Meet MOIA

Join us on a MOIA ride with Moritz.?

We will introduce you to the people behind MOIA and give them the opportunity to share insights about their role and their time at MOIA.?

Hi Moritz! Can you tell us more about how you are making an impact at MOIA, what led you to the role you're in today and what is worth to know about yourself??

I joined MOIA in 2018 to support building the underlying platform and helping the existing teams delivering their services. So, my first contributions have been very technical and we as a team did things like setting up an AWS organization, setting up Kubernetes, central monitoring and alerting, central log aggregation, and supported teams with cloud and especially serverless best practices. ?

To implement for example best practices, you also need to focus on people and leadership and take them on the journey. The things we implemented sound like very technical problems, but a system like MOIA obviously has technical and human components and all need to work together to achieve the goal.?

I also contributed to hiring the right talents, supporting the teams with overarching topics and macro architecture, and then even worked on the organizational setup and the change management needed for this. For example, in 2020 we did a self-selection for our new team setup. But I was also responsible for the personal growth of engineers and chapter leads.?

Also, I did not only focus on platform topics but also supported the teams responsible for the software which enables the operations of the MOIA service, like Fleet Management or the Vehicle Guidance Application. Therefore, as a Director of Engineering I pair with people from our Product organization on roadmaps and goals for the different teams, to align product and tech strategy.??

What was your biggest learning so far in your working life??

This is impossible to answer because I learn all the time. There are so many learning opportunities: from my own mistakes, from things that go wrong and from things that work out great but also from things we did as an organization. I learned that providing a ridesharing mobility service is not easy and that there is complexity in every single detail – especially also when you operate a fleet of vehicles. And this complexity cannot solely be handled by technical systems, one must build a system with humans and technical systems interacting meaningfully and responsibly with each other.?

What changed over the time? What has been preserved at MOIA??

At MOIA for me the main change is that we learned a tremendous number of things. At the same time, we grew and refreshed the organization, so we have even more experts improving the service and knowing all the details of the parts they are contributing to.?

A constant for me at MOIA is, that we have people that really care about the product. They buy into the idea of providing ridesharing, they use it oftentimes or do pairing sessions with our operators (for example drivers) to deeply understand the needs and what works well and what not. Even so the term is not very nice, we do a lot of “eat your dogfood” – not only as customers but also as drivers. The hardest time for me at MOIA was when this flow was disturbed by Corona, but even then we survived the time with no production feedback.?

What’s your must-read, watch or listen for all Software Engineers??

A book that really opened my eyes, because it shows that there are very different approaches to building great software, is “Coders at work” by Peter Seibel. But I also believe that “The Phoenix Project” and “The Unicorn Project” by Gene Kim are great books. And of course there are books like “Accelerate”, “Team Topologies”, “The Field Guide to Human Error” or the Google SRE Books that heavily influenced my thinking and day to day work.??

How do you move? What is your favorite mobility option??

As an engineer the answer is of course: It depends.?

In Hamburg I mainly use the public transportation or my bike and combine it with MOIA when needed. For visiting friends and family in the countryside I use my car – but when I visit people in other larger cities, I take the train and combine it with the local public transportation or car sharing providers.??

Click here to connect with Moritz on LinkedIn.?

Interested in learning more about our career opportunities at MOIA? Learn about our open positions.?