Moritz Thomas

I've been building websites since I was 15 — long before I had a job title for it. What started as school-era side projects (a newsletter platform, a CS clan page) turned into a career that's taken me across some of Europe's most interesting digital products: Transfermarkt, EatSmarter, Shop Apotheke, Facelift, UniDays, and today, Hamburg Airport. Along the way I've taken on client work too — sites for a piano teacher, a business coach — and the side projects never really stopped.

My work sits at the intersection of engineering and influence. I'm an expert in React, Next.js, TypeScript, and modern web architecture — but what I find most rewarding is further up the stack: spotting where a grassroots technical idea can change the direction of a whole product, running the PoC, and convincing everyone from UX designers to Vice Presidents that it's the right move.

The clearest example is what I built at UniDays. I proposed a full website rebuild and a modern replacement for their legacy CMS, ran the proof of concept, and then spent months bringing the whole organisation on board — UX, QA, Architects, Commercial, Marketing, the VP of Engineering. The result saved the company around a million compared to off-the-shelf alternatives, and it was done the way I like to work: openly, collaboratively, and with a stack I'm genuinely proud of. That project is also how I moved into architecture.

At Hamburg Airport I'm doing it again at a different scale. I designed and architected an event-driven ESB that replaces a legacy integration layer and distributes data across dozens of airport systems — Kubernetes-native, microservice-based, Node.js at the core. Beyond the engineering, I'm pushing hard on modernising how the organisation builds software, often through high-impact PoCs that span whole business areas, including work with AI.

Outside of work: I play piano, I was in the stands for the 7:1 in Brazil (yes, really), and I have a mild obsession with good food — Hamburg's Michelin-starred restaurants are something of a personal project. I read a lot, travel when I can (Brazil, Bali, the Azores, most of Europe), and I'm genuinely fascinated by science and engineering — not just as a career, but as a subject.