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Curriculum vitae

Axel Forsberg

Don’t tell people your plans. Show them your results.

Axel Forsberg

Profile

I work at the intersection of technical leadership and cloud strategy, primarily with large enterprises where technology decisions have real business consequences. My background spans hands-on cloud architecture across AWS, Azure, and GCP, including platform ownership at enterprise scale. Most recently at IKEA, leading the tenant migration of their CORE retail offer spanning 11 retailers, 30 markets, and 30+ connected systems. Since 2021 I’ve been Technical Director and part of GESHDO’s leadership team, and until 2024 I also led the A-Stack, with four team leads and 29 consultants across four technology teams under my line management. I’ve shipped products used by hundreds of thousands of people across 20+ countries, built infrastructure running at extremely low cost across five markets, and co-developed a Visual Search feature with Google presented at Google I/O 2019. I lead with outcomes. The technology is the means, not the goal.

Skills

  • Technical Leadership
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Web Development
  • People Management
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Serverless Architecture
  • IT Architecture
  • IaC
  • CI/CD
  • Git / GitHub / GitHub Actions
  • Line Management
  • Roadmap Planning
  • Agile ways of working
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • Generative AI
  • Prompt Engineering
  • Large Language Models
  • Firestore
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  • Model Context Protocol
  • C#
  • Vector Search
  • Embeddings
  • Semantic Search
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • Vertex AI
  • PowerShell
  • Machine Learning

Aptitudes

Experience

  1. June 2026 - October 2026 Internal

    Technical Architect & AI Engineer

    GESHDO Now ABBig Hero Six (BHS)

    Built an AI-powered consultant-to-assignment matching platform. BHS scrapes and ingests job ads from a range of major enterprises, embeds them with Vertex AI, and semantically matches them against GESHDO's consultant CVs using Firestore vector search, with a LLM (Claude) ranking and motivating each match in natural language. Designed the RAG pipeline and an MCP server over Streamable HTTP that exposes the matching engine and CV/company knowledge base to LLM clients, all running serverless on Cloud Run.

    BHS now generates consultant sales at a pace comparable to the rest of our sales, creates more than 1,000 consultant-to-assignment matches every month, and is being rolled out to more companies within Generate Group.

    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Generative AI
    • LLM
    • RAG
    • Vector Search
    • Embeddings
    • Vertex AI
    • Claude
    • MCP
    • Semantic Search
    • TypeScript
    • Node.js
    • Firestore
    • Cloud Run
    • GCP
    • CI/CD
    • GitHub Actions
    • Docker
  2. December 2024 - Current Contract

    Technical Lead

    Inter IKEA SystemsACE

    Technical leader for the Azure Cloud Excellence (ACE) team, responsible for cost governance, security improvements, and enabling scalable self-service solutions that accelerate delivery for engineering teams across IKEA's Azure estate. Leading the tenant migration of IKEA's CORE retail offer, spanning 11 retailers, 30 markets, and 30+ connected systems, ensuring compliance and operational continuity throughout.

    • Technical Leadership
    • Architecture
    • Azure
    • Infrastructure
    • D365
    • Power Platform
    • IAM
  3. August 2023 - December 2024 Contract

    Platform Owner

    Inter IKEA SystemsRPIC/EDG

    As Platform Owner for RPIC at IKEA, I owned the vision, roadmap, and delivery of the integration platform that supplies 12 retailers with the business-critical data they need to operate, including product range, pricing, and other core commercial data. By building a standardized, governed framework connecting Inter IKEA source systems with retailers and retailer facing systems, I ensured reliable and scalable data flow that franchisee operations depend on daily.

    • Technical Leadership
    • Architecture
    • Integration Patterns
    • Azure
  4. August 2022 - June 2023 Contract

    Technical Leader

    StepStoneEmerging Tech

    Technical lead for StepStone’s innovation lab, exploring AI, blockchain, and immersive tech (AR/VR) as potential sources of new products, competitive advantage, and cost savings. Acted as technical advisor for a team of engineers through rapid prototyping cycles to validate what was technically feasible and commercially viable, providing the business with concrete go/no-go foundations for emerging technology investments.

    • Machine Learning
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Augmented Reality
    • GCP
    • Cloud Run
    • Firestore
    • Node.js
    • CI/CD
    • GitHub Actions
    • Docker
  5. March 2021 - Current Employment

    Technical Director

    GESHDO Now AB

    As Technical Director and member of GESHDO's leadership team, I guide the company-wide technology strategy, support sales and contribute to the overall direction and growth of the company. Until 2024 the role also included leading the A-Stack (see separate entry).

    • Technical Leadership
    • Company Steering
    • Strategy
    • Sales
    • Consultancy
  6. March 2021 - February 2024 Employment

    Director, A-Stack

    GESHDO Now AB

    Led the A-Stack, a unit of four technology teams with four team leads reporting to me and 29 consultants in total. Translated company strategy into clear direction for the team leads, delegated ownership to them and coached them in their leadership. Held line management responsibility, including development talks, salary reviews, recruitment and difficult conversations. Managed expectations from clients and the organisation, and allocated consultants across teams and assignments.

    • People Management
    • Line Management
    • Leadership Coaching
    • Delegation
    • Strategy Translation
    • Resource Allocation
    • Expectation Management
  7. March 2021 - December 2021 Contract

    Cloud Architect

    Inter IKEA SystemsKitchen Planner

    Cloud architect for IKEA's Kitchen Planner, a worldwide tool used by millions of customers to configure and visualize kitchen purchases. The platform had grown complex over time, with increasingly slow development and deployment cycles. As part of the architecture team, we were responsible for simplifying the AWS infrastructure and introducing new AWS capabilities to reduce that overhead, enabling the development teams to ship faster.

    • Architecture
    • Technical Documentation
    • AWS
    • Serverless
    • Lambda
    • API Gateway
    • DynamoDB
    • Neptune
    • Node.js
    • React
  8. January 2020 - February 2021 Employment

    Team Manager, A-Team

    GESHDO Now AB

    Managed the A-Team, a delivery team of ten consultants, with direct line management responsibility. Ran development talks and follow-ups, supported the consultants in their assignments and worked with sales to staff the team on client assignments.

    • People Management
    • Line Management
    • Coaching
    • Resource Allocation
  9. March 2019 - December 2024 Contract

    Technical Advisor

    Ikano BankCloud Support

    Long-term cloud advisor to Ikano Bank, serving as a trusted second opinion on architecture decisions and a resource for resolving critical issues when they arose. Supported the migration from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, enabling the bank to reduce operational overhead and decommission legacy systems. Delivered solutions such as a centralized PII data obfuscator to ensure analytics pipelines remained GDPR-compliant.

    • AWS
    • Serverless
    • Cost Optimization
    • Terraform
    • CI/CD
    • AWS CodePipeline
    • Jenkins
    • Git
    • C#
  10. February 2019 - May 2025 Contract

    Technical Advisor

    Ingka GroupEdge Engineering

    Member of Ingka Group's Edge Engineering team, a digital strike team tasked with rapidly prototyping and delivering new solutions, and conducting tech due diligence for strategic acquisitions and investments. Built and shipped products deployed across 20+ countries with hundreds of thousands of users. Notable work includes:

    • Visual Search, developed in collaboration with Google and presented at Google I/O 2019, letting customers photograph furniture to find matching products in IKEA's range.
    • A home office furniture lending system rolled out globally during the pandemic to support remote workers.
    • The backend and data pipeline for a cookieless analytics solution running on ikea.com, handling over one billion analytics events.

    • GCP
    • Serverless
    • Cloud Run
    • Cloud Functions
    • Firestore
    • BigQuery
    • Node.js
    • ML/AI
    • Go
    • Hugo
    • Git
    • CI/CD
    • GitHub Actions
    • Cloud Build
    • Docker
  11. April 2018 - February 2019 Contract

    Tech Lead

    Ikano BankSuper Fast Web

    Tech lead for a team of three developers building Ikano Bank's new web platform. Achieved a perfect PageSpeed score of 100/100 on both desktop and mobile across all categories, reducing the bank's dependency on paid search advertising by improving organic search ranking. Built on a fully serverless AWS architecture, optimized end-to-end for speed, security, and low operational overhead, deployed across 5 countries at an operational cost of under $50/month.

    • AWS
    • Serverless
    • Lambda
    • API Gateway
    • S3
    • Cloudfront
    • DynamoDB
    • Cognito
    • .Net
    • C#
    • APIs
    • Vue.js
    • Hugo
    • Git
    • CI/CD
    • AWS CodePipeline
    • Jenkins
  12. March 2018 - April 2018 Contract

    Cloud Developer

    Sony MobileCampaign Platform

    Built a serverless campaign platform on AWS for Sony Mobile, replacing an on-premises system burdened with dependencies and long lead times. The new platform enabled campaigns to be launched faster, with automatic scaling, high availability, and significantly lower operational overhead.

    • AWS
    • Serverless
    • Lambda
    • API Gateway
    • .Net
    • C#
    • APIs
    • CI/CD
    • AWS CodePipeline
  13. March 2017 - March 2018 Contract

    SharePoint Architect

    Axis Communications ABGalaxis

    Performed a SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016 migration for 4,000 users at Axis Communications, migrating multiple terabytes of data to a supported platform while eliminating legacy custom code that had accumulated over the years. Rather than a simple database move, extracted and recreated content and solutions from scratch using PowerShell, resulting in a clean, maintainable environment that enabled faster development of modern extensions going forward.

    • SharePoint
    • PowerShell
    • C#
    • MSSQL
    • CI/CD
    • Jenkins
    • TeamCity
  14. March 2017 - Current Employment

    IT Consultant

    GESHDO Now AB

    Consultant at GESHDO, delivering cloud development, architecture and technical leadership for clients such as Inter IKEA Systems, Ingka Group, Ikano Bank, StepStone, Sony Mobile and Axis Communications (see individual assignments). Started in hands-on cloud development and infrastructure and have gradually moved into architecture, platform ownership and technical leadership roles, while keeping up with new technology through continuous learning.

    • Consultancy
    • Cloud Architecture
    • Technical Leadership
    • AWS
    • Azure
    • GCP
  15. November 2015 - March 2017 Employment

    System Developer

    Axis Communications ABGalaxis

    Worked as a system developer. Main focus on migration from server-side to client-side APIs for SharePoint On-Premise.

    • C#
    • JavaScript
    • PowerShell
    • MSSQL
    • TFS
    • Git
    • CI/CD
    • Jenkins
    • TeamCity
    • SharePoint 2013
    • SharePoint 2016
  16. May 2014 - October 2015 Employment

    System Administrator

    Axis Communications ABIT Operations

    Worked as a system administrator for Windows servers mainly. Managing deployment, monitoring and maintenance of different systems. Large focus on SharePoint farm administration.

    • On-Prem Servers
    • SharePoint 2013/2016
    • MS SQL Server 2012/2014
    • Windows Server 2012 R2/2016
    • NetApp ONTAP FlexClone
    • PowerShell
    • Active Directory
    • Hyper-V
    • IIS
    • Backup & Recovery
    • Disaster Recovery
    • SCOM
    • WSUS
    • Patch Management
    • Performance Tuning
    • DNS
    • DHCP
    • SSL/TLS Certificates
    • Load Balancing
    • Incident Management
    • Technical Documentation
    • Automation & Scripting
  17. June 2013 - April 2014 Employment

    Software Test Engineer

    Axis Communications ABGalaxis

    Worked as a software test developer introducing automated test for a web platform. Wrote documentation and implemented different test in both C# using Coded UI and PowerShell.

Education

  • Diplomerad VD-utbildning (Certified CEO Programme)

    Friends of Executive

    May 2026 - October 2026

    A seven-day diploma programme for sitting and aspiring CEOs, completed over three sessions with lecturers from Lund, Gothenburg and Stockholm universities and led by Jonas Ridderstråle. The programme covered the CEO's financial responsibility, from profitability, key ratio and cash flow analysis to budgeting, financial reporting and management control. It also covered the CEO's legal role and liability, including the Companies Act, annual reports, contract law and intellectual property.

    On the strategic side, I worked with business environment, industry and competitor analysis, strategic positioning, core competence and value creation. The programme concluded with modules on developing leadership and leadership teams, including psychological safety, and on business development from a customer perspective through brand strategy, relationship marketing and internal marketing.

  • Ledarskap nivå 1 - Ny som chef

    Framfot Företagsutbildning

    2022

    In the course, I had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in acquiring knowledge, tools, and models that have significantly boosted my confidence in my new role as a manager. Through this training, I learned how to effectively set, track, and achieve established goals using goal-oriented management techniques.

    The course also provided me with valuable insights into how I can engage my team members in our collective goals through coaching and development discussions. I acquired the skills to conduct productive meetings, meaningful development conversations, successful salary negotiations, and to navigate difficult conversations with finesse. Additionally, I learned strategies to effectively manage the unique challenge of overseeing my former colleagues and handling challenging situations with ease.

  • Information and Communication Engineering Technologies.

    Lund University

    2008 - 2014

    In LTH's Information and Communication Technology program, I've gained expertise in internet technology, security, and design, plus software and digital skills. I've learned to bridge tech and human needs, preparing for a future in IT innovation. This program covers advanced communication systems, security, and user perspectives, making me ready to shape IT's future.

    This program is at the core of today's information society, providing a dynamic education on rapidly evolving information processing methods. It equips students to engage with and lead technological advancements.

  • Web development with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

    Umeå University

    June 2012 - August 2012

    Introduction course to web development.

  • Game development with C# and the XNA toolkit.

    Gotland University

    June 2012 - August 2012

    Introduction course to game development.

  • Application development for Android.

    Mid Sweden University

    June 2011 - August 2011

    Learnt the Android platform and how to develop and implement applications for it.

Languages

  • Swedish Native
  • English Advanced

Personal projects

Code Controller

Designed and built from scratch a self-hosted control plane for AI coding agents that turns a fleet of Windows and macOS computers into an always-on development workforce. Claude Code and Codex sessions run around the clock on my own machines while I start, follow and steer them from any device, including my phone. The platform spans the full stack: a TypeScript agent on every host, a dashboard and supporting services on Google Cloud, secure tunnels through Cloudflare and a guided installer, all built on a zero-trust security model without a single service account key. It has become my daily tool for running many development tasks in parallel, around the clock.

Features include:
• Dashboard on Cloud Run behind Google sign-in (IAP) showing every host and session
• Starting, following and steering sessions remotely from any device
• Cron schedules and GitHub listeners that start work automatically
• Secure previews of dev servers on the hosts through Cloudflare tunnels
• Push notifications for finished work and hosts going offline
• Setup wizard that installs and repairs Windows and macOS hosts, with one-time links for adding new computers
• Backup and restore of each host's sessions, schedules and listeners to Firestore
• No service account keys: each host signs in with its own Firebase identity, limited by Firestore Security Rules to its own data and revocable at once

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • Google Cloud Run
  • IAP
  • Firestore
  • Firebase Auth
  • Cloud Scheduler
  • Cloud Build
  • Secret Manager
  • Cloudflare Tunnels
  • Web Push
  • PowerShell
  • GitHub API

Downloadr

Designed and built a private, mobile-first web app (installable PWA) that automates a home media library end to end: it watches RSS feeds, picks the right releases through rules and TV-series tracking, sends them to Synology Download Station on my NAS and makes them available in Plex. It runs serverless on Google Cloud with a scheduled job every 15 minutes, a full CI/CD pipeline and production-grade security and monitoring.

Features include:
• Rules with keywords or regex, size limits, per-feed scope, destination folder and live preview
• Release-name parser and quality profiles (resolution, source) for automatic TV-series and episode tracking
• Request portal where invited users search the TMDB catalog, request movies and shows and get notified when they are available in Plex
• Live Download Station status with pause, resume and remove, plus clean-up suggestions based on daily upload history
• Web Push notifications to the installed PWA when downloads start, complete or fail
• Google sign-in for allowlisted accounts only, encrypted secrets (AES-256-GCM), strict Content-Security-Policy, rate limiting, audit log and session revocation
• Cloud Monitoring alerts on denied sign-ins, server errors and missed scheduled runs
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions: lint, typecheck, tests, dependency audit, build and deploy to Cloud Run

  • TypeScript
  • Next.js
  • React
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Google Cloud Run
  • Firestore
  • Cloud Scheduler
  • Cloud Build
  • Secret Manager
  • Cloud Monitoring
  • Artifact Registry
  • GitHub Actions
  • Web Push
  • PWA
  • Zod
  • Vitest
  • Synology DSM API
  • TMDB API

Towers of the Valley

Designing and building a complete mobile game for iOS on my own, from game design and story to backend, art pipeline and App Store release. Towers of the Valley is a reverse tower defense: the player collects and trains monsters and sends them against ever-taller towers. The game is built for long-term growth with strict layering, all game content as validated data and an authoritative server on Google Cloud that verifies every battle and purchase. Currently in beta on TestFlight.

Features include:
• Godot 4 client with a deterministic, tested battle simulation separated from presentation
• Go API on Cloud Run with Firestore transactions, a ledger, idempotent requests and battle plausibility validation to prevent cheating
• Firebase Auth (anonymous, Apple and Google sign-in) with no direct client access to the database
• 40 monsters across eight elements and 80 hand-designed towers, defined as JSON content with schemas, versioned and hot-swapped from Cloud Storage
• In-app purchases verified server side through the App Store Server API
• AI art pipeline generating consistent sprites and poses with Gemini on Vertex AI, and narrated intro in English and Swedish with Cloud Text-to-Speech
• Infrastructure as code with Terraform for separate dev and prod projects
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions, automated TestFlight uploads and App Store listing, screenshots and localized texts pushed from code

  • Godot 4
  • GDScript
  • Go
  • Google Cloud Run
  • Firestore
  • Firebase Auth
  • Cloud Storage
  • Vertex AI
  • Gemini
  • Cloud Text-to-Speech
  • Terraform
  • GitHub Actions
  • App Store Connect
  • StoreKit
  • Xcode
  • Python
  • Game Design