Vienna, AT
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ABOUT
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// dossier

Tobias
Kilga

Now: Head of Product, Data & AI // SQUER // ViennaI build technology organizations and ship AI in industries where getting it wrong has real consequences. 15 years in MedTech. Three companies. One consistent focus.
English
German
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// the story
I joined MED-EL in 2010 as an IT helpdesk specialist. The company makes cochlear implants, devices that restore hearing, and I was immediately struck by how much the technology mattered to people. When your systems sit behind something that important, “works on my machine” doesn’t cut it. I stayed 15 years and five roles, until I was leading the entire IT organization across 30+ sites worldwide. Built the team from the ground up, developed the company’s first AI strategy, shipped internal AI tools, and led the organization through ISO 27001 certification.

Around 2023, I started building on the side, in parallel with the day job. I co-founded Veriyou, a real-time deepfake detection startup, and took the CTPO role at LIT Health, where we built an AI-powered diabetes management app. That one was personal: I’ve been diabetic since 1999, and I’ve watched the technology get more impressive every year while staying frustrating to actually live with. That’s where my bar comes from: technology that actually works, for the person depending on it, not just in the demo. Building from zero while running a global IT function also settled something for me: evolving systems and creating them are different crafts, and I wanted both.

In January 2025, I left MED-EL and co-founded Flex.Insight, a deliberately small advisory practice for AI strategy, implementation, and organizational transformation. No bloated teams, no work theater. The premise was simple: advice is only worth taking from someone who can build the thing. We wrote publicly about why technology so often fails to work the way it's supposed to, and the work found an audience.

That’s what brought SQUER to the table. They asked me to lead their Product, Data & AI unit: commercial strategy, go-to-market, delivery governance. So I wound down Flex and joined. Same thesis, more leverage. And I still build. The most recent projects on this site (an AI funding-advisory agent, a content platform for pharma) I architected and coded myself. That’s the long game, and it hasn’t changed since the helpdesk: be the advisor you can check against working systems.
// track record
2025 – Present
SQUERHead of Product, Data & AI
  • Joined from Flex.Insight to lead SQUER's Product, Data & AI unit.
  • Responsible for commercial strategy, go-to-market, and consulting across product, data, and AI services.
  • Own governance and security positioning for client engagements, especially in regulated industries where compliance is a hard requirement.
  • Also served as interim Head of Engineering for a client's digital logistics platform (millions of transactions across 10+ integrated systems), clarifying team boundaries and system interfaces so teams could ship predictably.
Jan – Dec 2025
Flex.Insight AdvisoryCo-Founder
  • Co-founded a deliberately small advisory practice for AI strategy, implementation, and organizational transformation, built on the premise that the people giving the advice should be able to build the thing.
  • Select client work, strategy through to hands-on delivery. Every engagement was staffed by the people who actually did the work: no handoffs, no shadow teams.
  • Wrote publicly about the distance between how technology is supposed to work and how it actually performs, including a piece on enshittification in the workplace that got traction well beyond the intended audience.
  • Wound down the practice when I joined SQUER full-time.
2024 – 2025
LIT HealthChief Technology & Product Officer
  • Led technology and product for Melia, an AI-driven diabetes management app that gives patients real-time insights and personalized support. A venture role held in parallel with my position at MED-EL.
  • Built the cloud infrastructure from scratch with healthcare-grade privacy requirements (GDPR, HIPAA). First time building a patient-facing product, very different from internal IT tooling.
2024
Walnuts DigitalPartner – AI Strategy
  • Helped enterprise clients integrate AI into their operations, from identifying where it makes sense, through technical implementation, to getting people to actually use it. A part-time advisory mandate alongside my role at MED-EL.
2019 – 2025
MED-ELHead of Corporate Information Technology
  • Ran the global IT function for a cochlear implant company: infrastructure, operations, security, and service management across 14 countries and 30+ sites.
  • Developed MED-EL's first AI strategy: identified where AI could have real impact, built internal capability, got executive buy-in, and started shipping tools.
  • Built and deployed internal AI-powered tools in collaboration with business and product teams. The hardest part was always the last mile: getting something that works in a notebook to work in production.
  • Set up the company's AI governance framework: data classification, ownership model, audit controls. In MedTech, you can't just deploy a model and hope for the best.
  • Led the organization through ISO 27001:2022, UK Cyber Essentials, and CyberTrust Gold Label certification.
2023 – 2024
BAFIT – University of InnsbruckBoard Member
  • Board member of the Banking, Finance, and IT network, bridging academic research and industry practice on digital and technology topics.
2023 – 2024
VeriyouCo-Founder & CTO
  • Built a real-time deepfake detection system from scratch: RTMP stream analysis, scalable architecture, and the core detection models.
  • Built in parallel with my day job at MED-EL. My first product from zero outside a corporate environment, with a completely different pace and set of constraints.
2017 – 2019
MED-ELManager, IT Operations
  • Managed global IT operations, including Opex/Capex budgets, vendor relationships, and the first serious automation initiatives across the company.
2016 – 2017
MED-ELTeam Leader, Communications Infrastructure
  • Responsible for global VoIP, video conferencing, and mobile device management, making sure 2,000+ people across 14 countries could talk to each other reliably.
2010 – 2016
MED-ELManager, Corporate IT Helpdesk → IT Helpdesk Specialist
  • Where it all started. Joined as an IT helpdesk specialist and built up the corporate helpdesk function: standardized processes, introduced new tools, and learned that good IT is mostly about understanding what people actually need.
// toolkit
Applied AII've shipped AI tools at MED-EL, built a real-time deepfake detector at Veriyou, and led an AI health app at LIT Health. The pattern is always the same: the model is 20% of the work. The other 80% is data quality, ownership, governance, and getting people to trust the output.
IT TransformationAt MED-EL, I took a fragmented IT landscape spread across 14 countries and turned it into something coherent. Cloud migration, architecture cleanup, technical debt reduction. But the hardest part was always getting 30+ sites to agree on how things should work.
Security & GovernanceLed MED-EL through ISO 27001:2022, UK Cyber Essentials, and CyberTrust Gold Label certification. Later dealt with GDPR and HIPAA at LIT Health. Security in regulated industries isn't a checkbox. It's an operating model that touches everything.
Delivery LeadershipI've led teams from 5 to 100 people across IT, product, engineering, and data. The thing I keep coming back to: teams ship reliably when they have clear ownership, shared definitions of done, and someone willing to remove blockers instead of adding process.
Regulated IndustriesMedTech (MED-EL), healthcare (LIT Health), logistics (SQUER client work), finance (BAFIT network). Every regulated industry has its own flavor of "you can't just deploy that." The underlying discipline of balancing speed with compliance is the same.
Executive LeadershipBuilt and scaled MED-EL's IT organization from a small team to a global function with multimillion-euro budgets. Comfortable talking to board members about strategy and to engineers about architecture, ideally in the same meeting.
Product ManagementCame to product management from the IT and engineering side, which means I think about operability and maintenance from day one. At SQUER, I shape how we position and sell our product capabilities, connecting commercial strategy with what our teams can actually deliver.
Data & AI PlatformsLLMOps, RAG, agents, data pipelines. At MED-EL I built the internal data infrastructure that made our first AI tools possible. The gap between a working prototype and a production system is where most teams get stuck. It's also where I tend to focus.
// credentials
University of LiverpoolMSc Information Systems Management (2017–2019). Studied how leadership shapes an organization's ability to innovate with technology, a question I kept running into at work and wanted to understand properly.
MCI – Management Center InnsbruckBA in Economics (2014–2017). Built the foundation in business and economics while already working in IT. The thesis came directly from what I was seeing on the job: how IT teams actually manage innovation day to day.
// signal

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AI implementation, product leadership, regulated industries. If you have a real problem, I'm interested.
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