Alexander Pokorny - Interim CIO & IT Transformation Lead

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Vienna, Austria

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Experience

Aug 2024 - Present

2 years 2 months

Vienna, Austria

Owner & Lecturer

Artellico / Own Company for AI Governance and Data Products

Consulting and interim management at the intersection of IT operations and regulation
Impact analysis and implementation planning for NISG 2026 and EU AI Act, including risk management and reporting and evidence processes
Training for governing bodies and employees on regulatory obligations
Teaching assignments in Data & Information Management and Human-Machine Interaction at Hochschule Burgenland, since 2023
Supervision of master’s theses and participation in the examination board
Expert presentations in business and educational institutions
Design and development of data and AI products, platforms and pipelines
Privacy-first architectures and Zero-Knowledge Encryption, cloud-native on EU infrastructure
Connection to bank account systems via SEPA direct debit mandates and message formats according to ISO 20022 (pain.008, camt.053)
MLOps and AIOps in ongoing operations
Own applications under own brand: shared code base, separate delivery for each target device
AI-assisted software development (vibe-coding), complete agentic pipelines, code generation, implementation, automated testing, CI/CD and release cycles
Publications on EU AI Act, NIS2, DORA, CRA and CER as an integrated governance system
Publications on data sovereignty, cloud economics and industrial image processing
AI Governance / Compliance: Data Quality, Responsible AI, EU AI Act Readiness, Risk Classification, AI Ethics

Jan 2023 - Present

3 years 9 months

Austria

Teaching Assignments

Hochschule Burgenland

Teaching assignments at Hochschule Burgenland since 2023 in Data & Information Management and Human-Machine Interaction, supervision of master’s theses, participation in the examination board

Mar 2022 - Aug 2024

2 years 6 months

Vienna, Austria

Head of Data Intelligence

Greentube (Online Gaming Provider, International)

Responsibility for 24/7 operations of business- and compliance-critical systems
Responsibility for budgets in the millions
Built and led an internal department with more than 40 employees in four specialist areas and up to 22 direct reports, comprising Data Engineering, Analytics, BI and Application Development
Managed subordinate leaders; promoted four of them from within the team
Supported two return-to-work processes after parental leave; stable staffing after the reorganization
Represented roadmap priorities in steering committees before the board and CEO
Group cloud strategy and central project to renew the DWH, BI, analytics and reporting platform
Decision in favor of a cloud-native rebuild over incremental modernization, with eight legacy workstreams deprioritized; migration of the platform to Microsoft Fabric in Azure
Approval by the Steering Committee based on a one-page decision document
Reduced platform costs by around half by decommissioning on-premise hardware and not renewing SQL Server Enterprise licenses
Established the operating model (roles, processes, governance, KPI and service ownership) for Data Engineering, BI/Analytics and data-driven applications
Developed a revenue recognition system for recognizing revenue with external developers, as well as financial and management dashboards in Tableau
Quality assurance with binding development and quality standards (automated regression and acceptance tests, DoD, code reviews)
ITIL-based service operations using ServiceNow: incident and change management in one of the teams, managed through service ownership, escalation paths and KPI analysis
On-call duty on a rotation basis for the responsible platforms: escalation levels, restart, security monitoring in operations and post-mortem analysis after incidents
Annual ISO-27001 audits with management responsibility: preparation and coordination across four teams, support during audit discussions and system reviews
Negotiated the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement including Cloudera integration through Azure Credits; around 150,000 euros saved by applying existing credit volumes
Negotiated further framework agreements with cloud and software providers
Responsible for data platform license management
Demand planning, allocation and tracking, purchasing through central procurement
Portfolio and dependency management across product groups
Post-merger integration at system and data level: migration of acquired units’ data into the existing platform, followed by decommissioning of the parallel systems
Translated customer requirements into technical solutions
Stakeholder, partner and supplier management
Advisory support for the CRM platform decision (Salesforce versus Microsoft Dynamics), including implementation
Supplier landscape consisting of Microsoft, Cloudera, Salesforce and Tableau
Coaching and personnel development for the management level
Personnel responsibility throughout the full cycle: recruiting, hiring and setting objectives
Personnel development, deputy arrangements and succession planning for key roles

Apr 2020 - Mar 2022

2 years

Vienna, Austria

Head of Digital Business Development

Data Technology / SanData (IT Service Provider and Systems Integrator, DACH)

Regional management for Germany with P&L responsibility
Acquisition and presales in Austria and the wider DACH market
Project management for customer projects from preparing the offer through project completion
200 % revenue growth in one and a half years, in a region being built up
Disciplinary and professional management of employees at the Munich location
Developed new sales channels and major customers
Harmonized traditional and agile management principles
Designed and implemented ML projects for major customers in the finance and retail sectors (real estate portfolio segmentation, private banking, fraud detection, forecasting and demand models)
Data-driven software development in customer projects: internal ordering portal, reporting and integration systems in the hospital environment, automated document capture in the public sector
Governance mandate at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank for 20 months (Statistics Main Department): designed a data governance structure, data quality, model governance and regulatory traceability
Workshops, presentations and presales activities for major customers in digitalization
Built networks with AI companies from start-ups to major providers, as well as partnerships with cloud providers

Jun 2018 - Dec 2019

1 year 7 months

Vienna, Austria

Lead Data Scientist Corporate Digitalization

voestalpine High Performance Metals (Industrial Group for High-Performance Materials, Worldwide)

Derived the divisional data and AI strategy from the division’s business goals, from board decision to operational implementation in under one year
Implemented applied AI use cases in production
Computer vision defect detection in manufacturing and quality control
IoT telemetry analysis, condition detection and predictive maintenance
Real-time data connection for production across the automation levels: SCADA, MES and ERP connected end to end
Integration via OPC UA and MQTT, telemetry and edge processing from operating plants
Specification compliance in quality control as a core requirement, especially for customers in the aviation industry (Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier) with the strictest standards for safety-critical components
Planned digital route cards: transition from paper as an accompanying document to a fully digital document from the melting furnace through to quality control
Group-wide view through process mining with Celonis and mapping into a central evaluation system, without prior system consolidation across individual SAP instances for each subsidiary
Project management for AI-based and data-driven initiatives in the industrial environment, including data lake POCs
Professional management of divisional AI projects
Architecture design for data and ML pipelines
Trainer for the board and senior management in Data Science and AI
Built the Data Science & AI curriculum for the divisional Digital Academy
Collaboration with academic institutions (FH Joanneum, Montanuniversität Leoben), management of external technology partners
Obtained public research funding through FFG applications for research and digitalization projects

Nov 2015 - May 2018

2 years 7 months

Vienna, Austria

Head of Global and EU Reporting Systems

Austria Tabak / JT International (FMCG group, worldwide)

Represented the company before the European Commission, the Italian Ministero della Salute, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health, industry associations and international scientific bodies
Responsibility for business-critical IT landscapes under strict regulatory requirements (EU Product Directive)
Successfully implemented the EU reporting system on time under extreme time pressure in accordance with the Product Directive; went live on the regulatory deadline
Secured a technically justified deadline extension in negotiations with the European Commission as the industry association’s representative after the recipient systems on the authorities’ side were not operational
Group-wide S/4HANA migration program of around 400 person-years: led the production data and regulatory reporting workstream, from requirements through design and implementation to acceptance; the financial data workstream was managed by Finance
Programs ranging from 50 to 250 person-years as System Architect and Development Lead, with geographically distributed developers
Built the support model and transferred knowledge to a third-party provider
Led project teams of 50–60 people, including external consultants; distributed teams in Europe, America and Asia
Actively managed the development of EMTOC, the European reporting portal, together with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health
Selected and managed external consultants (Accenture, TCS, WIPRO, HCL)
Tender processes, candidate interviews, contract negotiations and escalation management

Feb 2009 - Oct 2015

6 years 9 months

Vienna, Austria

Head of Business and Systems Development

Austria Tabak / JT International (FMCG group, worldwide)

Led software development for six years with a team of around ten developers: requirements analysis, architecture, implementation, testing and release managed by one team
Led the architecture, design and implementation project for the global regulatory compliance and reporting systems
Developed in-house using the Microsoft stack with .NET and ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server and SharePoint workflows, as well as ABAP on the SAP side
Built and operated an independent IT organization within Group IT for Scientific & Regulatory Affairs, with its own domain in the data center
Full responsibility for hardware, servers, virtualization, network, backup and recovery
Access and entry control using fingerprints and later RSA tokens as hardware devices and on mobile phones
Development, operations (DevOps), support and on-call services within one unit
Developed the global ingredient reporting system with full SAP integration and reporting obligations for each market under national law; reduced calculation effort by a factor of 10 through an architecture redesign and performance-critical algorithms from combinatorial optimization
Other systems in production: material release control, processing of health-related complaints, project management and performance measurement systems, and process automation
Migrated data from the legacy SiS system to SAP R/3 and consolidated production data in a central SAP system as the Single Source of Truth
Binding master data and bill of materials model from the SKU to the subcomponents, with defined maintenance processes and a complete change history
Interfaces to around 40 production sites following a standardized pattern of full baseline downloads and change history (ABAP, Scheduler, SQL)
Delta mechanism for transferring data from SAP to local systems with monitoring and 24/7 monitoring, installed locally according to the site’s software and machinery
Connected SAP PLM and business reporting through SAP BW, with data flows from FI, CO and SD for revenue, sales and financial reports
Built the high-security regulatory platform in Vienna, later operated in Geneva
SAP-to-MSSQL interface as a group-wide reference implementation, used for more than a decade across J-SOX, the EU Product Directive and several national regimes
Consolidated the portfolio onto the SAP reference platform based on three criteria: regulatory defensibility, ongoing operating costs and migration duration
Introduced Scrum, Kaizen and DevOps as the first reference implementation in the group
Managed development and operations in one process: changes through Scrum releases, incidents through incident management with defined response times, and shared performance indicators for both
Post-merger integration after acquisitions at application and data level: transferred production and master data into Group SAP
Harmonized heterogeneous landscapes through SOA and ESB solutions
Project management and performance measurement systems, as well as process automation
Scientific calculation systems for Scientific & Regulatory Affairs

Aug 2005 - Jan 2009

3 years 6 months

Vienna, Austria

Project Team Lead Regulatory Affairs

Austria Tabak / Gallaher Group (FMCG group, worldwide)

Regulatory submissions under national and international legal frameworks (EU, WHO, FCTC, FDA)
Developed the first global reporting system: reduced calculation time from three hours to three minutes
Established security standards for highly confidential formulations and intellectual property; held the highest security clearance status in the company

Jan 1999 - Dec 2011

13 years

Vienna, Austria

Founder & Media Expert

Pagina – Design, Development and Media (own company, Vienna)

IT consulting and layout of publications, textbooks and web portals
Interactive learning materials and media applications
Commercial advertising materials and publishing support; worked full-time until 2005, then operated the business alongside employment

Jan 1997 - Dec 2000

4 years

Vienna, Austria

University Lecturer

University of Vienna

Lectures and courses on computational chemistry and high-performance computing
Lectures on quantum mechanics and solid-state chemistry
Teaching scientific publishing techniques

Industry experience

See where this freelancer has spent most of their professional time.

Experienced in Information Technology, Education, Professional Services, Advertising, Media and Entertainment, and Manufacturing.

Information Technology

Education

Professional Services

Advertising

Media and Entertainment

Manufacturing

Business area experience

See which departments and functions this freelancer has contributed to most.

Experienced in Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management, Marketing, Legal, and Procurement.

Information Technology

Product Development

Project Management

Marketing

Legal

Procurement

Summary

Interim management, program and project management for transformation initiatives: outsourcing and transition to managed service operations, post-merger integration, consolidation and decommissioning of established landscapes, as well as SAP and AI programs in regulated industries. 29 years in IT, including around two decades in leadership: own company management, corporate division, national subsidiary, department build-up with more than 40 employees and up to 22 direct reports, responsibility for budgets in the millions, reporting to the board and CEO.

Transformation from target setting through to regular operations: target vision, target architecture and application portfolio as separate management levels, business case and roadmap, management of service providers and consultants, governance and PMO, templates and decisions for the steering committee. Post-merger integration at system and data level, setup of the support model and orderly handover of operations to a third-party provider, portfolio consolidation with binding decommissioning dates. Proven on the cost side: reduced the application landscape by one quarter, cut platform costs in half, saved 150,000 euros annually by renegotiating the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.

SAP for 14 years, from R/3 and ECC through BW and PLM to S/4HANA, BTP and CAP: group-wide S/4HANA program as the responsible stakeholder with around 400 person-years, programs with 50 to 250 person-years as System Architect and Development Lead, an SAP-to-MSSQL interface as a group-wide reference implementation across around 40 sites.

Data and AI from board decision to operations in under one year. Regulation from ISO 27001 in the annual audit cycle through NIS2 to the EU AI Act, with representation before the European Commission and national ministries.

Skills

Cloud, Platforms & Architecture: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Google Cloud, Aws, Multi-Cloud And Hybrid, Saas, Paas, Faas, Colocation
Microsoft Stack: M365, Teams, Sharepoint Including Development, Active Directory, Sql Server
Operating Models: Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), Microservices, Devops And Dataops, Ci/Cd, Infrastructure As Code, Git, Virtualization, Backup And Recovery
Sap: R/3 Including Data Structure, Ecc, Bw (Fi, Co, Sd), Plm, Sap S/4hana, Btp, Cap, Ai Core, Integration Services, Rfc Development, .Net Connector, Master Data And Bill Of Materials Models
Data Governance & Security: Data Governance, Data Quality And Cleansing, Master Data Management, Data Modeling
Encryption: End-To-End, Zero-Knowledge, Pbkdf2
Data Sovereignty: Eu Self-Hosting, Privacy By Design
Data Platforms: Etl/Elt, Ssis, Data Lakes, Data Warehouse And Warehousing, Big Data, Databricks, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Nifi, Cloudera, Bigquery, Batch And Streaming, Edge Computing, Opc Ua And Mqtt Telemetry, Scada And Mes Integration, Process Mining (Celonis)
Software Development: C++, C, C#, Python, R, Sql, Fortran 77/95/2018, Matlab, Mathematica, Sas, Vba, Bash, Powershell, Perl, Php, Kotlin, Rust
Ai-Assisted Development: Claude Code, Antigravity, Cursor, Github Copilot, Agentic Workflows From Specification Through Implementation To Release
Web And Frontend: Javascript, Html5, Css3, Xml, Xslt, Angular, React, Sveltekit, .Net, Asp.Net Mvc
Databases: Ms Sql Server Through 2025, Postgresql, Nosql
Methods & Modeling: Agile (Scrum, Kanban), Togaf, Itil, Cobit, Value Engineering, Lean Management, Project Management
Enterprise Architecture: Bpmn, Uml, Object-Oriented Analysis And Design, Soa, Esb, Iso 20022
Tools: Sparx Enterprise Architect, Altova Missionkit, Oxygen Xml, Signavio, Visual Studio, Ms Visio, Ms Project, Latex
It Operations & Service Management: 24/7 Operations, Server And Network Operations, Monitoring, Automation, Observability With Grafana, Prometheus, Alerting, Availability And Latency Management
Service Operations: Itil Service Operations With Servicenow, Incident, Change, Service Ownership, Escalation, Kpi, Service Desk And User Support, Service Catalog, Ticket Management, Availability And Capacity Management, Configuration And Asset Management
Physical And System Access: Active Directory, Role And Access Concepts, Segregation Of Duties, Multi-Factor Authentication With Rsa Token And Fingerprint, Privileged Access
Operational Security: On-Call Duty On A Rotation Basis, Incident And Crisis Management, Restart, Post-Mortem Analysis, Disaster Recovery And Emergency Exercises
Business Continuity: Emergency And Business Continuity Management, Management Of External Service Providers And Outsourcing
Suppliers And Contracts: Tendering, Selection, Framework And License Agreements, Sla Agreement And Management, Escalation Management, Offshore And Nearshore Units
Artificial Intelligence & Analytics: Predictive Modeling, Statistical Modeling, Anomaly Detection, Time Series Forecasting, Risk Modeling, Machine Condition Detection
Generative Ai: Llms (Gpt, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, Self-Hosted Llms And Slms), Rag, Agents, Mcp, Fine-Tuning
Machine Learning: Neural Networks, Image Recognition, Reinforcement Learning, Digital Twins And Simulation, Nlp And Text Analytics, Explainability (Lime, Surrogate Models)
Business Intelligence: Reporting, Dashboards, Kpi Systems, Power Bi, Tableau, Sas, Ssrs, Ssas
Operating Systems: Macos, Windows (Server), Linux (Debian, Ubuntu), Bsd, Chromeos
Regulation & Compliance: Eu Ai Act, Iso 42001, Data Protection, Dsgvo / Gdpr, Privacy By Design, Anonymization, Us Cloud Act, Jurisdictional Risks, Schrems Ii, Data Sovereignty For Dach, Nis2/Nisg, Dora, Cra, Cer, It Security, Cybersecurity And Cybersecurity, Risk Management, Iso 27001 In The Audit Cycle

Languages

German

Native

English

Advanced

Spanish

Intermediate

French

Intermediate

Education

Sep 1991 - Jun 1999

Universität Wien

Mag. rer. nat. · Chemistry · Vienna, Austria · mit Auszeichnung

Sep 1983 - Jun 1991

Theresianische Akademie Wien

Matura · Modern Languages Grammar School · Vienna, Austria · mit Auszeichnung

Certifications & licenses

Project Management Certification

bit Trainingsinstitut

Driving License A, B, BE

Inland and Sea Navigation Licenses, Marine Radio License (UBI, SRC/GMDSS)

Certified Trainer (Train-the-Trainer)

Statistics

Experience

Total positions 10

Experience in Information Technology 19.5 y

Avg length 4 y 1 m

Longest experience 12 y 11 m

Global experience

Countries worked in 1 (Austria)

Primary country Austria

Expertise

Recent roles Owner & Lecturer, Teaching Assignments, Head of Data Intelligence

Main industries Information Technology, Education, Professional Services

Main business areas Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management

Qualifications

Highest degree Master

Certifications earned 4

Profile

Member since

September 2026

Last update

September 2026

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Frequently asked questions

Have questions? Find more information here.

Alexander is based in Vienna, Austria and can operate in on-site, hybrid, and remote work models.

Alexander speaks the following languages: German (Native), English (Advanced), Spanish (Intermediate), French (Intermediate).

Alexander has at least 29 years of experience. During this time, Alexander has worked in at least 10 different roles and for 9 different companies. The average length of individual experience is 3 years and 11 months. Note that Alexander may not have shared all experience and actually has more experience.

Based on recent experience, Alexander would be well-suited for roles such as: Owner & Lecturer, Teaching Assignments, Head of Data Intelligence.

Alexander's most recent position is Owner & Lecturer at Artellico / Own Company for AI Governance and Data Products.

In recent years, Alexander has worked for Artellico / Own Company for AI Governance and Data Products, Hochschule Burgenland, Greentube (Online Gaming Provider, International), Data Technology / SanData (IT Service Provider and Systems Integrator, and DACH).

Alexander is most experienced in industries like Information Technology, Education, and Professional Services. Alexander also has some experience in Advertising, Media and Entertainment, and Manufacturing.

Alexander is most experienced in business areas like Information Technology, Product Development, and Project Management. Alexander also has some experience in Marketing, Legal, and Procurement.

Alexander has recently worked in industries like Information Technology, Education, and Professional Services.

Alexander has recently worked in business areas like Information Technology, Product Development, and Finance.

Alexander holds a Master in Chemistry from Universität Wien.

Alexander has 4 certificates. Among them, these include: Project Management Certification, Driving License A, B, BE, Inland and Sea Navigation Licenses, Marine Radio License (UBI, and SRC/GMDSS).

Alexander is immediately available full-time for suitable projects.

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Daily rate avg. 823 €

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Median rate 800 €

The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.

Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 30 Sep 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.