Dieter Schwanke
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Toptal member since August 4, 2022
Dieter is a seasoned product manager with a unique blend of management skills and hands-on technical experience. He delivers by fostering a quality culture and his experience collaborating with cross-functional global teams in companies like Siemens and Sony to provide delightful customer experiences. Dieter uses data insights and his analytical mind to find result-driven and optimal solutions. He excels at decomposing complex problems without losing sight of the big picture.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Head of Product
- International Projects
- Microelectronics
- New Products
- Product Delivery
- Product Discovery
- Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
- Strategic Planning
Work Experience
Head of Digital Transformation
COGO Intelligence in Agribusiness
- Led and strategized a digital transformation roadmap for the organization. I also defined technological improvements to be made on internal infrastructure, aligned with ascertaining business requirements.
- Reduced recurrent manual activities from main stakeholders by 75%, opening more time for relevant, billable tasks achieved mainly by implementing robots for ETL, defining a new internal data lake, and automatically feeding crawled data into it.
- Boosted website traffic by 300% by conceptualizing website upgrade, modernizing its UI/UX, adding responsiveness, introducing SEO strategies, and integrating with social media.
- Created company's CEO digital presence, including weekly YouTube videos and publishing regular podcast episodes, and active LinkedIn and Instagram postings.
Strategic Planning Coach
NetComet ISP
- Worked with the ISP CEO to define long-term business goals together.
- Trained and mentored a cross-department team about strategic planning, BSC, KPIs, OKRs, and SWOT analysis.
- Coached the definition and execution of the company's first strategic planning.
Head of Product
CEITEC Semiconductors
- Led development and production of an ultra-high frequency (UHF) passive cryptographic electronic toll collection integrated circuit (IC), reaching around 40% market share. Obtained Brazilian protocol certification or homologation.
- Led software and hardware development of Brazilian e-passport smart card (SoC), an over $10 million program. Achieved Common Criteria global security certification, covering secure design, secure production chain, and secure hardware and software.
- Obtained accreditation of the first IC entirely developed in Brazil.
- Led development and production of a passive UHF RFID IC; obtained GS1's EPC Gen2v2 global standard certification; helped sell more than 100 million units.
- Led the development and production of a low-frequency RFID IC. Obtained ISO 11784/11785 global certification.
- Defined requirements and conducted procurement and ramping-up of IC production lines: wafer testing, grinding, dicing, visual inspection, and packaging.
- Built and trained a team of product engineers and owners. Assembled and coached a team of test engineers accountable for the development and production testing.
R&D Program Manager
Sony Mobile Communications
- Played the role of account manager of Sony Ericsson head in Brazil, responsible for full PLM, from business and systems requirements up to end-of-life.
- Helped build a new R&D department, ramping up from 30 to 120 mobile developers in about one year. Introduced an Agile development process Scrum, including training and cultural changes.
- Managed development and maintenance of global smartphone built-in apps within an international multi-site structure in Brazil, Sweden, Japan, and the USA, including technological and ownership transfer of several apps from SE to BR and from BR to China.
- Helped raise Brazil’s operation to a Sony Ericsson global development center status.
Liaison and Expatriate
Sony Mobile Communications
- Relocated to the customer's HQ in Sweden to kick off the short term assignment (STA) program, aiming at improving Brazilian developers' expertise and strengthening the team's networking while helping Sony Ericsson's talent shortage.
- Screened, selected, and built a remote software development team at Sony Ericsson's HQ, handling operational, legal, and labor processes to relocate developers to Sweden.
- Managed technology and ownership transfer of built-in Android and native apps from Sweden to Brazil.
Research and Development Line Manager
BenQ
- Built and trained internal and outsourced teams for Windows and Linux companion software development and maintenance.
- Interfaced directly with the BenQ-Siemens headquarters in Germany to perform requirements management, implementation, planning, and testing.
- Introduced an Agile development process, Scrum, for the whole team.
Project Manager
Siemens Mobile
- Managed software components development and maintenance flow for Siemens Mobile within an international multi-site structure in Brazil, Germany, Poland, and the USA.
- Led the redesign of the Windows Personal Information Manager (PIM) used to synchronize address book and calendar data with connected mobile phones.
- Built and trained a team of Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) developers, experienced in data synchronization and internalization.
Solutions Architect | Co-founder
DOLSCH Biomedical Instrumentation
- Founded a biomedical instrumentation company with a neurosurgeon associate focused on sleep studies. Replaced old analog, paper-based recording devices with a digital, computer-based system that saves two hours per day per patient of manual exam analysis.
- Built from scratch in the 90s, pioneer hardware and software of polysomnographic systems based on National Instruments virtual instrumentation that was used for daily exams in three major clinics for over five years.
- Developed sensors, conditioners, instrumentation amplifiers, and analog-to-digital converters for simultaneous acquisition of up to 16 medical channels, including EEG, EMG, SpO2, and ECG.
Project History
Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) RFID Integrated Circuit (IC)
Led the discovery and delivery of a brand new passive RFID IC for a leading global ETC company.
It was developed entirely by CEITEC, where I was the head of product, certified by the federal government for Brazilian design.
The IC targets a $100 million market by the estimated Brazilian vehicle fleet and, in the first year, seized a 40% market share of new tags.
Its first customer was a global player Q-Free ASA, which helped with the requirements, field testing, and homologation. All customer communication was conducted by me, from requirements specification to prioritization to sales and delivery.
The IC is ARTESP SJ5511 protocol certified and is known for its best-in-class performance—high sensitivity and ultra-low error rate.
Smart Card SoC (System-on-a-Chip) for Brazilian E-passport
Led the new product development of the Brazilian e-passport smart card CTC21001. Obtained the Common Criteria EAL4+ global security certification.
The e-passport module CTC21001 contains one contactless integrated
circuit providing the extended access control (EAC).
The CTC21001 is made of a contactless IC chip encapsulated on a micro module, IC software programmed on the chip, and data necessary to enable the MRTD personalization, which is pre-personalization data programmed on the chip.
At the logical level, the product provides access control for personalization, the integrity and confidentiality of personal data, identification and authentication, and protection against abuse of functionality, information leakage, physical tampering, and malfunctions.
COGO Intelligence in Agribusiness Data Lake Creation
Gathered business requirements, defined architecture, and implemented the creation of an agribusiness data lake containing historical and current pricing, acreage, and production of 30+ commodities.
Having grown consistently over two decades without having adequate technical data support, its critical information was distributed over several heterogeneous, inconsistent spreadsheet files.
My job was to gather business requirements, define the architecture and implement the new agribusiness data lake, with API's integration to several external data sources. The main topics were commodities pricing, acreage, and production. In total, more than 30 crops are being monitored, with close to 100 markets for pricing.
ISP Strategic Planning Implementation
https://netcomet.com.br/Trained the company management team on strategic planning, helped define its first round, and coached its execution, reaching a consistent 10% CAGR growth.
EPCGen2-certified RFID integrated circuit
Led the development and global EPCGen2 certification of a brand new passive RFID (radio frequency identification) IC from scratch.
They were developed in-house by CEITEC, where I was the head of product, and were certified by the federal government as a Brazilian-owned design.
Over 100 million units were produced and delivered during the family lifecycle: own design, wafer production at TSMC, in-house wafer functional testing, and in-house wafer grinding and dicing.
Among its customers/end-users worth mentioning are HP Inc (https://www.hp.com/), VALID (https://valid.com/) and BEONTAG (https://beontagrfid.com.br/).
Education
Postgraduate in Project Management
University of California, Berkeley - Berkeley, CA, USA
Master's Degree in Computer Science
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) - Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) - Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Certifications
Intellectual Property
WIPO Academy
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master
Object Mentor
Skills
Tools
GitHub, ETL, LabVIEW, Google Data Studio, Trello, Jira, Grafana, MQTT, Node-RED, Redmine
Paradigms
Testing, Agile Project Management, Agile Software Development, Agile Product Management, Scrum, Mobile App Design, Continuous Delivery (CD), Design Thinking
Industry Expertise
Agriculture, Telecommunications, Telecom Equipment & Solutions, Healthcare
Other
Perl, JavaScript, PHP, APIs, International Projects, Project Management, New Products, RFID, Microelectronics, System-on-a-Chip (SoC), People Management, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Head of Product, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Scrum Product Owner, RFPs, RFQs, ITTs, Responses, Proposals & Quotes, Public Sector, Strategic Planning, Digital Transformation, Consulting, Presentations, Product Management, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Stakeholder Management, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Feature Prioritization, Product Strategy, Project Scheduling, Technical Product Management, Strategy, Strategic Initiatives, Cross-functional Collaboration, Wireless, Android, Culture Management, Smart Parking, Smart Factories, Scripting, ANSI C, Consumer Electronics, Tender Analysis, Embedded Systems, Price Analysis, Commodities, Business Intelligence (BI), HTML5, CSS, Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA), Product Owner, Value Proposition, Product Sales, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Product Marketing, Marketing, Roadmaps, Backlog Grooming, Enterprise, Product Roadmaps, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Internet of Things (IoT), Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Services, SaaS, Stakeholder Engagement, Vision Development, Pitch Decks, Manufacturing, Python, Smart Meters, Risk Analysis, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Electronic Payments, Cryptography, Oracle Cloud, Java, Production Lines, Software Development, Medical Devices, Statistics, Algorithms, Neural Networks, Intellectual Property, Common Criteria, Mobile App Testing, Mobile UI, Mobile UX, Native Mobile Apps, Mobile App Development, PHPOffice (formerly PHPExcel), Full-stack Development, Localization, Continuous Integration (CI), REST APIs, Hardware/Software Co-design, Agile Sprints, Communication, Software Architecture, Linux, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), USB, Bluetooth, Internationalization, Sensors & Actuators, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Analytics, Sales Enablement, Sales Presentations, Sales, Value Proposition Design, Sales Pitches, Data Acquisition (DAQ), Medical Software, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Inventory Management Systems, Inventory Management, Enterprise SaaS, Data Product Manager, Strategic Planning & Execution, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), SWOT Analysis, Stakeholder Interviews, Metrics, Project Planning, Program Management, Big Data, Data Analytics, Technical Writing
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring