Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO) - TIPICO GROUP - St. Juliens, Malta (HQ) / Munich, Germany
(2013-01)
An active member of the Group Executive Team of Germany's leading, multi-channel iGaming/Sportsbetting company. Founded in 2004, based in Malta with branches in Germany, Austria, Croatia, US, Gibraltar and Colombia, more than 1300 retail shops across Europe and a fast-growing web and mobile business in a highly regulated market.
- Span of Control: 350+, growing from zero across locations around the globe
- Sole responsibility for the group's IT strategy, budget, vision, and highly scalable technical platform (> 15B transactions on a single League Saturday, growth rate up to 30% p.a.)
- Led the product and technical design a.o. for Tipico's mobile product (85% share), live and pre-game auto-trader and micro-campaigning marketing tool.
- Established a completely new setup & strategy for in-house software development, agile business analysis, technical operation, product & project management and system operations which boosted the Ebitda growth of 7x since joined in 2013
- Initiated, designed and launched Tipico's Datawarehouse and Datalake which is now the backbone of Tipico's event-driven architecture and acquisition and retention marketing tools.
- Developed and deployed a new sportsbook and iGaming platform from the ground up for the US market (NJ, OH, CO, and IA) in just 9 months (MCP). Successfully sold to largest US player
- Led and designed the cloud migration of a EUR 4B business from a physical DC to AWS. Preparation to turn bare metal into IaaS took 7-8 months and complete migration was executed in just 4 working days. Running fully fledged IaaS/Paas setup incl. GenAI/LLM capabilities
- Led a successful LBO process in 2017 from technical and product side. (acquisition by CVC in 2017)
SVP core engineering - THOMASCOOK GROUP - London, UK
(2010-01 - 2012-12)
THOMASCOOK Online
- Span of control: 35 (incl. 5 pan-European Scrum Teams, senior J2EE engineers, solutions architects, analysts and project managers), Budget responsibility: EUR 10.5M
- Successfully architected and rolled out core, group-wide SOA and packaging platform within 6 months, capable of a throughput > 3.000 msg/sec and > 50 API services of multiple brands (eg. Traveltainment, Peakwork PlayerHub, TC Nurvis & ATOS, Payment Gateways, Hotels4U)
- Successfully envisioned and rolled out pan-EU package cache product and next-gen travel search (web & retail, > 1.5B combinations of >12 Thomascook & Neckermann brands) based on cutting-edge open-source technology (Solr/Lucene)
- Enhanced Agile Project Management Methodology and introduced test driven development to distributed code factories.
- Maintained and optimized supplier relationships with external companies like Oracle, Accenture, Epam and RedHat et al., achieved cost savings > 40%
- Developed and implemented the organizational structure of TC Online's core engineering team and recruited and engaged 30+ employees (onshore, offshore, contractors)
Managing Director - COMVEL GROUP - Munich, Germany
(2008-07 - 2010-01)
COMVEL Technologies GmbH - Start-Up of technology powerhouse as part of COMVEL Group
- Successfully designed and developed state-of the art dynamic packaging engine (highly scalable and performant infrastructure/services based on PROGRESS SONIC ESB/MQ)
- Envisioned and lead the initiation of start-up incl. business plan, finance plan, team structure, unit's strategy and IT architecture – succeeded in a fully fledged (DP) booking engine in only 8 months development time and below estimated budget
- Operational responsibility for all COMVEL Group IT infrastructure and related activities (web front end, tour operating system, packaging environment, internal systems) – Group's revenue: EUR 120M, employees: 105
- Set-up of enhanced project planning and management capabilities for whole COMVEL Group
Group Director Product Management - LASTMINUTE.COM HQ - United Kingdom
(2007-01 - 2008-07)
Travelocity Europe - TTV: > GBP 450M per annum
- Developed and executed first group-wide strategic plan for Dynamic Packaging (DP) & pre-packaged Holidays (EMEA, APAC) and lastminute.com's B2B brand "medhotels.com" (EMEA)
- Built business cases, analyzed competitive landscape, markets and consumer needs
- Key achievement: closer integration and optimization of DP and Holiday businesses and technologies leading to a conversion rate increase of > 20%
- Initiation of group-wide real-time controlling and monitoring capability for DP/Holidays and B2B business performance
- Spear-headed the global convergence process for DP and pre-packaged Holidays
- Led and executed the European verticalization/restructuring process of the Product Management unit
- Led cross functional (marketing, IT, revenue mgmt.) task force for Travelocity CEO (Michelle Peluso)
Managing Director - MEDHOTELS.COM GMBH - Munich, Germany
(2004-12 - 2006-12)
Acquired by lastminute.com in 12/2003 - Wholesaler of hotels in sun and beach destinations - TTV: > € 8M per annum
- Start-up of business in Germany from scratch (EUR 2M to EUR 8.5M revenue in 2 yrs.)
- Program leader for world-wide establishments of B2B and B2C relationships – immediate effect: group turnover increase by 3x (yoy)
- Successfully integrated medhotels.com's hotel and transfer products into lastminute.com's pre packaged booking engine (lead to a revenue increase of > 30%)
- Established medhotels.com as a tour operator of its own B2B brand "Holiday & More" with more than 2000 registered travel agencies
Head of IT and Production - LASTMINUTE.COM GMBH - Munich, Germany
(2001-11 - 2004-11)
Budget: EUR 1.5M per annum
- Interim Country Manager of lastminute.com GmbH for 5 months due to CM's sickness
- Management of IT and production group in German Branch in Europe's most important travel market: focus on software development, internal support and creative design team
- Defined and successfully enhanced business processes (cost reduction of EUR 200k p.a.)
- Full responsibility of Germany's EUR 1.5M IT budget
- Managed projects with internal IT team and external partners
- Integrated lastminute.com's hotel products in pre- and dynamic packaging booking engine
Technical Project Manager - LASTMINUTE.COM PLC - London, UK
(2000-03 - 2001-10)
IPO in March 2010
