Hi, I’m Steffen. I live in Munich, and since 2016, I build data & ML products with our clients at [at], Germany’s leading provider for data projects.
In summer 2020, I started managing a team of 8 data scientists and engineers focused on personalization and recommendation systems. In this role, I write code maybe 20% of my time. The rest splits between consulting / architecting / designing and management, in particular coaching and people development.
Before stepping onto the management path, I worked with clients in various industries, from automotive to retail and technology. The business problems and technologies began similarly varied but have converged on a few themes: Business problems focus on recommendation systems, customer analytics and segmentation, and designing experiments to measure the impact of personalization. Most development happens in Python (data engineering and ML) with occasional excursions to Scala (when working with Apache Spark).
I started in software development, data, and ML coming from a background in industrial engineering. While in unversity at TU Berlin, I enjoyed my statistics courses (so much that I took some as extracurriculars…) but for the longest time, I thought I’d end up working on supply chain optimization or production planning at an automaker or similar. So when I entered the field with little prior knowledge, I wanted to learn … everything. The first book I read after graduating was on Deep Learning, but there was also so much to learn about software development in Python, and people were talking about big data a lot. What I like most about my job is that, while the focus might have shifted, the general sentiment remains. And since I still can’t decide, I aspire to be a full-stack data scientist, covering product, data analysis, modeling, and engineering.
When I am not at work, I enjoy being outside with my girlfriend, Lena, and our dog, Toffie. We are proud owners of a retrofitted van that we like to take on road trips through Europe (our favorite destination is Soča valley in Slovenia). When we stay inside, and I don’t code enough at work, I sometimes dabble with (personal) open-source projects.