Experience
Career history across industry, academia, and the public sector.
For current status and a full employment history, see LinkedIn. This page captures the substantive work behind each role, beyond what fits in a job-title timeline.
Current Positions
Senior Advisor, Energy & Utility — Mjølner Informatics, part of Accenture
Domain expert at the intersection of the energy sector and supporting IT/OT technologies in the Energy & Utilities business unit. The role sits between business and implementation, covering architecture, domain knowledge and research. A recurring theme is elevating syntactic data structures to semantic layers grounded in standards such as IEC CIM, master data and canonical data models, reusable both for system integration and as context for LLMs.
Selected contributions:
- Data Governance and Enterprise Architecture advisory. For a Danish energy company, advised the Data Governance department on master data management, then the Enterprise Architects in the Integration Platform area on integration principles, team responsibilities and required capabilities. Concluded with a whitepaper (sole author) proposing a framework for boundary governance and contract-driven data exchange, with the knowledge embedded directly in the team rather than in a requirements specification.
- MELVA Pro. One of the architects and a domain expert on Mjølner’s meter-data and master-data management platform for Danish utilities, where architectural responsibility is shared by a group of senior profiles, each within their own area of expertise. Proposed IEC CIM as the shared domain vocabulary, with separate interfaces to the standard for humans and LLMs, and works on context engineering and knowledge availability for AI systems.
- Utility data sharing. For a Danish government agency, co-author and architect of a decision basis comparing three national infrastructure scenarios for sharing water and district-heating consumption data, and subject matter expert on a report on consent and GDPR in utility data sharing.
- Danish Utility Digitalisation Programme, EU track. Participates on Mjølner’s behalf in the track that keeps the programme aligned with EU regulation, projects and research.
- Context Spaces. Conceived and developed a methodology for LLM-assisted analytical work, in which deliverables carry provenance back to their sources.
Associate Professor — University of Southern Denmark
Faculty of Engineering, Software Engineering Section. Teaches Data Management (bachelor) and Big Data and Data Science Technologies (master), and supervises master’s and bachelor’s projects. Research focuses on IT solutions for the green energy transition, scalable AI systems, IoT and data-related middleware, big data, deployment strategies, and knowledge management for AI/ML at scale. The earlier research years at SDU covered IoT, Edge Systems, middleware, scalable solutions (Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker), requirements analysis (especially nonfunctional requirements), and large-scale data analysis (Hadoop, Spark); most of the conference and journal publications originate from that period.
Several titles have been held here across a decade at SDU:
- Associate Professor (2026 – present)
- Assistant Professor (2023 – 2026)
- External Lecturer (2021 – 2023)
- Postdoctoral Researcher (2019 – 2021) – Software Engineering Section
- PhD Fellow (2016 – 2019) – Center for Energy Informatics
External Expert Evaluator — EUDP
Appointed evaluator for the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme (EUDP), under the Danish Energy Agency, reviewing applications for public funding of energy technology projects (TRL 4–8). Evaluates proposals on technical innovation, commercial viability, energy-policy alignment, and organisational readiness across EUDP’s strategic focus areas.
Previous Positions
Chief Advisor — Danish Energy Agency
Drove part of the Danish Utility Digitalisation Programme (Forsyningsdigitaliseringsprogrammet / FDP), representing the expert role of the Danish Government. Contributed as a Danish National Representative and Expert at Data for Energy (D4E), part of the Smart Energy Expert Group (SEEG) in the EU Commission, helping set the direction for flexibility in the future energy grid.
Competencies: Fællesoffentlig dataarkitektur (FDA), Governance, Strategisk planlægning, Datastrukturer, Datamodellering, Data Engineering, Data Science.
Senior Architect, PhD — Energinet
Senior architect, advisor, and innovation driver across Energinet’s OT, IT, and data domains. Subject Matter Expert in multiple Agile Release Trains (GridOp ART, OT ART) under SAFe.
Selected contributions:
- Innovation project behind the OT Platform. Led, together with others in the Digital Innovation department, the innovation project and team that created the prototypes and MVP of a Kubernetes platform with a secure OS, deployment flows, monitoring and lifecycle management; Product Owner and Scrum Master for the team. The work became the core of the Hamlet Project, which established the OT Platform, a secure hosting platform for IT supporting OT systems that later became an Agile Release Train.
- Secure data distribution between security zones. Designed the conceptual foundation for moving data securely between security zones, with a governance layer and an information classification matrix. Facilitated moving the data-distribution responsibility from the OT organisation to DNA, where it was built as Energinet’s Information Distribution Service (IDS).
- Information Management initiative. Designed, initiated, and built the theoretical foundation for the Information Management initiative, estimated at multi-billion DKK, concentrating on data and metadata management for OT in the TSO and DSO sector.
- National digitalisation strategy. Drove the direction from Energinet’s side (later named Forsyningsdigitaliseringsprogrammet).
- Hamlet Project Expert Advisory Board. Member for the 1.3 billion DKK project. Authored the Non-Functional Requirements for Hamlet.
- EU liaison and D4E. One of Energinet’s liaisons in the EU, working through Data for Energy (D4E) under the EU Smart Energy Expert Group, where Jakob was nominated as Energinet’s representative.
- Research coordination. Internal connection point and driving force for ~10 research projects with universities inside and outside Denmark.
Competencies: SAFe, Stakeholder Management, Enterprise Architecture, TOGAF, Microservice architecture, Informationsarkitektur, Strategisk planlægning, Distributed software architecture.
Head of Research & Development — Esoft
Led the strategic initiative to modernise the image preparation, collection, and processing architecture at Esoft using AI Pipelines. The pipeline became one of the company’s main competitive advantages: over 70% of fully AI-edited or AI-assisted image processing now flows through it. Built as a platform, not as per-project AI solutions. The architecture is the basis of the AI Pipelines paper at ICSA-C 2025.
Competencies: Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, MongoDB, Domain-Driven Design, Servant Leadership, Machine Learning, Information Architecture, Stream Processing.
Research Affiliate — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
3-month research stay as part of PhD program. Collaborated with UC Berkeley. The collaboration with Gabe Fierro later resulted in the 2022 Service Portability paper.
Software Architect — Blue Ocean Robotics
Architecture, design, and construction of multiple internal applications. Development and maintenance of websites built in ASP.NET MVC and Umbraco. Involved in multiple robot-related software projects. Server, network, and operations responsibility.
Software Architect — Hviid Development
Own company (formerly hviidNet), operated continuously over 14 years and in parallel with most of the W2 roles above. Software development, architecture, scalable solutions, hosting, network, and server architecture. Ran own infrastructure and operations.
Competencies: .NET Core, Microsoft SQL Server, C#, Linux Server, Network, Cisco, Active Directory, Windows Server, Distributed software architecture, IT-Arkitektur.
System Consultant — ScanNet
Direct operations and architecture experience: Linux (LVS, Apache), Windows (Clusters, IIS, DNS, AD, Exchange), Database (MySQL, MSSQL), Network (Cisco, Teaming), SAN/HBA, VMware vSphere, monitoring.
IT Consultant — Unik System Design
System Consultant, Test Manager, Database Manager.
IT Supporter — Carlsberg Group
Onsite support of users from Tuborg and Coca-Cola in Fredericia. Administration of on-floor production computers.
Education
| Period | Degree | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 – 2019 | PhD in Software Engineering | Faculty of Engineering, SDU |
| 2014 – 2016 | M.Sc. in Software Engineering (cand.polyt) | Faculty of Engineering, SDU |
| 2013 – 2014 | B.Sc. in Web Development (International) | UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole |
| 2010 – 2013 | Academy Profession Degree in Computer Science (Datamatiker) | UCL Erhvervsakademi og Professionshøjskole |
| 2002 – 2005 | IT Supporter, Data and Communications Education | Syddansk Erhvervsskole |
| 2000 – 2002 | Højere Forberedelseseksamen (HF) | Nr. Nissum Seminarie og HF |
Certifications
- Enterprise Architecture Training and Certification Program – Module 1: Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture, EA Fellows (2024–2025).
- ArchiMate (90171), DTI (2022–2025).
- CCNA 1–4 (Networking Fundamentals, Routers and Routing Basics, WAN Technologies), Cisco (2004–2025).
Honors
- Danfoss Engineering Tomorrow Award 2017 – Nominee.
Pedagogical Qualifications
- Universitetspædagogikum (UP) – Pedagogical competency profile level C, SDU, 2024 (10 ECTS).
- Plus several short-format SDU courses on lecturing, student response systems, and flipped learning (2024).
- Projektansøgning – Projektledelse for forskere og PhD-studerende, SDU, 2020 (2 ECTS).