Matthias Patzak

Matthias joined AWS in May 2020 as a Principal Advisor with the German solution architecture organization and transitioned to the Enterprise Strategist team in January 2023. In both roles, he has helped customers to build digital organizations that make the most out of their people, processes & technologies using cloud technology as a driver. Matthias covers how customers can setup loosely coupled, but highly aligned organizations that innovate at scale.   

Early in his career as a software developer at KPMG Consulting Matthias learned that traditionally managed projects often fail, despite intensive planning and specification by experienced people. In 2004, inspired by Kent Beck's book “Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change”, he set up his first agile organization at PHARMATECHNIK, a German SaaS provider for pharmacies. There he learned how to increase the probability of success with iterative and incremental approaches that anticipate change rather than avoid it.

In 2008 Matthias joined AutoScout24, the largest pan-European online car market, where he introduced Scrum, continuous integration, unit testing and test-driven development. Matthias improved the communication and collaboration between the software development and IT operations department, enabling the launch of new software features a dozen times a day from a monthly release schedule. Matthias rearchitected the whole technology stack to a cloud-native, event-driven and micro service-based architecture on AWS. Taking advantage of the cloud, he evolved his organization into you-build-it-your-run-it teams working loosely coupled on top of a developer experience platform.  By not changing the fundamental business KPIs, Matthias convinced other parts of the organization to transform as well and introduced Lean Startup thinking in the wider organisation.

In 2019 Matthias joined Home Shopping Europe (HSE) as Managing Director and CDO. There he set up a new digital unit that rearchitected the companies e-commerce platform in just 11 months to a cloud-native, event-driven and micro service-based architecture on AWS. Due to a KPI- and business benefit-driven approach, the new platform delivered double-digit performance regarding conversion rate and floor sales with only 60% of the features.

Matthias enjoys sharing his experience with implementing lean and agile ways with customers and how to leverage cloud-native technologies to accelerate and create value for customers. Through his vast experience as a technology leader, Matthias is able to share lessons learned and the importance of centering transformation around people.