Nice to meet you
I've been building software professionally since I was 18. Today, most of my work happens somewhere between engineering, product, and customers: building teams, designing systems, and solving technical problems.
I still consider myself an engineer first — I just spend more of my time thinking about people, organisations, and how good engineering gets done.
When I'm not thinking about software, I'm probably thinking about cacti.
How I got here
I started teaching myself web development as a teenager (during the era of PHP and ActionScript) and took on my first paid projects when I was 18. I initially wanted to become a web designer who could also build and moved to Cologne to study Integrated Design at Köln International School of Design — but quickly realised I was much more interested in building things than designing them.
I spent the next few years freelancing as a web developer before moving to Berlin in 2014 to join Razorfish. From there, I moved to McKinsey & Company, where my work gradually shifted towards larger software systems, solution architecture, and eventually engineering leadership.
Over the years, I've worked in agencies, consulting, startups, and scaleups, and with some very large enterprises. The technologies and job titles have changed quite a bit, but I've mostly stayed close to the same kind of problems: understanding what needs to be built, figuring out how to build it well, and working with people to make it happen.
These days I spend less time writing production code myself, but I still like staying as hands-on as possible and building things when I get the chance.
For a more detailed and chronological version, there's my resume.