Benjamin Martin Kaleja, Product Manager in Berlin, Germany
Benjamin is available for hire
Hire Benjamin

Benjamin Martin Kaleja

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Berlin, Germany

Toptal member since May 16, 2019

Bio

As product manager and project lead, Benjamin has launched products to 6-figure audiences, such as a customer service chatbot, a connected-car solution, and an industrial IoT analytics suite. He's led interdisciplinary teams that were distributed across countries. Benjamin has founded and successfully sold an AI SaaS company, demonstrating his entrepreneurial spirit, commercial acumen, and expertise in emerging technologies.

Project Highlights

Körber Digital: Establishing of a Company Builder for Industrial IoT
Product owner for a Smart Factory app store; set up the product management department, and agile coach for product owners.
Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe: B2C Banking Chatbot Launch
Development of go-to-market strategy and product ownership; onboarding of customers; 73% accuracy; reach: 3+ million users.
Volkswagen: Connected Car Launch
Business case development, product management consulting, and supply chain and operation strategy.

Expertise

  • Agile Software Development
  • Business Cases
  • IT Project Management
  • Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
  • Market Entry
  • Product Delivery
  • Product Management
  • Product Strategy

Work Experience

Product Management and IT Consultant

2013 - PRESENT
Digital:Convergence
  • Consulted on the design and establishment of a company builder at Körber Digital.
  • Completed the product launch of a B2C chatbot at Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe.
  • Performed a market study on a smart insurance platform at Volkswagen.
  • Consulted on a connected car project at Volkswagen.
  • Consulted on an API-based data lake project at Munich Re.
  • Realized a smart home product launch at ERGO Digital.
  • Handled an enterprise architecture management project at DHL.
  • Contributed to a social media excellence project at Audi.

Founder | CPO | Managing Director

2021 - 2023
ZenOps Technologies GmbH
  • Built and launched a SaaS platform for SMBs to put IT management and security processes on autopilot.
  • Raised €1 million from European and US-based VC funds and notable angel investors, such as the MD Microsoft EMEA or CISO of AWS, and managed the investor relations full cycle.
  • Sold the company to a Singapore-based competitor in an all-share M&A transaction.

Business Analyst

2015 - 2016
IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft
  • Performed all relevant activities in the venture capital deal chain from deal sourcing to portfolio company sales processes.
  • Built a strong network in the German start-up ecosystem.
  • Modeled business cases and derived enterprise valuation with various methods such as DCF.
  • Negotiated term sheets and structured deals >1 million EUR.
  • Performed due diligence activities on buy-side as well as sell-side.

Business Development Intrn

2013 - 2013
DuPoint Chile
  • Analyzed South American markets for market entry opportunities and modeled opportunity size.
  • Assisted in various sales and account management activities.
  • Explored adjacent market segments for diversification.

IT Consulting Working Student

2012 - 2012
KPMG
  • Consulted clients with regard to their IT and enterprise architecture governance.
  • Contributed to white papers about cloud computing architectures.
  • Analyzed clients total costs of ownership of technology choices.

IT Consultant Intern

2011 - 2012
Deloitte
  • Conducted risk management assessments of blue-chip clients.
  • Assessed cloud computing infrastructures for vulnerabilities and performed penetration testing activities.
  • Implemented IT controls according to leading frameworks such as COBIT.
  • Performed fraud detection audits.
  • Advised clients with regard to emergent cybersecurity threats.

R&D Intern

2010 - 2011
Fraunhofer Institute
  • Researched and monitored the coating process of mechanical components with ultra-hard, amorphous carbon layers.
  • Assisted in conducting experiments in various domains of industrial technologies.

Körber Digital: Establishing of a Company Builder for Industrial IoT

Product owner for a Smart Factory app store; set up the product management department, and agile coach for product owners.

Set up a company builder/incubator with over 20 initiatives and 100+ employees w/ offices in Europe and Asia.

DekaBank: B2B Chatbot Launch

Served as the project lead and handled product development and launch throughout three major development stages.

I was involved in developing, implementing, and testing a chatbot for the internal workflow management of the investment bank, DekaBank, regarding a new regulatory initiative, PSDII. I also implemented agile methodologies in the project.

Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe: B2C Banking Chatbot Launch

Development of go-to-market strategy and product ownership; onboarding of customers; 73% accuracy; reach: 3+ million users.

Development and market entry of a customizable customer service chatbot for retail banking clients.

Volkswagen: Data Platform for Vehicle Data

Strategic foresight, market landscape analysis, project setup, and design of technological blueprint.

Business model development of the data platform for vehicle data.

Volkswagen: Connected Car Launch

http://www.volkswagen-we.com

Business case development, product management consulting, and supply chain and operation strategy.

Development of a car-on-demand/car sharing platform using a Telematic module, cloud back end, and mobile app.

Munich Re: IoT Platform/Data Lake Project

Led requirements analysis and MVP design and business case modeling.

Feasibility study of an IoT risk management platform in order to consolidate group-wide structured and unstructured data sources.

ERGO Digital: Smart Home Product Launch

https://www.smarthome.de/moeglichkeiten/ergo-smarthome-schutzbrief

Product strategy and management for collaboration of ERGO and Telekom for a joint product launch.

IoT Product management of the joint venture product "SmartHome Schutzbrief" from Telekom and ERGO.

DHL Express: Capability Management Project

Led a team of six to implement a capability lifecycle process across the clients' organization.

Process analysis and design of an IT governance framework with regard to the capability lifecycle.

Audi: Social Media Excellence

Data analytics of social media streaming data, benchmarking of dealer's performance, and derivation of actionable metrics.

KPI-based social media analysis of Audi's dealer network and derivation of respective measures.

SAP: Cloud Platform Strategy

Assessed SAP's hyperscaler strategy for a SaaS product portfolio.

My work involved assessing SAP's hyperscaler strategy for a SaaS product portfolio in a board-level project as a project member representing the SAP Business Technology Platform (iPaaS) and derived recommendations for partnership approaches.
2012 - 2015

Master's Degree in IT Systems Engineering and Management

Technical University of Berlin - Berlin, Germany

2013 - 2014

Exchange Participant in MBA Program

Siam University Bangkok - Bangkok, Thailand

2008 - 2011

Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering and Management

Technical University of Dresden - Dresden, Germany

NOVEMBER 2023 - PRESENT

ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers

DeepLearning.AI

OCTOBER 2023 - PRESENT

Generative AI with Large Language Models

DeepLearning.AI

APRIL 2019 - PRESENT

PRINCE2® Foundation Certificate in Project Management

AXELOS Global Best Practice

APRIL 2019 - PRESENT

AWS Fundamentals: Building Serverless Applications

Amazon AWS

DECEMBER 2018 - PRESENT

AWS Fundamentals: Going Cloud-Native

Amazon AWS

NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT

Microsoft Enterprise Security Fundamentals

Microsoft

MAY 2018 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)

Scrum.org

JANUARY 2018 - PRESENT

Big Data Analytics

Hasso Plattner Institute

MAY 2017 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)

Scrum.org

DECEMBER 2016 - PRESENT

Machine Learning

Stanford Online

Tools

Trello, Confluence, ProdPad, Office 365, Jira, Zoom, Atlassian Suite, Figma, Balsamiq Mockups, Asana, Slack, Postman, Google Workspace

Paradigms

Agile, Scrum, Agile Software Development, Agile Product Management, BPMN, PRINCE2, Microservices Architecture, Azure DevOps

Industry Expertise

Venture Capital, Automotive, Insurance, Banking & Finance

Platforms

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Other

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Agile Coaching, Smart Factories, Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Engineering, Market Entry, Product Management, Business Development, Lean Product Development, Organizational Design, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Business Cases, User Journey Maps, Business Analysis, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Innovation, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, Scrum Master, IT Project Management, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Web App Development, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Cloud Computing, UX Process, Release Management, UML, Enterprise Architecture, Aha!, Chatbots, Big Data, Notion, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Financial Controlling, International Projects, International Growth, Finance, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Analytics, Product Owner, Agile Product Delivery, Cybersecurity, IT Security, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Serverless Architecture, Project Delivery, Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Prompt Engineering, Workflow Automation

Collaboration That Works

How to Work with Toptal

Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.

1

Share your needs

Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2

Choose your talent

Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3

Start your risk-free talent trial

Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.

Top talent is in high demand.

Start hiring