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Martin Kadauke
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Project management · Digitalisation · AI transformation · Stuttgart / Tübingen region

I transform how companies work. And take AI into governed production.

Experienced IT project manager and digitalisation lead. Nine years between Mittelstand and global corporate: mapping processes on the shop floor, rolling out systems, steering programmes — most recently as co-lead of the PMO for the IT infrastructure separation of two automotive market leaders, more than 65 projects across over 800 sites. And I don't just introduce AI, I build it myself.

Most people put AI affinity on their profile. I run my own.

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Profile

Rebuilding a process is handwork. I do it with you.

Transformation does not happen in a workshop room. It happens where the work happens — with the people who run the process every day and know exactly where it hurts. I map it there, rebuild it with them, and make sure the new system is actually used afterwards. And because I build the technology myself, I don't promise anything that won't run later.

Half one

Transformation, projects, programmes

From a single department process in an SMB to a programme where 65 projects run into each other at once.

  • Process mapping and requirements analysis in the department itself, not from a distance
  • End-to-end digitalisation: from a paper or email process to a system in production
  • PMO setup: structure, reporting and governance for programmes with many sub-projects
  • Risk and dependency management across project and departmental boundaries
  • Stakeholder and board communication, top-management presentations, town halls
  • Change and adoption: workshops, training, rollout into the sites
  • Technical product owner: backlog, prioritisation, acceptance
  • Scrum, Jira, Confluence, MS Project, SharePoint · ECM/DMS and invoice processes · SAP environment

Half two

AI & engineering

Not from slides, but from running systems — at work and in my own data centre in the basement.

  • RAG: knowledge systems over company documents, including chunking and embeddings
  • Agentic workflows and MCP integrations
  • Local language models with Ollama — privacy by architecture, not by contract
  • Prompt and context engineering, including hardening against prompt injection
  • Company-wide n8n automation with human-in-the-loop
  • AI governance: guardrails for AI-generated software, EU AI Act and GDPR fundamentals
  • Claude Code, Codex, Cursor · Docker, Proxmox, K3S, self-hosting

Work

Five transformations, in concrete terms.

Each with what I actually owned — and what I did not.

01 Corporate programme · 800+ sites

IT infrastructure separation of two automotive market leaders

Daimler Truck AG Senior IT Project Manager · PMO co-lead 11/2023 – 07/2025

Daimler Truck was spun out of Mercedes-Benz — two market leaders in the automotive industry that had to be technically disentangled. The IT infrastructure of more than 800 locations had to be separated, carved out or rebuilt from scratch: during live operations, all at once, against a hard deadline.

Approach

  • Co-lead of the PMO in the IT Infrastructure Core Separation Program: coordinating more than 65 individual projects — WiFi, digital office and clients, data-centre build-outs, mainframe separation and more.
  • Ran risks, dependencies, tasks, project plans and timelines across all projects — including the question of which project was currently blocking which other one.
  • Built a large coordination and documentation platform so every project saw the same state of play.
  • Organised workshops and town halls, prepared top-management presentations and supported board meetings.

Result

For two years, the point at which 65 projects knew about each other. Reference: good to very good.

Scope

I did not own the technology of the individual projects — that is what the product owners were for. I owned the fact that they did not block each other.

02 SAP Sustainability Control Tower · CSRD

ESG platform rolled out in a global corporation

Daimler Truck AG IT coordinator & technical product owner 2024 – 2025

CSRD obliges corporations to report sustainability figures in an audit-proof way. The data for that sits scattered across departments, sites and systems that were never built for it.

Approach

  • IT coordination and technical product ownership for the SAP Sustainability Control Tower as the group-wide ESG platform.
  • Structured data collection along the CSRD requirements: which figure comes from which system, who owns it, how often it is delivered.
  • Translated between the business, IT and reporting — three worlds with three vocabularies and one shared deadline.

Result

A platform where sustainability reporting is no longer assembled out of spreadsheets.

Scope

My role was IT coordination and product ownership, not the sustainability assessment itself — that comes from the business.

03 RAG · governance · automation

AI platforms built and put into operation

HICO Group / Highcoordination GmbH Senior IT Project Manager · AI & automation 07/2025 – present

A consulting firm wanted to use AI but had neither a knowledge system nor any guardrails for the applications its people had suddenly started assembling themselves.

Approach

  • Built a RAG knowledge system: company documents made searchable and answerable, with citations instead of invention.
  • Designed and built a governance platform for AI-generated applications: every internally built app has to register and request data access — database connections, API credentials — through the platform. That makes shadow IT from vibe coding visible and bounded instead of forbidden.
  • Introduced n8n company-wide as the automation layer, with human-in-the-loop wherever a machine must not decide alone.

Result

A statement of intent turned into running internal systems with clear access paths.

Scope

Built and operated internally, not rolled out as a customer project. I deliberately leave the product names out here.

04 SAP · finance · international

Invoice intake automated all the way into SAP

AFI Solutions GmbH, Stuttgart IT Project Lead · SAP Invoice Solutions 2021 – 10/2023

Invoices arrive by email and as scans and have to end up correctly posted in SAP. In between: recognition, checking, approval, matching — and every company does it differently.

Approach

  • Consulting and project lead for the in-house SAP add-on for invoice processing, on-premise and in the cloud.
  • Mapped, configured and rolled out document processes from capture through OCR recognition to a pre-filled SAP document.
  • Looked after international customers in industry, automotive, healthcare, the public sector and fashion.

Result

Finance departments where most incoming invoices reach SAP without anyone retyping them.

Scope

This was document automation before language models: classic rule-based OCR, no LLM. These are exactly the processes being redone with Document AI today — I know both sides, and I know where the old rule sets still earn their keep.

05 Healthcare · recycling · HR · finance

Deep digitalisation of Mittelstand companies

webix solutions GmbH, Stuttgart IT Project Lead · ECM digitalisation (ELO Digital Office) 08/2016 – 10/2021

Mid-sized companies whose core processes still ran on ring binders, network drives and email — patient records, weighbridge notes, personnel files, incoming invoices. Every customer with their own history and their own special cases.

Approach

  • Full-stack consultant: from building the servers through running workshops on site to fully customising the ECM solution to each process.
  • Main contact for customers in healthcare, recycling, HR and accounting — from the first process mapping through to operations.
  • Digitalisation that held up after the project ended: training, key-user enablement, tuning in real daily use.

Result

Five years of moving mid-sized companies from paper to end-to-end digital processes — each to the point where the department no longer wanted to go back.

Scope

Small projects with direct customer contact, not a corporate environment. That is exactly where I learned what a process really looks like before you rebuild it.

How I build

My data centre is in the basement.

The fastest way to understand AI is to operate it — with updates, outages, backups and an electricity bill.

At home I run a small but serious infrastructure: clustered virtualised servers, container orchestration, a dedicated machine just for language models, monitoring, off-site backups and an automation backbone that wires services together.

What runs on it isn't demos, it's things that are allowed to break and are therefore monitored: my own web applications with real users, language models for text recognition and classification, transcription pipelines, home automation.

That is why I don't have to guess about data protection, running costs, latency, or the sentence we'll just do that one locally. I have already paid the bill.

Live references

Career

Curriculum vitae.

From Mittelstand consulting through finance processes into a global corporate programme — and always building things myself alongside.

Request the CV by email

  1. 07/2025 – present

    HICO Group / Highcoordination GmbH

    Senior IT Project Manager · AI & automation

    RAG knowledge system, governance platform for AI-generated applications, company-wide n8n automation.

  2. 11/2023 – 07/2025

    Daimler Truck AG, Leinfelden

    Senior IT Project Manager · PMO co-lead, IT Infrastructure Core Separation

    Coordinated more than 65 infrastructure projects across 800+ locations in the disentanglement of two automotive market leaders. Additionally IT coordinator and technical product owner for the SAP Sustainability Control Tower ESG platform (CSRD).

    Via Nash Direct (temporary agency contract), capped at two years by German law.

  3. 2021 – 10/2023

    AFI Solutions GmbH, Stuttgart

    IT Project Lead · SAP Invoice Solutions

    Consulting and rollout of an SAP add-on for invoice processing at international customers, on-premise and in the cloud.

  4. 08/2016 – 10/2021

    webix solutions GmbH, Stuttgart

    IT Project Lead · ECM digitalisation (ELO Digital Office)

    Full-stack consultant for SMBs: from building servers through running workshops to fully customising the solution. Main contact for customers in healthcare, recycling, HR and accounting.

Education

  • 2015 – 2018

    State-certified computer scientist (Informatiker), business informatics focus

    Akademie für Datenverarbeitung, Böblingen

  • 2009 – 2010

    Interactive Media

    SAE Institute, Berlin

  • 2009

    Abitur (university entrance qualification)

    Technisches Gymnasium Sindelfingen

Languages

German (native) · English (fluent, native level)

Contact

Let's talk.

Email or phone is fastest. I usually reply the same day.

Available immediately Permanent or freelance · Stuttgart, Tübingen, Reutlingen, Metzingen region · remote and hybrid possible