Berlin Metropolitan Area
I am a senior engineering and platform leader with 20+ years of experience in software engineering, platform strategy and organizational leadership. I specialize in building the technical and organizational foundations that enable product teams to deliver faster, operate more reliably and scale sustainably. At Zalando, I lead platform engineering in a large-scale technology environment and work across engineering, product, people and organizational design. My experience includes leading engineering managers and senior technical leaders, shaping platform strategy, supporting product and engineering alignment, and contributing to the transformation of complex technology organizations. I have been part of senior leadership efforts to merge and reorganize technology organizations, establish clearer operating models and create stronger foundations for scalable delivery. I am particularly strong in situations where technical systems, organizational structures and stakeholder expectations need to be aligned. In addition to my engineering leadership work, I bring experience in employee representation, economic committee work and organizational governance in a 6,000+ employee company. This perspective helps me understand organizations not only as delivery systems, but also as social, economic and cultural systems. I value clarity, integrity, pragmatic leadership and sustainable engineering cultures. My goal is to build environments where teams can do meaningful work, make good decisions and create long-term impact.
Leading Partner Portal & Tech Foundation, a platform engineering department responsible for core partner technology capabilities across Zalando. Currently leading 3 engineering teams covering partner portal infrastructure, the PAX Partner Design System, partner communications, API gateway capabilities, Partner IAM, and API/EDI-based partner integrations. My teams enable vertical product teams to build scalable partner experiences, communicate transactionally with partners, integrate partner workflows and deliver consistent user experiences across Zalando’s partner ecosystem. Currently building Model Context Protocol (MCP) and AI platform capabilities for the partner domain, including chatbot infrastructure and reusable LLM integration patterns. Maintained a highly stable platform environment with fewer than 4 production incidents per team per year across business-critical platform capabilities. Founded and currently leading a VP-supported People & Culture stream for the business unit, creating a structured operating model for topics such as diversity & inclusion, innovation, community building and organizational culture. Lead a small virtual team of volunteers, together with dedicated community roles, to drive cross-functional initiatives that strengthen engagement, collaboration and cultural development across the organization. Former member of the Partner Tech Executive Leadership Team from early 2022 to end of 2024. Core member of a senior leadership team that merged and reorganized three technology organizations into a 300+ people tech organization. Served twice as interim Head of Product during leadership transitions, for 12+ months in total, ensuring continuity in product strategy, prioritization and cross-functional alignment
Led Zalando’s Retail Platform and supplier-facing portal, providing the foundation for connecting business partners and internal operations and improving purchase-to-pay processes. Built and developed high-performing engineering teams, including team health, performance and cost tracking. Created and led several cross-department communities, including frontend and engineering management communities. Improved the department’s technology landscape by reducing fragmentation and moving towards a JVM/Kotlin-based environment to enable faster cross-team collaboration.
Led 4 Engineering teams. Responsible Engineering Manager for four engineering teams for the domains Real Estate, Geo Services, B2B APIs and Fraud detection. Responsible (technical) Product Owner for three of these domains (Real Estate, Geo Services, B2B APIs). Organization of cross-functional support for other market- and platform segments including project coordination. Provide strategic visions for the teams in accordance to the company strategy. External contact point for driving and developing the real estate standard OpenImmo 2 and GIF.
Technical responsibility for customer data migration of the real-estate agent software “MaklerManager” to “FlowFact Direct hAPPy”. Coordination of project internal development and quality assurance. Monitoring, steering and quality assurance of external development teams. Controlling of the projects business goal (~1.2m€ revenue impact per anno). Support of external customer care and sales teams and in developing marketing and sales strategies. Direct report to ImmoScout's senior management (Vice President Evalutions).
Mainly responsible for technical planning and implementation of new features and enhancements of the real-estate agent software „MaklerManager“. Maintenance and operation of the software including emergency support. Optimization of agile workflows inside the team. Technical consulting and support of the product management. Planning and implementation of manual and automatic test cases and test strategies.
Giving Linux/Unix courses at the HTW Berlin for Applied Computer Sciences students.
Mainly responsible for technical planning and implementation of new features and enhancements of the real-estate agent software „MaklerManager“. Maintenance and operation of the software including emergency support. Optimization of agile workflows inside the team. Technical consulting and support of the product management. Planning and implementation of manual and automatic test cases and test strategies.