDD, trunk-based development, everything as code · Team Topologies, team sizing, Drive (Daniel Pink) · PlantUML, Mermaid · NIS2, Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), GDPR · Kubernetes, Flux, Go, PostgreSQL, Bruno, Playwright
Solution Architect and Team Lead
Apr 2023 – Dec 2024Billerud AB
Led the design and implementation of the platforms underpinning the next generation of supply chain management, and the practices for building and operating applications on top of them.
- Designed a Kubernetes-based global application platform serving both legacy and modern applications
- Established a global event platform enabling event-driven architecture across the system landscape, with Ambassador components integrating systems that could not participate natively
- Formed the delivery team, then split it into application and platform teams inside the line organization so the solution would not become a consultant product
Event-driven and microservice architecture, API gateway, ambassador pattern · BDD, CI/CD, shift-left security, everything as code · ArchiMate, BPMN, PlantUML · Kubernetes, Azure, Azure DevOps
Solution Architect
Sep 2022 – Mar 2023Billerud AB
Designed a digital sales contract management solution with an Information Architect, selecting the platform through market analysis and treating contracts as data objects — making the design a foundation for automation, CPQ capability, and decision-making across the supply chain.
- Serverless microservices used to extend the platform where the product stopped, keeping the design adaptable to changing requirements
Event-driven, serverless, and microservice architecture · ArchiMate, BPMN, PlantUML · Azure
Solution Architect and Engineering Manager
Aug 2019 – Mar 2022IA System (AFA Försäkring)
Architect for applications and platforms, head of the DevSecOps engineering department and part of the executive team, people lead for all software and platform engineers, and Product Owner for the platform team. The IA System is the leading SaaS solution for systematic work-environment and improvement procedures — used worldwide, 24/7 at over 99.5 percent availability, in more than 30 languages, via web, app, and API.
- Transitioned a monolith to a microservice architecture
- Designed and implemented a flexible, scalable, secure, cloud-agnostic application platform on Kubernetes
- Implemented a new operating model: delivery speed up by two orders of magnitude, incidents sharply down, and job satisfaction substantially up
Microservice, event-driven, zero-trust, and JAMstack architecture · Go · Kubernetes, Ansible · On-premise, Azure, Azure DevOps
Solution Architect and Enterprise Architect
Dec 2017 – Aug 2019AFA Försäkring
Architect for the preventive measures business area and other major initiatives — designing technical solutions with the product teams, and operating models with the organization.
- Designed a cloud-native solution for handling the rights of data subjects under GDPR
- Designed, anchored, and implemented a new operating model for financing external research and development grants
- Designed and anchored a new operating model for the IA System
Products not projects; you build it, you run it · Docker, Kubernetes
Solution Architect, Team Lead and Product Owner
Dec 2016 – Dec 2017AFA Försäkring
Led the company's first venture into digitalizing the core insurance business — forming a cross-functional business and IT team inside a clear bounded context, with the autonomy to solve the problem as it saw fit.
- The organization's first use of AI in the core business
- Solved business challenges in months that had gone unsolved for years under the previous operating model
Python, PostgreSQL
Solution Architect and Enterprise Architect
Sep 2015 – Dec 2016AFA Försäkring
Recruited into the company's digitalization and technological modernization — designing technical solutions with the project teams and operating models for the organization.
- Designed and anchored a new operating model for the digitalization of the company
Earlier, 2005 – 2015. Mostly SAP-centred solution architecture and development, in consultancies and at SAP itself, with growing architecture ownership and the first team leadership. The two I would still point to: an automated B2B order process for Sweden's largest utility firm that became a platform for later development, and the central contract component for a company in occupational pensions and insurance.
- Enterprise Architect, Presales, SAP NordicsOct 2014 – Aug 2015
- Software Architect, AcandoJan 2013 – Sep 2014
- Software Architect and Tech Lead, CollectumJul 2010 – Dec 2012
- Developer, Software Architect and IT Manager, Stretch ConsultingJun 2007 – Jun 2010
- Developer, ConnectaJun 2005 – May 2007
Skills
Grouped by domain. The roles above carry the evidence of depth — some of it also built and tested through my own work outside assignments.
Architecture and design
- Solution architecture
- Enterprise architecture
- Zero-trust architecture
- Event-driven architecture
- Serverless architecture
- Microservices
- Integration and API patterns
- DDD
- Team Topologies
- Service design
- Information modelling
- Requirements analysis
- Technology and platform selection
Organization and operating model
- Operating model design
- Governance and decision rights
- Organization design
- Change management
- Digital transformation
- Process development
- Business analysis
- Product management
- Project management
- Design and innovation workshops
Life cycle and delivery
- Digital solution life cycle management
- Shift-left security
- GitOps
- CI/CD
- Agile
- Kanban
- Lean
Testing and quality
- BDD
- Acceptance testing
- API testing
- GUI testing
- Playwright
- Bruno
Leadership
- Engineering management
- People leadership and coaching
- Executive stakeholder management
- Team leadership
- Hiring and team formation
- Product ownership
Platforms and infrastructure
- Kubernetes
- Proxmox
- Docker
- Flux
- Ansible
- Linux
- Caddy
- Git
- Azure
- Azure DevOps
- On-premise, cloud and self-hosted
Data and integration
- REST APIs
- RPC APIs
- OpenAPI
- PostgreSQL
- SQLite
- DuckDB
- Parquet
Languages and frameworks
- Go
- Python
- JavaScript
- Bash
- templ
- htmx
- Alpine.js
Operations, security and compliance
- NIS2
- Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)
- GDPR
- IT security
- Host hardening
- High-availability operations
- Incident management
- Multi-tenant SaaS
- Backup and recovery
- CNPG (CloudNativePG)
- Litestream
- restic
Modelling and communication
- PlantUML
- Mermaid
- ArchiMate
- BPMN
- Markdown
- LaTeX
Certifications and education
DF Kompetens is the certification body of Dataföreningen, the Swedish computer society.
- Certified Chief ArchitectDF KompetensJun 2016 – Jan 2017
- Certified IT ArchitectDF KompetensJun 2012 – Dec 2012
- Information ManagementLinnaeus University1996 – 2002
Alongside client work
Under Alpha Phase Studio AB I am building an open model and tooling for the digital solution life cycle — an opinionated set of classifications, processes, and security measures that take a solution from first design to reliable operation, with tooling that makes the model practical to run day to day. The work page carries the detail, and the writings carry the decisions behind them as I make them.
Getting in touch
If delivery is where your organization keeps getting stuck, or something in the writing is worth arguing about, I am easy to reach. Engagements run remote or on-site in the Stockholm region, and I travel elsewhere in the Nordics a few times a month.