Benedikt Stemmildt DE Invite me to speak 
---
name: Benedikt Stemmildt
role: Co-Founder & Co-CEO, CSO, hackers&wizards
base: Hamburg, Germany
topics: [agentic engineering, software architecture, developer experience, engineering leadership]
contact: benedikt@stemmildt.com
machine_readable: /llms.txt
---

Benedikt Stemmildt

Developers in flow, building great products.

I help software teams move from vibe coding to agentic engineering: as co-founder of hackers&wizards, on stage, and as host of the Rethink Engineering podcast. Twenty years of building software products and the businesses around them taught me the rest.

Invite me to speak Work with my team at hackers&wizards 

Companies

Worked at

  • OTTO
  • Breuninger
  • BLUME 2000
  • TalentFormation

Built with

  • Tchibo
  • SIGNAL IDUNA
  • IONOS
  • Krombacher
  • Mercedes-Benz
  • eventim
  • OBI
  • blau direkt
  • Picnic
  • Haufe Group
  • MOIA
  • Vorwerk
  • Moonfare
  • LichtBlick
  • dm
  • EGYM
  • Statista
  • EUROGATE
  • bonprix
  • adesso insurance solutions
  • 1GLOBAL
  • OMR
  • Bünting
  • Unzer
  • SDK
  • Suiteify
  • Fricke Gruppe
  • XING

Talks for people who build, lead, and teach software

I have spoken at conferences since 2016. The talks I am proudest of started the same way: something was bugging me at work, and the talk was how I worked it out in public.

Where to meet me

  1. code.talks 2026

    Program chair · Hamburg

  2. Software Factories: Engineering on Autopilot

    Talk · Digitale Leute Summit, Cologne

  3. alphalist Dev Bootcamp

    Workshop, curriculum lead · Berlin

  4. LangChain x hackers&wizards Hackathon

    Co-host · Hamburg

  5. Building the Dark Factory: When Agents Run the Whole SDLC

    Talk · OOP, Munich

  6. Building the Agentic R&D Organization

    Workshop · CASE, Berlin

  7. Stop Building Features. Build the Factory That Builds Them.

    Talk with Leo Peters · agentic.hamburg, Hamburg · Video

  8. Agents Across the SDLC: From Refinement to Retro

    Talk · AI Agents Montreal, online · Video

  9. Vibe-Coding Is Killing Your AI Productivity

    Talk · code.talks, Hamburg · Video

Watch a full talk · agentic.hamburg 2026, with Leo Peters Stop Building Features. Build the Factory That Builds Them.

Current topics

  • From vibe coding to agentic engineering

    How teams move from random prompts and inconsistent output to AI-assisted development with real context, feedback loops, quality gates, and human ownership.

    For developers, tech leads, and CTOs

  • Architecture when AI writes more code

    AI makes code cheap to produce. That makes architecture, boundaries, testing, review, and maintainability matter more, not less.

    For architects, senior engineers, and leaders

  • Developer experience as strategy

    Why fulfilled teams move faster, why friction hides in everyday workflows, and how tooling and leadership shape delivery you can sustain.

    For CTOs, leaders, and platform teams

  • Teaching as an engineering skill

    What Hacker School, mentoring, and AI-assisted development taught me about how knowledge actually moves between people.

    For developers, mentors, and educators

Formats

  • Keynotes and conference talks30 to 60 minutes, in English or German, a clear narrative, and enough technical detail that the audience can use it back at work the next morning.
  • WorkshopsHands-on sessions for teams or conference audiences, around agentic engineering, context engineering, and developer workflows.
  • Panels and interviewsConversations about the future of software engineering, AI-assisted development, and engineering leadership.
  • Program and track curationHelp for conference programs and communities where the conversation matters as much as the stage.

Speaker bio

Benedikt Stemmildt is a founder, software architect, speaker, educator, and agentic engineering advocate based in Hamburg. He is a co-founder of hackers&wizards, a founding member and long-time Inspirer at Hacker School since 2014, program chair of code.talks, and host of the Rethink Engineering podcast. With 20+ years in software engineering, from OTTO and Breuninger to CIO at BLUME 2000 and CTO at TalentFormation, he helps teams build better software with more clarity, craft, and human responsibility in an AI-assisted world.

Download the headshot JPEG, 800 × 1000

Selected stages

  • code.talks
  • OOP
  • JAX
  • DDD Europe
  • Java Forum Stuttgart
  • alphalist
  • WeAreDevelopers
  • Digitale Leute
  • Informatik Aktuell
  • CIO.de
Invite me to speak All talks, past and upcoming 

From prompt engineering to a software factory

These are working notes, not finished thinking. The arc I keep coming back to is how teams move from one-off prompts to a working system that builds software with them, and what stays a human's job along the way.

  1. Prompt engineering

    Crafting the right prompt for one task. The skill is real and the output can be sharp. But the win lives in that prompt, not in the team, so it does not compound.

  2. Context engineering

    Durable, reusable context, so people and AI work to the same standards. Decisions, conventions, and review criteria, written down once and used by everyone.

  3. Agentic engineering

    Workflows where AI carries more of the work while humans keep judgment, direction, and accountability. Not replacing developers. Raising the level they work at.

  4. Software factory

    A chain of specialised agents across the full development cycle, owned by the team that uses it. The work shifts from writing every line to setting the rules the chain runs on.

You can outsource your thinking, but you cannot outsource your understanding.

What I believe so far

  1. Context beats clever prompts

    A clever prompt helps once. Shared context compounds. Decisions, standards, and review criteria are worth treating as reusable assets, not things you re-explain every time.

  2. Agents are colleagues, not commands

    Useful AI work looks more like mentoring than commanding. You give context, examples, boundaries, and a clear sense of what good looks like. The same things a new teammate needs.

  3. The factory is the deliverable

    Past a point, the team is not shipping features. The team is shipping the chain of agents that ships the features. The work moves up a level, and so does the skill.

  4. Quality and ownership still count

    AI-generated code is still code. It needs tests, review, a fit with the architecture, operational thinking, and a human who owns the result.

Listen: Rethink Engineering

The podcast I host with re:cinq: AI-native software development, engineering leadership, and how organisations change around both. Latest conversations:

Spotify  Apple Podcasts  YouTube  All episodes 

Twenty years, newest first

Developer, architect, CIO, CTO, founder. The titles changed. The work, building software organisations that move fast and stay sane, mostly did not.

  1. 2024 to nowNow

    Co-founder · hackers&wizards

    Turning agentic engineering into something teams can actually use. Training, workshops, and AI-assisted development that keeps the craft intact.

  2. 2022 to 2025

    CTO · TalentFormation

    Company rebuilding, architecture, and delivery. Where agentic engineering moved from an interest to the centre of the work.

  3. 2020 to 2022

    CIO · BLUME 2000

    Owned e-commerce IT. The department was not set up for what was coming, so we rebuilt product, organisation, and technology at once, and shipped a new shop on the new foundation.

  4. 2017 to 2020

    Lead Software Architect · Breuninger

    The online-shop platform, built by 13 teams and 70 developers. I established a vertical architecture so they could move without waiting on each other. Online order revenue grew 35% in 2018.

  5. 2013 to 2017

    Software Engineer · OTTO

    Hired onto otto.de, starting in a SCRUM team building a new backoffice. Co-founded a small team focused on social media features. Two weeks in, a feature shipped from that team moved a single revenue line into the three-digit millions.

  6. 2009 to 2013

    Dual student · OTTO

    Rotated through controlling, SAP HR development, e-commerce, and corporate strategy. Helped get the Liquid Labs incubator off the ground, where Risk.Ident later spun out as its own company.

Six domains it takes to build a software company

Most people who build software go deep in one place. The code, say, or the org, or the numbers. The six below are usually six different people. I have done the work in each, and they inform each other far more than anyone expects.

  1. Business model design

    Where the revenue comes from, and whether the model holds up. I have drawn the canvas more than once, then had to make it pay. Incubators, spin-outs, new revenue lines inside an existing business.

  2. Service and product design

    What gets built, for whom, and why it earns their attention. A small feature at the right moment beats a big launch at the wrong one.

  3. Organisational design

    Teams shaped so they can ship without waiting on each other. I have redrawn the org to match the architecture, putting Conway's law to work instead of fighting it.

  4. Controlling

    Treating cost and return as a first-class input to design, not an afterthought. The numbers tell you which complexity earns its keep and which doesn't.

  5. Architecture and technology

    Twenty years of reactive, vertical, self-contained systems, and now agentic engineering. Writing it, reviewing it, and being accountable when it breaks.

  6. Steering

    Holding direction when product, organisation, and technology pull in different directions, and one of the three has to bend. Steering is the call about which one, and when.

From taking the computer apart to building teams

At ten I took my father's computer apart to see the part that made it work. I got it back together, mostly. The curiosity stayed. At thirteen I had a small company building websites.

That thread runs through all of it since. Writing software, drawing system boundaries, leading teams, teaching kids and students, and now working out what AI means for the craft.

I studied business informatics as a dual student, university and OTTO at the same time, and learned one thing early: the interesting problems are rarely only technical. Developer, architect, CIO, CTO, and founder all followed from there.

The full story, what I stand for, and whose ideas I borrow 

How do we use AI to make software teams more capable without losing craft, judgment, or ownership?

The question I am working on now

Good conversations start with context

Tell me what you are working on, what you have already tried, and what kind of answer would help. I would rather start there than with a vague "let's connect at some point".

Inviting me to speak?

The best invitations include the audience, the format, the date, the language, and the one question you want people to leave thinking about.

Invite me to speak

benedikt@stemmildt.com +49 171 1443 957

  • hackers&wizards

    Commercial work: agentic engineering, team training, and AI-assisted development that changes how an organisation builds.

    Visit hackers&wizards 

  • Education and Hacker School

    Digital education, teaching programming, and getting young people curious enough to build with technology, not just consume it.

    Visit Hacker School 

  • Community and peers

    alphalist, code.talks, CTO conversations, software architecture exchange, or a book worth arguing about.

    Send a note