Heiko Schilling
Manager of Research and Development
"It's rare to be able to apply your university knowledge in such
a direct way."
"I have three teams to manage in international locations, and
there's usually about 30 to 35 projects on the go at one time. I'll
be technical lead on some of them, so I may design software, and
talk with various people or business units to establish the
requirements. I'm mainly discussing roadmaps for projects as well
as defining projects, getting them started and keeping them on
track.
"The work I did for my Computer Science and Maths PhD fitted my
current role perfectly - particularly since I completed one topic
solely on navigation. I'd heard a lot about TomTom before applying
and I knew plenty about the work they did in the technology world.
But I didn't know much about the company itself. I started at the
Berlin office three years ago and in those days there were only
four people and they'd only been going a month. Everything was very
flexible, as there was no structure yet, so it was quite
interesting. Everyone was working on everything. It was more like
fun than work!
"Berlin was quiet but when I came to Amsterdam, it was a lot
more hectic. It's the centre of the company so you can talk to
people at all levels, and really get to know the company. Over the
years, it's become really big and very international. But even so,
you can still talk to anybody, it still feels like a family."