Daniel Kubitza

Leading a team of 9 engineers, 1 QA specialist and 4 apprentices building the next generation of mailbox.org, Europe's digitally sovereign workplace.

Moved the team from parallel backlogs to focused, cross-functional delivery: the mailbox.org brand relaunch shipped hand in hand with a switch of the entire technical backend, without work going stale between teams. Our first fully cross-functional team then took EVAC from a real discovery phase through fixed-team sprints, with reviews and retros, to launch. A model we are now repeating for the next products. The difference shows: fewer context switches, fewer cross-team blockers, shorter lead times.

As part of the mailbox.org leadership team, driving OKR adoption with methodical workshops that turned reliability and growth ambitions into few, sharp objectives with first measurable results.

Now driving AI adoption in engineering: building on GitHub Copilot and introducing Junie to lift delivery throughput, then evolving the practices around it, from code review to refinement. As engineering speeds up, the constraint shifts upstream, which only sharpens the point that product and technology have to scale together.

Led a team of 11 backend engineers working on the next evolution of HiDrive, together with product and frontend teams.

Early OKR adopter at STRATO: my team was among the first to pilot the framework, helping shape the company-wide introduction.

A product area created from my own restructuring proposal: two focused B2B units instead of three. Led 6 teams and 40+ employees together with the Head of Product.

We re-cut the product area around domains: Merchant Business owning the entire merchant journey, from onboarding via sales and Salesforce or our self-service tools to invoicing the shops, while the new Inventory unit focused on the massive data import that keeps prices on idealo current by the minute.

In the leadership circle under CTO and CPO, set unit OKRs and co-authored idealo's guiding principles, with #domain-driven and #end-to-end-responsibility as my focus.

When the pandemic hit, we switched fast: physical whiteboards turned digital, processes adapted, and we worked deliberately to keep the human connection alive in the new hybrid culture.

Together with the Head of Product, established English as working language and invested in people's language skills, opening hiring to a far larger talent pool. idealo product & technology later made English official.

Took over a unit of 3 teams built around three silos: shop administration, invoicing, click counting. Systems that depend on each other, teams working side by side rather than together.

Established a real leadership routine of team leads and POs together with product, and turned tool-based silos into product teams. A new fourth team, grown from shop administration members plus new experts, replaced home-grown CRM functions with Salesforce, bringing the unit to 4 teams and 25+ employees.

When the C-level opened a call to rethink the B2B structure, my proposal, sharpened in conversations beyond my own area and backed by two of my team leads, was adopted: two focused B2B units instead of three, the blueprint for Merchant Business.

Built and hired the entire cross-functional engineering team (6+) from scratch: backend, frontend, QA, DevOps, later joined by additional product owners. Engineering before that: a single freelancer.

The team automated the heart of the business, a legal service for drivers contesting traffic fines: boxes of paper mail from authorities, different in every German state and previously entered by hand, turned into automated capture straight into the CRM. Massively faster, far less error-prone.

A deliberate turning point: after years of agency projects, I wanted to build products with a future instead of campaigns with an end date.

Led a core development team of 6+ engineers, repeatedly starting new ventures as Project CTO: 100 days from kickoff to soft launch, every time. Then continuous build-out around what the market actually needed, until the venture's own team took over development.

In between, my team ran Rocket's own web presence and quietly prepared it for the IPO.

Classified listing app for Android & iOS, launched in Pakistan. Team of 10 (backend, frontend, mobile, QA, devops).

Took a job platform built for a single market (Myanmar), internationalized it, and rolled it out across multiple Asian and African countries. Team of 11 cross-functional engineers.

Senior PHP and iOS developer across multiple high-profile projects, from large community platforms to ever shorter-lived campaign work: the final push toward building products instead. BMW Motorrad Community, BMW Motorsport, Nivea, Osram, Senseo, Tele 5, Austrian Airlines, Pixum, SAP.

Joined as a PHP developer, raised my hand the moment iOS projects came in, and shipped several apps in a stack that was completely new to me. Austrian Airlines, BMW Motorsport, BMW Motorrad Community, SAP, Pixum.

Grew from junior developer to teamlead of 4 backend engineers over 9 years, the foundation of everything that followed: the lead role came when loose collaboration between product and developers needed real structure. Co-developed the Exozet CMS and built the initial version of many sites running on it. Established project standards and a company-wide wiki that actually stuck: "it's probably in the wiki" became a sentence that was true. BVG, Deutsche Bundesbank, Deutschlandradio, NDR, Red Bull, Universal Music.