About Me
My name is Stylianos Giakoumidis, but people call me Stelios. I am a technology enthusiast with a passion for leadership, product development, and building innovative solutions. Currently working at Spotify leading taxonomy strategy, I bring over 8 years of experience spanning fintech, healthcare, and music industries. I was born in Greece but have lived in Sweden since 2012, when I came to pursue my Master's degree. My academic journey included PhD research in Applied Physics at KTH, where I contributed to 3 scientific publications, including one in Nature Communications.
Product Manager - Engineering Manager - Senior Software Engineer
Currently at Spotify leading cross-company taxonomy strategy across Music, Audiobooks, and Podcasts. Built and shipped the Central Taxonomy Service—a scalable platform powering discovery, search, and AI experiences. Previously scaled teams and platforms at Mindler (engineering manager for Data and Core Platform teams), Record Union (team/tech lead), and several finance companies including Lunar and Qliro. With over 8 years combining hands-on development, engineering management, and technical product ownership, I specialize in building scalable, secure, and compliant solutions for complex domains.
Managing teams is complex and dynamic. It requires empathy, vision and respect. Some people train for it, some people are charismatic, but all continuously learning. Leadership by example is the way to go in my book, people should be inspired not being afraid.
- Website: www.stylianosgiakoumidis.eu
- City: Stockholm
- Country: Sweden
- Degree: Master
Skills
Technical Skills
Leadership & Product Skills
Key Experience
Companies I've had the privilege to work with
Resume
Summary
Stylianos Giakoumidis
Product Manager and Engineering Manager with 8+ years of experience in software development, technical leadership, and product ownership. Currently leading taxonomy strategy at Spotify. Strong background in fintech, healthcare, and data platforms. Proven expertise in building scalable systems, leading cross-functional teams, and driving technical strategy.
- Stockholm, Sweden
- stelios.giakoumidis[at]gmail.com
Education
PhD in Applied Physics
2014 - 2016
KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
X-ray optics research
Master in Engineering Physics
2012 - 2014
KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Specialization in biomedical physics and x-rays computations.
Bachelor in Physics
2003 - 2012
Aristotle Univeristy of Thessaloniki,, Thessaloniki Greece
Specialization of computational physics and bachelor thesis in chaotic phenomena. Studies were delayed because being a professional volleyball player.
Professional Experience
Product Manager & Interim Engineering Manager
Oct 2024 - Present
Spotify, Stockholm, Sweden
- Lead cross-company taxonomy strategy across Music, Audiobooks, and Podcasts—owning the vision, roadmap, and delivery of shared ontologies and services
- Built and shipped the Central Taxonomy Service: scalable platform and API layer that unifies ontological/taxonomical models enabling seamless integrations across Spotify products
- Introduced AI taxonomical curation of content improving editors productivity across markets
- Established Taxonomy Governance framework with centralized workflows for versioning, change proposals, and decision rationale
- Led multidisciplinary team of engineers and taxonomists; defined OKRs and prioritized backlog with strong partner adoption
- Drove cross-domain alignment to reduce duplication, improve interoperability, and accelerate feature teams integrating taxonomy
CTO & Co-founder | Technical Advisor (Concurrent)
Feb 2024 - Present
Swiftmatcher-ai (CTO), FinProdAI (Advisor), Bubbl AB (Consultant)
- Swiftmatcher-ai: Hands-on CTO for early-stage startup using AI to assist recruiters - infrastructure, compliance, security, backend (Python), frontend (Flutter), data analytics, AI fine-tuning and prompting
- FinProdAI: Technical advisor for finance-focused AI products, leveraging expertise in fintech and AI integration
- Bubbl AB: Technical Product Owner, Engineering Manager, and Senior Software Engineer Consultant
Engineering Manager & Technical Product Manager
Apr 2022 - Feb 2024
Mindler, Stockholm, Sweden
- Technical product manager and owner of the Data Platform - reduced GCP costs by 50% and built data governance system
- Technical product manager of Identity Service - investigated and planned migration from AWS Cognito to Auth0
- Responsible for 2 development teams (Data team and Core-Platform team) and their services budget
- Managed Data pipelines, Data Operations and Data Security in GCP with Medical Data Compliant solutions
- Led clinical missions, payments, journaling and identity management initiatives
- Set up processes and ways of working in the team and the organization
Team/Tech Lead
Dec 2020 - May 2022
Record Union, Stockholm, Sweden
- Led core-platform team responsible for royalties, taxes, payments, user subscriptions and music release flow
- Managed team of 4 developers with 1-1s and mentoring; active engagement in product management
- Rewrote .NET Framework and Python services into .NET 5 microservices; migrated from Azure to GKE Kubernetes
- Maintained Python (Flask) microservices and developed Node.js proof-of-concepts for new platform features
- Technologies: .NET 5, JavaScript, GCP, BigQuery, Kubernetes, Python, Node.js, Circle-CI, Google Pub/Sub
Senior Software Developer - Finance Technology
Nov 2019 - Oct 2020
Lunar, Stockholm, Sweden
- Established build and release pipelines, logging, monitoring and alerting tools for production microservices on Azure
- Contributed to development and architecture for critical financial services
- Technologies: C#, Azure, Azure DevOps, Azure Service Bus, Redis, MSSQL, Datadog
Software Engineer - Payment & Credit Systems
Mar 2017 - Apr 2019
Qliro, Stockholm, Sweden
- Payment Service: Built backend task service in .NET Framework 4.5 with RabbitMQ for bank payment transfers
- Credit Decision Engine: Developed microservices in .NET Core with Python, C++, and R components for automated credit decisions using Kafka, RabbitMQ, Protocol Buffers, and Docker
- Notification Service: Created microservices in .NET Core using actor model and event sourcing
- GDPR Management: Built compliance service with ASP.NET Core MVC React, Kafka, Docker, and SQL
Services
A collection of services, repositories, libraries and blogs I have worked over the years