I cannot recommend him highly enough and I would work with him again in a heartbeat if offered the opportunity.
―Matt Colebourne, CEO Searchmetrics
About
Fractional and Interim CTO with 20+ years of experience building and transforming engineering organizations in high-pressure environments: PE transitions, hypergrowth, and new product launches. My strengths include delivery predictability, org design, executive communication, and hiring and coaching senior leaders.
I have deep practical experience applying LLM tooling to accelerate software delivery – from agentic coding assistants to automated testing and quality gates – without compromising reliability or security.
My goal is to foster a fearless culture that leads to highly motivated teams and great business results (Case-Studies).
Selected Capabilities
- Tech due diligence (PE/VC buy-side): rapid discovery, architecture/security review, team assessment, cost-to-fix, value creation roadmap
- Post-acquisition execution: operating model & governance, KPI/OKR system, budgeting and capacity planning
- AI-accelerated engineering: agentic coding with guardrails, test generation, PR automation, release automation, developer enablement
- Leadership: fractional and interim CTO/VP coverage, org redesign, performance management, leveling frameworks, succession coaching
- Engineering scale: nearshore build-out, hiring process design, onboarding, retention & engagement systems
- Architecture: modernization, platform scalability, reliability engineering, observability
References
I have completed 10+ interim and fractional CTO engagements for companies including Semrush, sevDesk, Mister Spex, Productsup, Acrolinx, Searchmetrics, Zalando, Springer, and several PE portfolio companies – spanning SaaS, e-commerce, logistics, financial services, and publishing (Projects).
Podcast & Publications
I am author of “Spicy: The Tech Leadership Cookbook” and “Effective SCRUM”, and host of the “Tech Leadership Deep Dives” podcast (also on YouTube). I also created the open source Ninja web framework (1,900+ GitHub stars).
Education & Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Computer Science
My primary studies were in Computer Science and Psychology (minor) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin which I completed with a German Diplom (equivalent to the English Master’s title).
Computer Science + Biology = PhD
I love all things computer, but it’s sometimes even better to combine Computer Science with something “real”. In my case I developed a huge interest in Bioinformatics, which combines Biology and Computer Science. Luckily I was granted a fellowship at the International Graduate School: Genomics and Systems Biology of Molecular Networks (Berlin, Boston, Kyoto). The coolest part of my PhD thesis was an algorithm that was able to compare and find similarities in RNA structures. That was really something novel at that time. It was big fun evaluating the algorithm and publishing the results. In 2009 I successfully defended my PhD thesis in Bioinformatics at the Free University Berlin.
MBA for fun and profit
Another interest of mine is economics. Why are some societies rich, but some are not? What does scarcity have to do with prices? And what does all that mean for us as a society? And because I am also interested in organizations and companies and finance I applied and was granted entry to the international MBA programme of the University of London / Royal Holloway College.
After many remote and onsite sessions with cool professors, many nerdy discussions with my fellow students and countless exams I was awarded an MBA in international management in 2016.
The MBA not only introduced me to economics in a structured way – but it’s also a big help when consulting for big corporations. If you got an MBA you simply speak the business language of the decision makers and can accomplish challenges inside organizations more easily.
