I help build teams and products that scale
by balancing team velocity with human leadership.
I’m Elias, an Engineering Manager turned product engineer with 12+ years of experience helping startups and scale-ups grow, scale, and reinvent themselves. As AI accelerates both opportunity and complexity, I help companies navigate change by shaping teams, modernizing systems, and building strong engineering cultures. In times like these, great leadership isn’t about control. It’s about clarity, trust, and focus, the foundations that help teams move faster and ship with confidence.
Services
Helping teams build, lead, and ship better
From first releases to delivery recovery, here’s how I help teams move faster and ship with confidence.
Guide
Direction and leadership when the challenge is organizational.
- Fractional EM or advisor
- Goal alignment & delivery flow
- Quality culture & practices
- Change navigation
Let's discuss your team setup and what's blocking progress.
Book a call →Build
From zero to first release. Turn vision into reality with pragmatic choices that balance speed and quality.
- Lean architecture
- Focused iterations
- Next.js/React/TS/Go
- Clear “first version shipped” scope
Let's talk about your idea and define what "first version shipped" means for you.
Book a call →Collaborate
I often co-create engagements tailored to your goals, from short advisory calls to longer fractional support. Common setups include:
- Technical or leadership audits
- Team or process health checks
- 1:1 coaching or advisory blocks
- Fractional leadership support
Let’s shape the right format together.
Book a call →Curriculum Vitae
Experience & Background
A mix of hands-on engineering, leadership, and product thinking...
Engineering Manager · Purchase, Website Journey, and Quality at SumUp
Managed 10+ engineers across Purchase, Website, and Quality squads.
- Led the marketing website re-platform to Builder.io across 35+ countries.
- Improved purchasing experience and scaled quality practices and coaching.
- Strengthened collaboration between Website and Lifecycle domains.
- Oversaw delivery of high-impact website migration projects.
Engineering Manager · Purchase, Logistics, and Quality at SumUp
Managed 10+ engineers across Purchase, Logistics, and Quality squads.
- focusing on e-commerce and logistics integrations.
- Improved purchasing experience and scaled quality practices and coaching.
- Maintained Plugger logistics app and SAP integrations.
- Led integrations with third-party logistics providers.
Engineering Manager · E-Commerce Platform at SumUp
Managed a team of 7 engineers in the E-Commerce domain.
- Responsible for SumUp’s global card reader purchase experience.
- Rolled out re-platformed solution in 35+ countries; introduced DORA metrics.
- Guided re-org and merger into a unified Purchase team.
- Implemented event-driven architecture for purchasing systems.
Senior Software Engineer · Conversion at SumUp
- Migrated monolith to a modular Go-based platform
- Improved performance and autonomy for marketing teams.
- Built reusable UI components and deployment tooling.
- Mentored engineers across frontend and backend systems.
Senior Software Engineer · Consideration at SumUp
- Built reusable UI components for global use.
- Refactored website content systems
- Increased conversion rates through faster page loads and improved UX.
- Supported marketing experiments through better content tooling.
Software Engineer at ZenMate
I was working as a full-stack engineer on ZenMates (VPN) products and websites.
Software Engineer at Coureon Logistics
Developed frontend apps, e-commerce plugins, and an MVP for a warehouse app.
Co-Founder at betweeen.com
Bootstrapped a communications product from MVP to live platform; full product and engineering ownership.
Freelancer at EK Design & IT
EK Design & IT was my own small company. I built web apps and company tooling; highlight: frontend for soundfluence.com (music collaboration platform).
Education
B.Sc. Computer Science (International Media & Computing)
HTW Berlin · 2013 – 2017
Qualified IT Specialist, System Integration
ITERGO Munich / SPE Siemens · 2007 – 2010
Core Competencies
- Leadership: 1:1s, performance management, team coaching, hiring
- Architecture: modular monoliths, microservices, event-driven
- Tech: Go, TypeScript, React, Next.js
- Infra: Kubernetes, Kafka, RabbitMQ
Let’s get in touch
Building a new product, scaling a team, or recovering delivery? I’m happy to connect.