About me
Born in Lower Austria, as a son of cooks and restaurant owners, great food was always important to me. I enjoy eating cuisine from different cultures and kitchens and like to cook myself. As long as meat is involved, I will probably try it.
I love volleyball, which I started playing at the age of 12. Back then I joined a local team and played competitively in regional and national championships. After a series of injuries I had to stop playing regularly but still have a soft spot for the sport.
Travelling is my passion and I aim to experience as much of this planet as possible. Among the places I’ve already visited is Iceland, which I feel is the most beautiful country on this planet.
2021 I finally got a Husky puppy. I enjoy the soothing effect he has on me a bit more than the patience he teaches me. Having trained Blitz for a few years now, spending immeasurable time cuddling with him I can confidently say he is the biggest teacher I ever had.
In my professional life I focus on bringing Product and Tech closer together. Looking holistically at the end-to-end Product lifecycle I remove barriers between teams and departments. My experience has shown me well structured teams will deliver in their highest capacity. I enjoy researching technologies and applying them in the best fit for the problem given.
Professional Experience
Zeile7, Remote — IT Consulting
October 2021 - February 2025
In my role as CTO for Hire and Fractional CTO at Zeile7 I work with multiple clients from Startups to Scale Ups and Enterprises to help them level up and reach their next potential. In collaboration with the client I shape their whole product delivery life cycle, train the teams and managers and define the necessary processes. In this role I ensure the achievement of short term goals while setting up the organisation to reach their long term targets.
Iconic Finance, Munich — VP Technology
April 2020 - September 2021
As VP Technology at Iconic Finance, I work across teams to shape not only the delivery process but the end-to-end Product lifecycle. Focussing on simple but effective changes allowed for on time, high quality, and in budget delivery of the first public version of the “Hey Money” app. As a team, we aim to ensure a high quality product delivery with up to date processes, tools and technologies. This includes definition of Best Practices in Infrastructure, Backend and Frontend development, including the introduction of BDD Product Lifecycle management, from ideation, story mapping, feature specification,to delivery and on-going operations.
BMW Group, Munich — Lead Special Projects
July 2018 - March 2020
At BMW we established a new delivery and development model to revolutionise mobile development. Starting with a small team in Chicago we were quickly able to scale new processes and technologies over multiple geographies, across the US, Europe and China. This led to a complete rewrite and global launch of the “MyBMW” app with more than 300 engineers working to best practices. As a strong believer in the “API First” , I worked across the organisation to share and coach the ways of working within the BMW Group.
PayU / Naspers, Berlin — Chief Architect
January 2016 - May 2018
As an inaugural member of the Berlin PayU offices. I assisted in finding a suitable office location and facilities; hiring the full team from scratch, including designing and implementing the Product Development process, and worked across teams to implement these standards across the organisation. From late 2016 I led the software development part of the “PayU Hub” – the global transformation project of PayU. In this role, I facilitated the efforts between multiple regions and teams within PayU but also from third parties. Coaching multiple teams in different locations was as much part of my role, working closely across the organization to lead towards a global way of working. While this included a lot of travel to the onsite locations I also manage remote teams from Berlin.
paysafecard, Vienna — Lead Mobile Development
May 2015 - December 2015
Working across the mobile team, enabling them to deliver our products in the best possible quality. During my time, I also worked to define the architecture and implemented our CI pipeline. Supporting the team in consistently achieving a high standard both in processes and product. My position also included helping the company to embrace a mobile first setup; including explaining and implementing the changes needed in IT, Product, Business teams, Marketing and Operations.
bwin.party, Vienna — Master Coder / Architect
June 2008 - April 2015
I began at bwin in the Research department; my projects included mobile phones and technologies from the beginning. After the successful development and deployment of the first native real money live betting application for iOS I lead development as an architect for the mobile teams at bwin and bwin.party for the sports betting area; consisting of the development, architectural guidance, and consulting of various mobile applications from backend to frontend. This included the setup of Agile methodologies, coaching the teams and finding solutions for specific issues in our workflow as well as working on our technical roadmap to continuous delivery. One of my main focuses was on setting up multiple mobile development teams in Europe (mainly in Austria, Ukraine and Romania), as well as part of the setup of our o -shoring capacity for bwin in Bengaluru, India.
Additional Skills
- Trained Firefighter
- Trained Paramedic
- Excellent Cook
- Driving Licence B
- Languages
- German - Native
- English - Business / Professional
Education
University of Applied Sciences, Hagenberg
Software Engineering - October 2005
Focusing on delivery of Products be it Lego robots racing through an obstacle course or building an IDE for industrial robots we always worked with companies while studying for our exams.
Grammar School, Wieselburg
June 2000
Additionally to a classical education I also was able to dip into programming for the first time. This and of course I played a lot of Volleyball during my time there.