Area Product Owner / Delivery Manager

Lead and develop a cross-functional international organization of 15+ engineers across internal, supplier, and joint-venture teams. Provide leadership, coaching, career mentoring, and escalation support, while mentoring technical leads transitioning into Product Owner and Project Manager roles.

Own integration-stability release activities for an ADAS platform, serve on the Change Control Board, and coordinate with six additional teams on release quality and safety-critical changes. Manage a €1–5 million annual operating budget and supplier contracts, negotiate delivery scope and costs with global vendors, and contributed to a 1,000+ contributor Platform-as-a-Product transformation and agentic-AI quality-control initiative.

Built the department's legacy-software operating model from the ground up, owning its concept, execution, and continuous improvement. Established and led an international supplier delivery team to expand delivery capacity and reduce dependency on internal resources.

Held ownership of the platform's legacy-delivery budget and managed supplier performance through KPI frameworks and monthly business reviews. Led delivery governance for legacy software work in an automotive engineering environment.

Directed a portfolio of 36 concurrent legacy software programs across multi-site international development teams. Led the continuation and completion of a cross-border project transfer while retaining budget responsibility.

Coached engineers and stakeholders on Agile delivery, supported the department's agile transformation, and led critical project-recovery task forces. Acted as the primary customer interface and escalation owner, conducting root-cause analysis for software and hardware returns using 5-Why, 8-D, and Ishikawa methods.

Founded and led an agile software development team of more than 10 engineers, establishing delivery practices and capabilities from zero. Restructured the handling of legacy projects and field-return and hardware-related software analysis.

Guided the client through a transition from waterfall to agile delivery. Directed the international transfer of 36 legacy projects from a high-cost nearshore center to an offshore delivery center, reducing legacy project costs by 20% while retaining cross-border budget responsibility.

Led automotive OEM teams through Scrum adoption, providing Scrum Master and Software Project Lead services. Embedded agile working practices and supported teams in applying Scrum principles.

Led a pilot initiative that restructured a waterfall delivery team into a fully agile operating model. Supported project delivery in automotive software environments across Wolfsburg and Nuremberg.

Directly led and managed approximately 120 employees, with accountability for up to 500 staff during peak operations across multiple departments. Supervised sales-floor, point-of-sale, and customer-service teams.

Developed and executed sales-floor strategies that improved area utilization and customer throughput. Managed operational performance and workforce coordination in a high-volume retail environment.

Thesis: Adsorption and Switching Behaviour of Photochromic Spiropyran Derivatives on Surfaces. Focused on surface dynamics, synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy, ultra-high vacuum technology, and research within the DFG Collaborative Research Center (SFB).