Work Experience

Work in industry

From global enterprises like Siemens and Schneider Electric to the fast-paced world of a medium-sized startup like ASMIQ, and then back to Siemens again — my career has been a journey across diverse tech ecosystems. Along the way, I’ve built up a unique blend of deep technical know-how, product strategy chops, and cross-functional leadership skills. These roles didn’t just shape the professional I am today — they taught me how to speak both “engineer” and “executive,” drive innovation, and keep my sense of humor intact during deadline week. If you're curious about what I’ve been up to in the serious grown-up world of industry, check out my CV here.

PhD

I earned my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Zurich, in the Requirements Engineering Research Group (RERG), under the brilliant guidance of Prof. Martin Glinz (truly the best — and not just because he’s probably reading this). I kicked off my PhD journey in April 2015, fueled by curiosity (and coffee ☕). I successfully defended my dissertation on March 4, 2019, a date forever etched in my memory — along with the nervous sweats that came with it. Here you can read more about my PhD work and here you can check out the full list of publications.

Publications

During my PhD, I published four conference papers, one workshop paper, and one journal article. My research was featured at top international venues, including the Requirements Engineering Conference (RE) and the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE).

After completing my PhD, I continued publishing and contributed one journal paper, two additional conference papers, and an article for IEEE Software magazine. In this article I share how I found my way into requirements engineering, the challenge of siloed processes, and a collaborative approach with UX designers that's helped me define clearer, more user-friendly requirements.

You can find the full list of my publications here.

Independent Work & Founding

Stepping away from a corporate PM role turned out to be one of the most productive periods of my career. I built things from scratch — technically, creatively, and commercially.

I architected and delivered a RAG-based conversational AI system for International School Community — a platform with 40,000+ users and 55,000+ comments — handling everything from embeddings and semantic retrieval to LLM response generation at scale. I also built the AI chat feature on this very website, adapting the same architecture for a smaller dataset.

At the same time, I founded StrongME — a movement and wellness concept — and took it from idea to live business: brand, website, class design, customer acquisition, and delivery. All of it.

Turns out "taking time off" looks a lot like shipping two AI products and founding a company.