Germán Hüttemann

Tech and Product Strategy

I turn capabilities into services, and services into products people keep choosing.

Lead Product Manager, IoT Data Platform at Schneider Electric · Barcelona

The move, repeated since 2006
01

Capability

Something a company built for itself. Valuable, and useless to anyone outside.

02

Service

The same capability, made consumable: an API, a data product, a developer portal.

03

Product

Priced, supported, versioned. Chosen again every year by people who could build their own.

Opening it: the easy halfKeeping it worth depending on: the actual work

Work

Four domains, eight platforms, the same move each time.

4+ years2022–present

Data as a Service

Schneider Electric · Global

Energy data monetized as products that customers, partners and internal teams subscribe to. Federated platform by design: every business unit keeps its own data model, and semantics and ontologies carry the interoperability between them, opening the way to agentic access.

Projects
  • Federated API management
  • Platform developer portal
  • Third-party cloud ingestion
  • Data products, streams & APIs
  • Subscriptions & entitlements
  • Platform notifications
  • IoT alarm management
4 years2018–2022

Commerce as a Service

Nespresso · 35+ markets

A monolithic ecommerce platform transformed into a headless, API-based one, with the governance, developer portal and ownership model that let separate teams ship against it. The closest thing to an internal developer platform in my record.

Projects
  • eCommerce as a Service
  • API openness & ownership program
  • Next Generation eCommerce
  • Developer portal & API governance
  • Identity, cart, checkout & catalogue APIs
8 years2010–2018

Banking as a Service

Paraguay · Saudi Arabia · Mexico · UK

Eight years opening bank cores to the digital world. From the first banking APIs and mobile apps in Paraguay to an entire digital bank defined from scratch for top-tier banks across three continents.

Projects
  • White-label banking API
  • Itaú banking API
  • Mobile banking: iOS, Android, BlackBerry
  • Corporate mobile banking
  • USSD banking & remote account opening
  • Digital banking for Saudi banks
  • New digital bank in Mexico
4 years2006–2010

Library as a Service

Paraguay

Search and cataloguing built once and delivered as a product to libraries nationwide. Where it started, and the same problem in its smallest form: one system, many institutions, none of them able to run it alone.

Projects
  • Library catalogue system
  • Information search portals
All career details on LinkedIn

What I have turned into services

Whole businesses first, then the platform capabilities underneath them, and the work that keeps both alive.

Whole businesses
  • Information search and access
  • Digital banking
  • eCommerce
  • Energy & Industrial IoT
Platform capabilities
  • API management
  • Identity & authentication
  • Accounts & transactions
  • Payments & checkout
  • Catalog & search
  • Ratings & reviews
  • Notifications
  • IoT alarms & events
  • Data storage & access
  • Subscriptions & entitlements
What keeps them alive
  • Product strategy & roadmap
  • Governance & design standards
  • Developer experience
  • Documentation & onboarding
  • Versioning & deprecation
  • Service levels & support
  • Pricing & packaging
  • Adoption & usage metering
  • Community & advocacy

How I execute

Find the product inside the capability

Most of what a company sells was first built for itself. I spot which internal capability has a market, and who pays.

Build for both sides of the interface

Consumer and developer experience are one discipline with two users. I have owned journeys used by millions, and the APIs beneath them.

Run it like a product, not a project

Projects end. Platforms keep earning the teams that depend on them: versioning, service levels, a roadmap negotiated rather than announced.

Build the business case, not just the product

A good product with no business case is an expensive hobby. Who pays, what for, and why now, before anything is built.

How I lead

People grow by getting harder problems rather than more work, and by learning to think better rather than execute faster. The test is whether they outgrow the role you give them: an API tester on my team became the manager for the Automated API Testing suite and unit. What I trust is mastery, explicit trade-offs and honored commitments.

Influence rarely comes from authority. It runs on three things: discussing in the other side's way of thinking and against their metrics, creating small wins because in large organizations momentum is more important than mandates, and building reputation based on credibility, clarity, and predictability.

Blog

How platforms are actually run: intake, ownership, governance, and the parts of product management that only show up at scale.

All posts on Substack