Sebastian "rash" Gepperth(en: they|he, de: er)

As Head of Product I led development of a new content workflow automation platform combining deterministic text generation and generative AI, shipping from prototype to first production customer in six months through rapid prototyping and short feedback cycles. I owned the product vision and roadmap, validated decisions through user research, market analysis, and customer interviews, and worked closely with Customer Success and Linguistics specialists to stay ahead of customer requirements.
I grew and led a cross-functional development team of up to 8 engineers, setting technical direction while mentoring team members and onboarding new hires. I translated technical complexity for non-technical stakeholders and discussed roadmaps and project progress with leadership.
Over nearly 10 years I evolved through multiple roles at AX, from UX Designer and Frontend Engineer to Principal Engineer and Head of Product. Along the way I redesigned the core product for intuitive onboarding and reduced learning curves, built an in-product tutorial system enabling non-developers to use the platform, developed analytics dashboards with interactive usage metrics, and designed complex system architectures including real-time collaboration systems, a WASM-based workflow runtime, and an operational transformation library.

Co-created an open-source virtual conference platform as both a community project and SaaS product, hosting over 400 events for conferences, meetups, and communities. I focus on product design and frontend development, shaping the user experience for organizers and attendees. The platform supports live streaming, chat, networking features, and interactive sessions.

For Onventis’ procurement platform I implemented and shipped a redesign of their catalog management component together with another new hire.

Co-founded a software agency building custom applications, primarily in the medical field. Scoped projects with clients, translated requirements into technical plans, and shipped on tight timelines with a small team.

Starting with freelance web design, I’ve been working with a wide variety of companies, technologies and problems, from CMS like Drupal, browser-based point-of-sale systems, and desktop applications with Java or .NET. I care a lot about strong communities and diversity, doing a lot of mentoring and creating safe spaces.