Technical Product Manager in Germany

• Technical leadership across hardware, firmware, and software teams; scope: hardware/firmware team (4 people) and leadership group (5 people)
• Consolidated and documented a product family that had grown over more than 15 years and aligned it with CRA compliance — from the bare-metal I/O module to the cloud interface.
• Provided the most important customer product with the essential requirements and architecture documentation within two months — for a firmware landscape that had grown over more than 15 years. It now supports the customer’s modernization strategy.
• Established a monthly reporting line to the supervisory board and executive board within three months: nine meetings since 12/2025. The report itself is versioned and built from the CI pipeline; it is based on automatically collected activity and release data instead of assessments.
• Built a container-based CI/CD infrastructure from scratch: cross-compilation, host tests, and documentation builds in one continuous pipeline.
• Introduced declarative QA gates for DevOps and development artifacts — from the start using lefthook instead of pre-commit, executed in a dedicated container image.

Technologies used: arc42, req42, tpo42, docToolchain, PlantUML, ArchiMate, C4 model, ADR, C, C++ (GTest), CMake, Bare Metal (ARM Cortex-M3/M7), OCI containers, Jenkins, lefthook, Prometheus, Grafana, SBOM, CRA, OPC, SCADA, PLC integration, IPv6 migration, Zero Trust, Sociocracy 3.0, Cynefin

Sovereign, cloud-native developer platform based on Kubernetes for critical energy infrastructure; around 200 people and 15 product teams.

• Introduced the product operating model for the platform, aligning around 18 product managers and product owners with Platform Architecture and Delivery in a matrix organisation.
• Defined the platform product processes and core product artefacts as the standard across all product teams.
• Established processes for non-functional requirements and Requests for Enhancement from consuming teams and customers.
• Designed the Jira structure supporting the programme's product and delivery processes.

Workflow-automation SaaS for operations teams (Berlin, 120 people); full-time freelance engagement reporting to the CEO: an initial 12-month interim mandate, extended twice through the AI build-out; owned product for one squad and coached the other product managers on process.

• Led generative AI (LLM) integration into the core product: from LLM-powered steps to natural-language workflow authoring and step-level automation suggestions, plus AI-managed dynamic workflows, shipped behind eval gates with human-in-the-loop fallbacks: AI-drafted workflows grew to 31% of all new workflows, and median time-to-first-workflow fell from 3 days to 4 hours.
• Packaged the AI capabilities as a usage-based add-on priced on executed automation steps, working with sales and marketing on positioning: ~€800K added ARR in the first year, and adopting accounts churned 1.8 pp less.
• Owned the roadmap end to end: replaced feature-request-driven quarterly planning with an outcome-based rolling roadmap built on quarterly bets and explicit kill criteria, presented monthly to the executive team and quarterly to the board.
• Rebuilt the product-management operating system: weekly customer-discovery cadence incl. workshop facilitation, RFC/decision-doc reviews and a single quarterly metrics narrative; coached four product managers, one promoted to senior during the engagement.
• Closed the engagement as scoped: hired and onboarded the permanent VP Product, handed over the process playbook and roadmap, and exited on schedule in June 2026.

• Own the 12–18 month roadmap and key outcomes for Elli's enterprise customer platform, covering onboarding, pricing, billing, analytics and broader platform modernization; redesigned the Fleet onboarding funnel to double conversion, supporting a projected €20.7M revenue uplift by 2028.
• Lead the broader Energy Intelligence product and directly own its AI/ML, asset and portfolio-optimization capabilities, including MLOps and safe strategy deployment, strategy lifecycle management and backtesting; delegated data and V2G integration roadmap ownership to a new PO as the platform scope expanded.
• Built a Human-in-the-loop GenAI/RAG support workflow, increasing L1 resolution by 24%, routing accuracy to 91%, and reducing L2 workload by 30%.
• Introduced standardized data contracts and a self-service Python toolkit for traders and Data Scientists, increasing platform adoption by 15% and reducing support effort by 50%.
• Built and scaled a real-time orchestration product from 32 to 3,000+ endpoints across four markets, growing recurring revenue from €1.4k to €56.3k MRR.
• Developed product and AI capability across the organization, training 20 PMs on RAG, agents and prototyping; mentoring a junior PM and coaching an Enterprise Platform Tech Lead toward Product Management ownership.

• Owned requirements management for a connected mobile app integrating live vehicle hardware and embedded systems, from analysis through implementation (Requirements Management). App has grown to 500,000+ Google Play downloads and 5,800+ App Store ratings (4.4/5), ranking #170 in Germany's Navigation category.
• Steered digitalization and process optimization projects, coordinating between specialist departments, development teams, and external partners.
• Formulated requirements as user stories and acceptance criteria, accompanying implementation through testing and release.
• Applied genuine, practical AI Fluency to identify automation opportunities and accelerate delivery work. Applied SAFe and PRINCE2 methodologies; earned SAFe® 6 POPM and PRINCE2® Foundation certifications while in this role. Certified in Anthropic's AI Fluency framework.

Further development & digitalization of key sales and application processes in a regulated banking environment, including requirements structuring, roadmap development and AI-supported use case assessment

Responsibilities & Impact:

• Management of existing digital products to ensure stable operations (Keep the lights on) amid growing regulatory complexity
• Product vision and development of a consistent, implementable roadmap
• Strategic backlog prioritization based on business goals, dependencies and technical feasibility
• Coordination of release planning, backlog, quality assurance and go-live readiness with business departments, IT, implementation teams and management
• Identification, structuring and assessment of AI-supported use cases at the interface of business departments, IT and the regulatory environment
• Analysis, structuring and translation of complex business requirements into epics and user stories
• Facilitation of team, stakeholder & alignment formats to ensure clarity of objectives, collaboration and decision-making ability
• Transparency on capacities, dependencies, delivery status and KPI/status aspects as a basis for product & management decisions
• Compliance with transparent structures and documentation (LeanIX, application profiles, runbooks)

Contribution to results:

Stabilization and further development of key financial processes under high regulatory and technical complexity. Improved transparency, decision-making ability and implementability through structured requirements, auditable documentation and AI-supported ways of working.

• Owned the product roadmap for platform and transaction-related capabilities in a large-scale fintech ecosystem.
• Led cross-functional teams (Android, backend, QA, operations) through sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives, and releases.
• Translated complex financial and operational business logic into clear epics, user stories, and technically sound acceptance criteria.
• Worked closely with Android engineers to deliver and scale applications across multiple device types and hardware constraints.
• Managed dependencies between mobile apps, backend services, and third-party systems to ensure reliable end-to-end flows.
• Acted as primary interface to senior stakeholders, aligning product priorities with business objectives and regulatory requirements.
• Proactively resolved delivery blockers and ensured predictable release cycles in a fast-paced environment.

• Owned product delivery for document automation and workflow platform used across multiple legal jurisdictions
• Led integration across 6+ systems using API-based data exchange and structured data mapping
• Partnered with engineering on data models, document generation workflows, and system orchestration
• Evaluated LLM-assisted document automation opportunities to reduce manual drafting
• Built functional prototypes to validate workflow and product concepts
• ~2x increase in case processing throughput
• Enabled multi-state rollout of platform capabilities
• Reduced manual document generation and operational bottlenecks by 80%

• Optimization of software lifecycle processes for SAP platform apps (BTP CAP)
• Development of template MCP servers for S/4 CALM systems of Porsche AI (BTP)
• Design, development, and IT product management for two MS CoPilot custom agents supporting SAP systems (incl. MCP integration)
• Lead Center of Practice: AI-assisted ABAP development
• Initiation and coordination of the proof of concept implementation of conduct.ai
• Advising application teams on software and integration architecture, clean core principles and implementation, as well as AI use on the SAP platform

As a freelance employee / independent consultant, I supported a wide range of development projects and advised clients on digital innovation initiatives. A common role was acting as project manager / product owner at the interface between the client and the development team.

• Product Consulting — (Fractional) Product Owner, Freelance Product Management
• AI Services — AI consulting, training, vibe coding / agentic engineering, AI agents
• Tech Services — full-stack web development, design/UX, MVP delivery.

Two complementary tracks: (a) building my own AI products and open-source tools under the Neckarshore AI brand, with a focus on AI-supported multi-agent development processes and documentation automation; (b) freelance support for industrial, logistics, and financial companies in IT-related transformation projects.

Current product portfolio under the Neckarshore AI brand:

• Omnopsis Documenter — AI-powered documentation engine: generates compliance, technical, and release documentation from Git, Jira, and Confluence. 500+ automated tests, 100+ API endpoints, RBAC, monitoring stack.
• TrustScope — trust analysis for public GitHub repos: deterministic three-pillar report (Security & Supply Chain, Governance, Community) based on OpenSSF Scorecard, with constructive fix suggestions instead of a single misleading score.
• md-viewer — dependency-free Markdown viewer for macOS (Finder Quick Action) and web, split view of rendered document and raw text.
• Obsidian Vault Autopilot — AI-supported vault automation for Obsidian × Claude Code: sorts the inbox, renames notes, enriches frontmatter.
• Phonesis Voice Bank — voice archive for families, hospices, and cultural archives (guided recordings, inheritable archive, optional voice cloning); currently in the GDPR compliance phase (Art. 9, biometric data).
• Multi-Agent Development Process — 12+ specialized agents (architecture, implementation, security, refactoring, marketing) with structured handoff protocol, parallel execution, and automated quality assurance — powers the entire product development.
• Freelance consulting: Technical Product Ownership for production, logistics, and compliance/AML systems; steering international rollouts including test, cutover, and change management.

Stack: NestJS, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Redis/BullMQ, Next.js, Claude Code (Opus), Docker, GitHub Actions, Vercel

• LLM-based features for automated CO₂e data extraction from unstructured documents (70% reduction)

• Agentic AI pipeline for automated Scope 3 emissions calculations with 150.000+ validated data records

• Intelligent API workflows for real-time carbon footprint calculations in ERP and ESG systems

• ML algorithms for predicting emissions hotspots and optimizing product design

• Automated data validation pipelines with NLP for quality assurance of CO₂e datasets

• Led a 15-person cross-functional team in developing 10+ AI features

• Strategic product planning and AI roadmap with 35% shorter time-to-market

• Stakeholder management with DAX companies (40% higher satisfaction, 95% retention)

• On-time project delivery with 95% budget adherence through data-driven backlog management

• Agile methods (Scrum, Kanban) with continuous AI/ML integration (25% increase in team velocity)

• Product-market fit for AI features through A/B testing and analytics (60% higher adoption rate)

• Mentored participants through structured learning paths and hands-on projects.
• Provided feedback and guidance on AI integration and product management best practices.
• Mentor teams on AI adoption, enterprise product strategy, and practical delivery choices.

• Strategic consulting and implementation of AI-supported automation solutions for service processes (email communication, document handling, review processing, voice agents)
• Technical orchestration using n8n (workflow automation), Claude and ChatGPT (LLMs), as well as custom API integrations into existing enterprise tools
• Measurable customer results: response times reduced from hours to minutes, 8 fewer hours of invoice processing per week, 75% fewer routine calls
• Assessment of regulatory requirements (GDPR, compliance) as part of customer consulting
• Technical Product Ownership (backlog, roadmap, prioritization)
• Formal contracting vehicle for freelance assignments, including 1&1 Telecommunications
• Building & scaling enterprise AI platforms