Leon Köllerwirth Hlihel

Professional experience

1. 01/2026 – present

   Principal Consultant | Enterprise Architecture & AI Transformation

   Independent · Bielefeld, Germany · Remote

   • Advisory and engineering at the intersection of enterprise architecture, software engineering and AI transformation.
   • Design and development of AI-enabled platforms with a focus on governance, traceability, data protection and technological sovereignty.
   • Advisory on enterprise architecture, architecture governance, engineering organisations and technology transformation.
   • Development of scalable agent and LLM architectures that integrate AI into business and knowledge processes.
   • Building Razbiram, a cognitive learning platform connecting learning content with AI-supported medical reasoning.
   • Hands-on product engineering from architecture through development to production-ready delivery — backed by more than 20 years of leadership and architecture responsibility.

2. 02/2022 – 12/2025

   Interim Chief Product Owner | Engineering & Architecture Transformation

   SMA Solar · Kassel, Germany

   • Interim responsibility for product steering, engineering organisation and architecture of a business-critical embedded-software platform for inverters and energy management.
   • End-to-end steering of roadmap, backlog, releases, dependencies and priorities across several interdisciplinary product and engineering teams.
   • Guided three products and around 30 features across multiple teams to market readiness.
   • Introduced and embedded SAFe and established microservices-oriented domain teams.
   • Built and evolved the company-wide ArCo architecture platform, including architecture principles, decision processes, documentation and governance.
   • Designed end-to-end Jira and Confluence processes for portfolio management, architecture and software development.
   • Reported to and advised management and stakeholders, translating technical decisions into product and business goals.
   • Steered international partners and collaborated with customers to evolve the product portfolio.

3. 04/2021 – 01/2022

   Principal Architect | Cloud & Platform Transformation

   Saturious · Göttingen, Germany

   • Advised on the strategic and technical evolution of a cloud and platform architecture in an IaaS/SaaS environment.
   • Designed a scalable overall cloud architecture, including platform design, operating model and technical target architecture.
   • Advised on Kubernetes-based and cloud-native infrastructure, conducted security reviews and designed secure AWS architectures following zero-trust and least-privilege principles.
   • Advised on service layering, multi-tenancy, integration and scalability of SaaS platforms.
   • Developed an economical licensing and cost model for cloud resources following a FinOps approach.
   • Connected architecture, information security and economic scaling in one transformation model.

4. 11/2020 – 04/2021

   Head of Engineering & Product

   YOMA Solutions · Hamburg, Germany

   • Technical and disciplinary leadership of a 12-person team across 3 departments; agile coach for Scrum and agile methods.
   • Product Owner of the core product YOMA — responsible for roadmap, backlog and stakeholder alignment.
   • Departmental reorganisation and refocusing of technical priorities to increase efficiency and delivery capability.
   • Definition of the IT strategy as well as conception and initiation of the redevelopment of the YOMA cloud platform.
   • Built and trained customer-specific AI/LLM solutions for optimising data analysis in the automotive sector (VW, used-car market) — using Claude and Python-based models for AI model training and feature engineering.

5. 11/2016 – 10/2020

   Senior IT Manager | Enterprise Architecture & Information Security

   Daimler Mobility AG · Stuttgart, Germany

   • Led the enterprise architecture function until 2019, developing target architectures, architecture governance, architecture decisions and platform standards for more than 15 markets.
   • Assessed and consolidated the application portfolio and developed transformation roadmaps and strategic technology decisions.
   • Owned cloud strategy and cloud governance across Azure and AWS environments, including negotiation and rollout of a company-wide Azure development framework.
   • From 2019, led information security and compliance as Head Information Security Officer, responsible for MaRisk, BAIT, ISMS and ISO 27001 governance.
   • Worked with internal audit, data protection and the second line of defence on risk analysis, security approvals and regulatory requirements.
   • Held architecture and steering responsibility for international migrations and cut-overs, including Zurich and Salzburg.
   • Consolidated European data platforms and provided functional leadership for data science and business intelligence activities.
   • Disciplinary leadership of ten staff, functional responsibility for up to 100 FTE and budget responsibility up to €5 million.
   • Regular reporting and strategic sparring at executive-board level.
   • Recognised for leadership performance in the Daimler Leadership Academy assessment.

6. 04/2005 – 11/2016

   Head of Engineering & IT Development

   Tönnies Fleischwerk GmbH (Tönnies Group) · Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany

   • Built and led the group-wide software development and engineering organisation of an internationally active food company.
   • Built the company-wide software and IT landscape from a greenfield start to productive use at seven production sites.
   • Developed business-critical platforms, including the fTrace batch traceability system, logistics, pricing and CRM solutions.
   • Introduced an enterprise data warehouse as well as KPI and balanced-scorecard reporting for production steering.
   • Developed group-wide technology, infrastructure and security standards as the foundation for a sustainably scalable IT organisation.
   • Built and led international nearshore and offshore engineering teams, including recruiting and organisational development across Europe and Asia.
   • Responsible for make-or-buy decisions, budget planning, disciplinary leadership of five to ten staff and functional responsibility for up to 30 staff.

7. 01/2005 – 04/2005

   Head of Development / Chief Developer

   Loopline interactive Media Agentur · Bielefeld, Germany

   • Leading software development (disciplinary responsibility: 3 staff).
   • Analysis and conception of architectures for an online shop and in-house software architectures for eCommerce.
   • Design of forward-looking infrastructures for developing online eCommerce solutions.

8. 10/2001 – 12/2004

   Software Developer / Medical Domain Consultant

   X3 Mediagroup / Werkintegra AG · Gütersloh, Germany

   • Development of one of the first medical eLearning platforms (conception, architecture and development).
   • Analysis and conception of medical processes with Dr Koch (Krefeld) of the German Dermatological Society (DDG).
   • Self-initiated development of a high-performance scanner algorithm extending a skin-cancer scanner application.

Capabilities

Education

Languages

• German — Native
• English — Fluent (C2)
• Italian — Intermediate (B1)
• Spanish — Intermediate (B1)
• Bulgarian — Intermediate (B1)