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Portrait of Tobias Kilga

Business & technology leader // Organization builder

Tobias Kilga

I build technology organizations that keep delivering when I am not in the room, and the business around them. I ran global Corporate IT at MED-EL as part of senior management; today I am Head of Product, Data & AI at SQUER, where I lead the commercial side and hold the P&L.

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Now: Head of Product, Data & AI, SQUER · Austria, DACH and remote · English and German

// Track record

As a PDF

Leadership

  1. Oct 2025 – Present

    Head of Product, Data & AI

    SQUER

    • Lead the commercial side and hold the P&L of a roughly 30-person business unit; my co-head leads delivery, and we share overall strategy.
    • Lead commercial strategy, sales, and go-to-market across product, data, and AI services, including offer design, positioning, pricing, and strategic accounts.
  2. 2025 – 2026

    Interim Head of Engineering

    Österreichische Post (via SQUER)

    • Led parts of the engineering organization from October 2025 to September 2026, reporting to the VP Digital Logistics Platform.
    • Provided engineering leadership continuity after the previous head became CTO, on a digital logistics platform carrying millions of transactions across 10+ integrated systems.
  3. 2010 – 2025

    Helpdesk to Head of Corporate IT

    MED-EL

    • As Head of Corporate IT (2019 – 2025), grew the function from around 60 internal employees in 2019 to more than 100 by 2025, across headquarters and teams in 14 countries. Five managers reported directly to me.
    • Member of senior management, reporting directly to the CEO and CDO, with responsibility for the annual IT operating and capital budget, people, strategy, and architecture.
    4 more
    • Led cybersecurity, helpdesk, IT operations, governance and strategy, and the IT contribution to ISO certification work.
    • Personally built MED-EL AI in 2023, an internal AI chat available company-wide, and added retrieval over internal knowledge soon afterwards.
    • Executive sponsor and IT lead for ISO 27001:2022 certification covering part of medical software development at headquarters. Participated directly in UK Cyber Essentials audits and personally carried out the work behind the Cyber Trust Austria Gold label, which MED-EL received in 2021 as one of the first two companies awarded it.
    • Earlier roles: Manager, IT Operations (2017 – 2019); Team Leader, Communications Infrastructure (2016 – 2017); IT Helpdesk Specialist to Manager, Corporate IT Helpdesk (2010 – 2016).

Ventures & advisory

  1. Jan – Dec 2025

    Co-Founder

    Flex.Insight Advisory

    • Built an AI strategy and implementation advisory practice that worked with eight enterprise and SME clients during its first year, among them banks, insurers and payment companies.
    • Ran the practice alongside SQUER from October through December 2025, then wound it down to focus on the business unit role.
  2. 2024 – 2025

    Chief Technology & Product Officer

    LIT Health

    • Led Melia, an AI-assisted diabetes app, through prototype stage. Owned product design, technical setup, architecture, and development.
    • Brought personal experience of living with diabetes to the product work. This was a venture role alongside other professional responsibilities.
  3. 2024

    Partner, AI Strategy

    Walnuts Digital

    • Helped build the company from the ground up and worked across several AI client engagements, alongside my MED-EL role.
  4. 2023 – 2024

    Co-Founder & CTO

    Veriyou

    • Developed a real-time deepfake detection prototype for RTMP streams and took it into pilot and research work alongside my MED-EL role.

Additional role

  1. 2023 – 2024

    Board Member

    BAFIT, University of Innsbruck

    • Board member of the Banking, Finance, and IT network.

// The story

2010 // where it started: the MED-EL helpdesk

How I got here.

I joined MED-EL, a maker of cochlear implants, on the helpdesk in 2010 and stayed fifteen years. Over five roles I learned the systems first, then how to lead the people responsible for them, and by 2019 I was Head of Corporate IT.

Most of that job turned out to be deciding what each function owned, then letting its managers act on it. The evidence came quietly: a stretch when I could be away for weeks and nothing escalated, because the people running each function had real decision rights and used them. I wrote about what that took, including my most expensive mistake, in The managers were the infrastructure.

I stayed close to the technology. In 2023 I built MED-EL AI myself, an internal AI chat for the whole company, and added retrieval over internal knowledge soon after. Alongside the corporate role I co-founded Veriyou to build real-time deepfake detection, helped build the AI strategy practice Walnuts Digital, and took Melia, an AI-assisted diabetes app, through prototype as CTPO at LIT Health.

Melia was personal. I live with diabetes, so I was building for someone like me. It left me with the question I still ask of any technology: what does it help someone do, and what does it demand from them in return?

My MED-EL role ended in 2025. That year I co-founded Flex.Insight for AI strategy and implementation work, joined SQUER in October, and closed Flex.Insight at year end to focus on my role at SQUER. Through SQUER I also spent a year as interim Head of Engineering at Österreichische Post.

One rule has held through all of it: I don’t propose a plan I couldn’t staff and run myself.

See the work Read the essays

// What I bring

  1. 01

    Business & technology leadership

    Senior management at MED-EL, reporting to the CEO and CDO, and business unit leadership at SQUER today. In both seats I answered for the budget and the people as well as the technology.

  2. 02

    Building organizations

    Growing an established IT function and building the management layer under it. The test I use: does it keep deciding well when nobody escalates to me?

  3. 03

    Commercial leadership

    Commercial and P&L responsibility at SQUER: what the unit sells, to whom, at what price, and the conversations that close it.

  4. 04

    Applied AI

    I built MED-EL’s internal AI chat myself and extended it with retrieval over internal knowledge. Much of my current work is about AI agents inside delivery teams, and who owns what they produce.

  5. 05

    Security & governance

    Executive sponsor and IT lead for ISO 27001:2022 in part of medical software development, plus hands-on work on security audits. I also publish an AI data-protection reference for DACH.

  6. 06

    Technical judgment

    I still design and build software. It keeps my estimates honest and tells me when a promising prototype is still far from an operational system.

// Education

  1. University of Liverpool

    MSc Information Systems Management (2017 – 2019). Research focused on leadership and an organization’s ability to innovate with technology.

  2. MCI, Management Center Innsbruck

    BA in Economics (2014 – 2017). Studied alongside my IT career, with a thesis on innovation management in IT teams.

// Next step

A confidential conversation.

For executive search, leadership responsibilities, and board or advisory conversations, a direct introduction is enough. Project enquiries have their own route.

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