This is the personal corner on the internet of Christian Schuhmann–a digital product engineer, designer, and entrepreneur.

Biography

I have devoted most of my life to thinking about and building internet businesses and their underlying functions. At an early age, I found my passion for web design and technology and quickly became enamored with this medium. Despite facing numerous challenges and obstacles in countless projects in nearly two decades, my fascination with this medium has only deepened, and I remain as passionate as ever about it.

Curriculum Vitae

I have a unique blend of creativity, engineering, and analytical skills, which has allowed me to build thriving businesses and products. You will find an overview of my most notable experiences in this list.

Senior Product Manager
DigitalService

DigitalService develops digital solutions for and with the German Federal administration.

Tenure
July 2023 - now
Responsibilities
Product Management
Location
Berlin, Germany

The DigitalService is the central digitalization unit of the Federal Government of Germany, established in 2020. Our core mission is to develop digital applications prioritizing citizen needs.

After over six years at my startup, smartvokat, I transitioned to the DigitalService in July 2023 as a senior product manager. My current focus is developing the new legal information system ("Rechtsinformationssystem (RIS)") for the Federal Government. This system is a pivotal component of the comprehensive initiative to digitize the creation, dissemination, and storage of laws and related legal information at the federal level. My team and I are dedicated to crafting user-friendly public-facing websites for citizens, with a planned go-live target set for the end of 2024.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Skills
Product Management, Project Management, Agile, Design Thinking, User Experience Research
Tools
Confluence, Figma, GitHub, Jira, Miro, Sentry

Chief Product Officer, Co-Founder
smartvokat

smartvokat empowers customers to create effective and efficient workflows from their legal and compliance processes. I had many roles; however, my key responsibility was to lead product management, design, and engineering for our workflow platform.

Tenure
July 2016 - Nov 2022
Responsibilities
Product Management
Portfolio Management
Engineering (Leadership)
Product Design
Team Leadership
Location
Remote
Düsseldorf, Germany

In today’s world, legal departments face an ever-increasing flow of requirements and regulations. This pressure presents an opportunity for digital transformation in processes and workflows. Although this holds true for many industries, the legal sector’s involved risk and traditional technological resistance make it a unique case. smartvokat is a specialized consulting and product company that provides comprehensive solutions for legal professionals. In essence, smartvokat simplifies this complexity through an easy-to-use user interface, enabling lawyers and non-lawyers alike to work more efficiently.

I co-founded smartvokat with four others in 2016 and contributed to all aspects of the company over the years. My primary focus was on product leadership for our Workflows platform, which played a significant role in the company’s growth trajectory. I designed and developed the initial prototypes, which paved the way for the full-fledged product line, working alongside a talented team of individuals. Today, the platform serves thousands of users, and the company generates multi-million euros in revenue annually.

After more than six years with smartvokat, I decided to transition to an advisory role at the end of 2022 and shift my focus to new endeavors.

Skills
Product Management, Software Engineering, Software Architecture, Project Management, Agile, Design Thinking, User Interface Design, User Experience Design, Team Leadership, Executive Leadership
Tools
Bitbucket, Confluence, Figma, GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Miro, Notion, Sentry, ZenHub
Technologies
Elixir, Erlang, Node.js (TypeScript, JavaScript), PostgreSQL, Docker, Heroku, AWS, React, GraphQL, Rest, Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm

Senior Product Engineer, Co-Founder
spacepilots

At spacepilots, we crafted user-focused digital journeys. We guided SMEs through the discovery, design, development, and deployment of mobile and web-based applications.

Tenure
Feb 2015 - July 2017
Responsibilities
Software Engineering
User Experience Design
Service Design
Design Thinking
Location
Remote
Düsseldorf, Germany

During our work on tift, we discovered a high demand for our skills in designing and developing digital products, leading us to collaborate with several other startups. Following the conclusion of tift, we established the digital product studio “spacepilots,” where we specialized in aiding startups and SMEs with researching, designing, developing, and validating their digital business models.

In my role at spacepilots, I utilized a combination of software engineering, user experience design, and service design. Our focus was primarily on assisting startups with refining their ideas and developing minimum viable prototypes for their specific problem domains. However, we also engaged with larger companies who wished to experiment with new product ideas.

After several years of addressing the issues of various companies, we had the opportunity to meet two lawyers who acquainted us with the legal industry’s challenges in digital transformation. What followed was a throughout research into the market and the founding of smartvokat.

Skills
Software Engineering, Software Architecture, Project Management, Agile, Design Thinking, User Interface Design, User Experience Design, Executive Leadership
Tools
GitHub, GitLab, Monday, Notion, Sketch
Technologies
Node.js (TypeScript, JavaScript), PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Docker, Heroku, AWS, React, React Native, Angular, Swift, WordPress, PHP, GraphQL, Rest

Software Engineer, Co-Founder
tift

Our vision was to transform employee scheduling in the hospitality industry with an AI constraint solver. My primary focus was product design and development.

Tenure
June 2014 - Aug 2016
Responsibilities
Software Engineering
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Location
Remote
Aachen & Düsseldorf, Germany

Our SaaS was an innovative employee rostering platform to improve fairness and compliance. Managers of restaurants or hotels had a single place to manage their employees’ shift plans and availability. Employees could easily add their preferences and manage their shifts. One of the platform’s key features was a sophisticated constraint resolver algorithm that adhered to German Labour Law. The solver could generate compliant schedules with 50+ shifts and employees within a few minutes, allowing managers to react quickly to changes.

I co-founded the company with three other founders right after university, and we secured initial funding and gained recognition for our business model with multiple awards. We also attracted the attention of potential investors, who were impressed with the product’s capabilities and the team’s expertise. Still, unfortunately, we weren’t able to achieve product-market fit quickly enough and had to abandon the project after two years. This learning experience profoundly affected my approach to building digital business in the ventures that followed tift.

In my role, I was responsible for software engineering, user interface design, and user experience design. I was integral in designing and developing the user interface, backend, and constraint resolver.

Skills
Software Engineering, User Interface Design, User Experience Design
Tools
BitBucket, Jira, Confluence, Sketch, Google Sheets, Google Analytics
Technologies
Node.js (TypeScript, JavaScript), Java, PostgreSQL, AWS, React, Rest

Freelance Software Engineer & User Experience Designer
madebyherzblut

As a freelancer, I was fortunate to work with small and large companies on many exciting projects, from interactive brain visualizations to distributed research tools for chemical engineers.

Tenure
Jan 2012 - June 2014
Responsibilities
Software Engineering
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Location
Remote

As a freelancer, I had the opportunity to harness my passion for visual design and user experience. By combining my software engineering and user experience design skills, I delivered high-quality work and cultivated a strong work ethic. As a result, my clients were so satisfied with my work that they became a great source of word-of-mouth advertising, which opened the door to many exciting projects and collaborations.

Throughout my career as a freelancer, I have had the opportunity to work on a diverse range of projects. These included developing prototypes for 3D interactive learning experiences of the human brain, e-commerce projects for leading retailers, building research and data analytics tools for chemical engineering, credit approval workflows for banks, and even designing award-nominated websites. My ability to adapt to different industries and requirements has allowed me to deliver excellent results consistently and laid the foundation for my career.

Skills
Software Engineering, User Interface Design, User Experience Design
Tools
BitBucket, GitHub, Jira, Confluence, Sketch
Technologies
HTML/CSS, PHP, Node.js, PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, AWS, React, Angular, Rest, ActionScript, WordPress, Drupal

Bachelor of Science in Communication and Multimedia Design
FH Aachen

The program combined business, technology, and communication. It offered in-depth learning in digital design, user experience research, storytelling, entrepreneurship, and change management.

Timeline
2011 - 2014
Responsibilities
Software Engineering
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Location
Aachen, Germany
Maastricht, Netherlands
Genk, Belgium

Following my time at bauer & bauer, I was eager to expand my skills beyond digital business development and delve into the design and management aspects of the field. With this goal in mind, I applied for the Communication and Multimedia Design bachelor’s program at Aachen University of Applied Sciences in collaboration with KHLim Media Arts & Design Faculty in Genk, Belgium, and Hogeschool Zuyd in Maastricht, Netherlands. This program stood out in the German university landscape due to its unique curriculum, combining digital technology, design, communication, and management content. The overarching goal was to create an integrative approach combining structured technical skills and creative design abilities.

Over the three years that I studied there, I gained expertise in a wide range of subjects, including design thinking, user experience research, visual design, marketing and sales, requirements engineering, service design, prototyping, innovation and change management, entrepreneurship, communication theory, narrative, and storytelling. This diverse curriculum provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the various components involved in developing successful digital businesses.

Today, this program is known as “Media and Communications for Digital Business.”

Software Engineer
bauer & bauer medienbüro

Here I learned the ropes of software engineering from utterly talented people—the work ranged from turning renaissance art into an interactive digital installation to building intranets for insurance companies.

Tenure
Jan 2012 - June 2014
Responsibilities
Software Engineering
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Location
Remote

I began my career at bauer & bauer, where I received professional training as a software engineer for three years. During this time, I primarily worked on web projects for small and medium-sized enterprises. bauer & bauer was renowned for its high-quality work and custom-built content management system, which offered excellent in-page editing capabilities–an innovation in 2006 that still holds up to this day. As the CMS continued to evolve, we expanded its capabilities to include intranet functionality, making it a platform for more ambitious web projects.

As my time at bauer & bauer progressed, the agency began taking on more museum projects, which allowed me to work on interactive installations. One project, in particular, received widespread praise for its display of high-resolution scans of the works of the Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer in his birthplace. This experience opened up new avenues of visual and user experience design, which I would go on to explore further in my career.

I am forever grateful to the team at bauer & bauer for not only teaching me the intricacies of software engineering but also for introducing me to the world of visual and user experience design. Their mentorship and guidance paved the way for my future success in the field.

Skills
Software Engineering
Tools
ActiveCollab, Photoshop, Subversion, CVS, GitHub
Technologies
HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL

Currently Reading

What happens if artificial intelligence does not do what we want or expect? How do we deal with emerging ethical and potentially existential risks? This book seems to be a good overview of the research field of “responsible AI” with a strong technical focus.

Recommended Reading

This book takes place today, is based on real stories, and revolves around blockchain technology. It tells the story of thrilling pursuits between law enforcement and criminals who operate with impunity, confident that they will never be caught.