Description

I help startups and scale-ups turn engineering complexity into a competitive advantage.

I work with founders and leadership teams who need senior technical leadership without a full-time hire, whether that's bringing structure to a growing engineering organisation, defining a platform strategy, reducing technical debt, or preparing the tech team for the next stage of growth.

I've led engineering organisations of 150+ people across Platform, Data, AI/ML, and Integration, building developer platforms from scratch, cutting critical incidents from 20 per week to 2 per month, and delivering ML-driven product improvements that grew revenue by 35% in six months. Before that, I rescued a high-stakes automotive partnership at HERE Technologies through six months of structured recovery work with Audi.

What I bring is not just technical depth. It is the ability to walk into ambiguity, diagnose what is actually broken, and build the structures that make engineering predictable and scalable.

I typically work on: engineering strategy and roadmaps, architecture reviews, team structure and hiring, AI/ML adoption, and interim leadership during transitions.

If you are navigating a period of technical growth or transition, I would be happy to talk.

Industry field of expertise

Languages

English
Native or bilingual
Greek
Native or bilingual
German
Conversational

Workplace preferences

Can work on-site

Berlin (up to 50km)

sennder Technologies
VP of Engineering, Platform & Data
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN
July 2024 - Today (1 year and 11 months)
Berlin, Germany
Leading 150+ engineers across platform, data, and integrations in a complex API-driven logistics ecosystem.
• • Introduced AI into production operations through two tracks: an automated bidding system using OCR, document parsing, and ML; and Team Athena, a governed agentic layer enabling non-engineers to ship features safely within defined guardrails. Alongside this, improved platform reliability 40 to 50% through SLO adoption and disciplined incident management, reducing P1 incidents from 20 per week to 2 per month.
• • Increased delivery predictability by around 30% by clarifying decision rights, simplifying operating models, and connecting engineering OKRs to business outcomes.
• • Drove the monolith exit through dependency surface mapping, RFC-based architectural governance, and a sequenced migration roadmap, keeping the platform running throughout and reducing AWS costs by 20k per month through targeted architectural changes and cloud-native optimization.
• • Operate as de-facto CTO across the engineering organization, partnering with CPO, CCO, and CFO to shape priorities, translate business strategy into engineering direction, and ensure technology investments materialize as measurable business outcomes.
• • Build Engineering Managers into genuine people leaders through structured coaching, succession planning, and career framework design. Zero attrition across the organization.
Team Building Site Reliability Engineering Platform Engineering Engineering Leadership Technical SStrategy
Delivery Hero
Senior Director of Engineering, Platform
E-COMMERCE
February 2022 - June 2024 (2 years and 4 months)
Berlin, Germany
Led a 240-person global engineering organization across backend, frontend, platform, and operations, supporting tens of millions of users across 70+ markets on a transaction-critical platform processing over 1 M API calls per minute.
• • Created the Quality Maturity Index: an org-wide engineering standards framework adopted by 50% of the 5,000- person engineering organization, making delivery quality, reliability, and technical debt trade-offs explicit and measurable.
• • Improved delivery velocity 25 to 30% through platform consolidation, shared architectural standards, and RFC based decision governance.
• • Drove direct customer and commercial impact: improved page-load performance 50% in 3 months, and partnered with ML teams on restaurant discovery personalization, contributing to 35% organic growth and 60% retention increase within 6 months.
• • Global Incident Commander: led cross-functional response during high-impact platform events, improving MTTR and strengthening post-incident learning culture. Zero attrition across 240-person organization.
Engineering Leadership Platform Engineering Site Reliability Engineering Technical Strategy
HERE Technologies
Senior Director of Engineering, Navigation Solutions / Director, Map Rendering & PlatformOct
TECH
January 2016 - January 2022 (6 years)
Berlin, Germany
Led global engineering teams across consumer navigation, map rendering, and geospatial platforms for automotive OEMs in safety-critical environments.
• • Led engineering for HERE WeGo, a consumer navigation product used by millions globally, working in close partnership with Product across multi-modal journey planning and end-to-end user experience.
• • Drove a 7x cold-start performance improvement, reducing in-vehicle navigation startup from under 7 seconds to under 1 second through re-architecture of the rendering engine.
• • Led the rendering engineering department across two parallel tracks: an open-source engine for web and the HERE rendering layer embedded in the Auto SDK, serving OEM integrations for BMW, Audi, and Daimler.
• • Coached engineering managers and directors to operate with autonomy and accountability across globally distributed teams in Berlin, India, and the US.
Performance Engineering Technical project management Technical Strategy System engineering