CV & experience · Copenhagen

Build useful things.
Grow strong teams.

I’m Peter Merkert. A founder and engineering leader who cares about people, products and how the two grow together.

From rendering LEGO games to scaling an engineering organisation, I’ve worked across the details of software and the broader decisions that help a company move forward. Today I’m building Viamente in Copenhagen.

Explore my experience ↓
Peter Merkert
Peter Merkert
Based in Valby, Copenhagen

30 peopleEngineering organisation at Retraced

4 teamsIncluding leadership through directors

Product + peopleEngineering, product, design and UX

The work so far

Experience

April 2026 — present

Founder & Managing Director

Lygge Studios / Viamente ↗Copenhagen, Denmark

  • Building Viamente, an AI-assisted travel-planning product that brings ideas, preferences and practical constraints into one coherent trip.
  • Own product direction, architecture and delivery. Build with AI-assisted development, primarily Codex, and use product feedback, usage and API costs to guide decisions.

2019 — January 2026

Co-Founder, CTO & CISO

Retraced ↗International B2B SaaS

  • Scaled engineering to around 30 people across four teams, including leading directors. Also led colleagues across product, design and user experience.
  • Connected technical priorities to business objectives, developed leaders and gave teams clear responsibilities and room to make decisions. As a co-founder, also supported marketing and sales when fellow founders were away.
  • Led technical direction and information security, including ISO compliance, as the company grew internationally.
  • Coded regularly until the team reached around eight people in 2020. My role then focused on people leadership and strategy, with coding mainly in personal projects.

2017 — 2019

Lead Frontend Developer

SalamantexTulln, Austria

  • Led front-end development for cryptocurrency payment terminals across web and Android.

2017 — 2018

SaaS Developer

LemundoHamburg, Germany

  • Full-stack development for SaaS products.

2016 — 2017

Junior Render Tech Programmer

TT GamesWilmslow, United Kingdom

  • Worked on rendering technology for LEGO Worlds and LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
  • Game development shaped how I think about performance: measure first, understand the system and care about the experience people actually have.

2014 — 2015

ERP Developer / Project Lead

CCS ChinaZhongshan, China

  • Adapted ERP systems across material planning, customer service and supply chains. Learned how software decisions connect to day-to-day operations across a business.

2013 — 2014

Thesis Student & Working Student

SAPKarlsruhe, Germany

  • Performance engineering and computer-science research.

How I lead

Culture Culture Culture.

Shared values, clear responsibilities and a growth mindset. I spend time with each direct report to clarify expectations and help them grow.

Everyone should feel empowered to bring out the best version of themselves. Everyone should understand how their contribution matters to the company and its business objectives, especially in the age of AI, where the risk is that everyone becomes an output machine.

A decision in practice

Give AI the context it needs.

In mid-2025 at Retraced, we consolidated 15 backend microservices into a monolith in about a week. We also brought the backend and two React frontend apps into one repository: a mobile widget for shops and a user-facing dashboard.

The aim was to prepare for more AI-assisted code generation. One checkout gave the tools better context across the system, helping us work towards more coherent, less error-prone generated code. This was both a change to the backend architecture and a change to how we organised the code.

Foundations

Education & recognition

2015 — 2016 · Newcastle University

MSc Computer Game Engineering

Best-performing MSc student. Philip Merlin Prize for an outstanding master’s dissertation.

2011 — 2014 · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

BSc Computer Science

Final grade: 1.4 in the German grading system.

Deutschlandstipendium, supported by SAP and Pilz. Selected for SAP FastTrack.

At home in Copenhagen

Still learning.

I speak German natively and English professionally, and I’m actively learning Danish. Since 2026, I’ve volunteered with Kulturens Frivillige at cultural events.

I enjoy sharing practical lessons from building software and leading teams. My talks cover AI, architecture and what happens when new technology meets the real world.

Explore talks and recordings ↗

Let’s talk.

About building a product, growing a team, or making AI useful in everyday work.

peter@merkert.ai ↗LinkedIn ↗