CV

Award winning Product Designer & Developer with more than 18 years of experience in designing & building web experiences and growing digital products.
Founded several startups and tech/design communities. Wide-ranging design and tech background. I love experimenting with new technologies, building new products, indie games and finding the best burger recipe out there.

Experience

Franz

Founder (Vienna, Austria) – 2016 – present

Franz is a messaging app that combines chat & messaging services like Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger and many more into one application.

  • Concept, design & development of frontend, backend and management services.
  • Frontend: electron, React, MobX.
  • Backend: Node.js, Express, RethinkDB.

WunderPreview

Co-Founder (Vienna, Austria) – 2019 – 2021

With WunderPreview you can get a live preview environment for your web or backend projects for every new feature – fully automated. Share previews with co-workers, managers or customers. WunderPreview simplifies feedback loops so you can deliver better software faster.

  • Concept, design & development of frontend, backend and management services.
  • Frontend: React, Next.JS.
  • Backend: Node.js, NestJS, Postgres, AWS ECS.

ADLK

Owner/Self employed (Vienna, Austria) – 2013 – present

  • Project based product design & development for innovation agencies, VC’s and software companies in general.
  • Leading a team of up to 7 freelancers for software/hardware project (Bluetooth enabled hardware lock).
  • Development of WordPress plugins/solutions like:
    • Sofort.com payment plugin for Gravity Forms.
    • Airport parking space reservation with Sofort.com and Stripe integration.
    • WP REST API based API for Uber Eats competitor based on WooCommerce data.

Automattic

Electron Maestro/External consultant (remote) – February 2018 – February 2019

  • Worked on Automattic/wp-desktop, Automattic/wp-calypso, Automattic/simplenote-electron.
  • Key responsibility is to automate & simplify the release processes of the electron apps by modernizing the infrastructure and moving builds to CI services.
  • General improvements, bugfixing and refactoring of legacy code.

Input Output (IOHK)

External consultant (remote) – 2017 – 2018

  • Development of electron based crypto wallet for Cardano (ADA).
  • Research and concept for plugin infrastructure to enable multi currency wallets.

Swell / Swelly

Designer & Product Designer (Los Angeles, USA / Vienna, Austria) – 2015 – 2016

  • Rebranding and redesign from “dvel” to “swell” to fit audience.
  • Concept & UI Design for iOS and Android.

Bloodirony Games

Co-Founder & Creative Lead (Vienna, Austria) – 2015 – 2016

  • Limited 1 year experiment to build a game studio and a game within 6 months + 6 months post launch.
  • Concept & design for (mobile) game “Shooting Stars!” – Released for iOS, Android, Steam and other platforms.
  • Prototyping and FX Design in Unity.
  • Marketing, PR and community management.
  • Story of fake pirate version went viral with several million media impressions.

Grete

Founder (Vienna, Austria) – 2013 – 2015

Grete is a personal food planning & shopping assistant for iOS that creates weekly meal plans and shopping lists.

  • Design, prototyping and validation of concept.
  • App development with Appcelerator Titanium (JavaScript/Backbone.js).
  • Backend service development with CodeIgniter and Postgres.

nexxar

Lead Designer (Vienna, Austria) – 2010 – 2013

  • Concept & Design for Annual Reports for companies like Volkswagen, Shell, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and other Fortune Global 500 companies.
  • Established and coordinated design team of 3 graphic designers.

screenteam

Digital Designer & Web Developer – apprenticeship (Linz, Austria) – 2006 – 2010

  • Design and development of bespoke websites (PHP, HTML, CSS).
  • Co-development of company CMS (PHP).

Notable projects

PowerFeed (in development)

2022

PowerFeed is a mobile app (React Native) for iOS and Android that creates metrics-overlays for videos with data from .gpx and .fit files to highlight the actual effort of an athlete.

Misty

2018

  • Misty is a concurrent script runner written in Node.js/TypeScript that can watch directories and restart processes on file changes.
  • Misty is especially useful for developing electron applications or backend services that need to be restarted to reflect changes.
  • Used by simplenote-electron and soon by wp-desktop.

Suzy

2018

  • Proof of concept for a mouse-less/keyboard controlled UI for Github notifications as an macOS menubar app. Created with electron, TypeScript, React, Node.js and Express.

Indiegame.at

2015

Community platform for the Austrian Game Development Community.

  • WordPress based website to let game developers and studios showcase their games.
  • Slack based community.

Horst

2012

  • Built a collaborative shopping list for iOS with PhoneGap, Backbone.js, Less and CodeIgniter on the backend side.

Additional information

  • Expert in JavaScript, Electron, Node.js, HTML, CSS/SASS, React, UI/UX Design.
  • Proficiency in PHP, MySQL, Postgres, RethinkDB, Git, Linux, CI Services (CircleCI, Travis, AppVeyor).
  • Broad experience with AWS.
  • In 2016, Franz won the Product Hunt Golden Kitty Award for Best Desktop App of the Year.
  • Co-founded the Vienna Gamedev Meetup in 2015 – Austria’s largest gamedev meetup with an average of 80+ attendees.
  • Fluent in German (native language) and English.