Tom George

Volkswagen Digital:Hub is a remote-first, Spain-wide tech hub responsible for delivering strategic digital products across the Volkswagen Group. With a growing team of over 150 professionals, we drive innovation and excellence across brands within the Group.

As Head of the Digital:Hub I lead:

• Strategic Vision & Leadership: Shaping the Hub’s direction to maximize value and foster innovation for Volkswagen Group brands.
• Sustainable Growth: Scaling the Hub in alignment with Group needs by establishing a sustainable operating model and structure.
• Talent Acquisition: Recruiting top-tier talent across Spain to strengthen the Hub’s capabilities.
• Culture Building: Cultivating a high-performance, agile, and autonomous culture, with a focus on delivery-first and remote-first practices.
• Execution of Key Metrics: Driving the implementation and achievement of core OKRs and KPIs to ensure strategic alignment.
• Delivering Business Value: Overseeing a €20M+ portfolio of software development projects from negotiation to execution to reliable delivery of value for our Group
• Technology Enablement: Empowering teams to leverage modern cloud-based technologies, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and cutting-edge web frameworks to drive delivery excellence.

SEAT:CODE is the Barcelona-based tech start-up created in 2019 to disrupt the future of SEAT. Our goal is to foster the digitalization within SEAT to pivot from a successful car manufacturer into an even more successful and efficient sustainable mobility service provider with fans as customers.

As Director of Delivery I was responsible for:

• Strategic orientation of SEAT:CODE to drive maximum value & innovation for SEAT SA and the wider Volkswagen Group
• Growing SEAT:CODE from initial 20 person team to over 250 within 2 years. Establishing and re-establishing structure and operating model to support the growth sustainably
• Creating a strong agile, autonomous & delivery first focused culture which supports our move to remote-first approach
• Identifying, negotiating & responsible for execution of a portfolio of more than 25m+ EUR software development projects for the Volkswagen Group
• Financial turnaround of SEAT:CODE from a loss-making organisation to healthy profit making
• Enabling teams to deliver using modern cloud based technology stacks utilising Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD and modern web frameworks
• Managing successful transition of critical Volkswagen Group systems to SEAT:CODE and their renovation, including Engineering and Product team setup, DevOps & SRE.

Fully responsible for the leading the successful conception, build up and operations of the Volkswagen Software Development Centre in Lisbon, growing the location from zero, including:

• Definition of core HR deliverables (hiring concepts, team setups & structure, contractual, etc)
• Leading the identification, contracting and renovation of appropriate office space
• Growing the team from 2 people to 40+ software engineers, product managers & user experience designers
• Establishing a strong Engineering culture with focal points on delivery, feedback, learning & quality.
• Implementing best of breed operating models and tools such as Lean Software development, Agile XP (extreme programming), Test Driven Development and Design Thinking
• Coached engineering team on sustainable development practices (Modularisation, technical debt, testing strategies, etc)
• Fostering multinational collaboration within the wider Volkswagen Group

Responsible for the conception, build up and management of the Software Development Centre in Wolfsburg.

• Conceived and built the SDC Wolfsburg from the ground up, implementing Agile & Lean processes
• Supported and enabled 'back to tech' strategy within Volkswagen Group IT by hiring and building internal software engineering teams
• Generated real value for business departments within Volkswagen by delivering digital software products across Sales, After-sales, Engineering and Quality areas

Manager responsible for Enterprise Architecture Management, Portfolio Management & Digital Software Product development within Group IT, Sales and Marketing.

Responsible for building a team to deliver Enterprise Architecture management across the Sales and Marketing domain within Volkswagen.

• Collaborated across multiple brands & regions to establish a group wide portfolio of systems in use within the Sales and Marketing domain
• Lead the conception, creation & agreement of a domain model for the Sales and Marketing domain, enabling higher levels of reuse for existing systems and driving standardisation across the Group

• Responsible for leading the definition of BHP Billiton Iron Ore target technology and infrastructure architecture, including technology principles, technology and infrastructure strategy and technology standards
• Responsible for driving large scale change and cost effectiveness through application of strategy and architecture principles
• Provide architecture governance across all technology related architectures developed within BHP

Engaged as Infrastructure Manager for six months, responsible for ensuring availability of BHP Iron Ore’s key ICT infrastructure

• Responsible for the operational availability of BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s ICT infrastructure
• Responsible for ensuring the full ITIL v3 processes within the infrastructure space within BHP Iron Ore