Designer.
Developer.
Product Manager.

I'm Liam Hess — a Product Owner who thinks in products, designs in Figma, and builds with code. 3+ years at ZEISS shipping an app with 200,000+ downloads. Currently exploring AI as the next layer of how products get made.

Bonn, Germany
liamskydamien@gmail.com
liamhess.dev
Get in touchSee my work
liam@world — zsh — 78×24
~/liam-hess❯
01 / About

From customer service to product owner — through design and code.

// the journey

I started in customer service at Carl Zeiss Consumer Products in 2020 — answering tickets, tracking issues, and building an internal JIRA workflow when I saw a process gap. That’s where I learned what users actually struggle with.

While studying Business Information Systems, I freelanced as a web designer and developer for four clients — owning everything from requirements to deployment. Design, code, scope — all on me.

In 2023 I joined the ZEISS Secacam team as a designer and quickly grew into a Proxy Product Owner role. In 2024 I became the official Product Owner for the mobile and web app — an app with over 200,000 downloads.

That journey through every adjacent discipline is the foundation I bring to product: I can talk to engineers in their language, design with the team, and still keep my head on the roadmap.

200K+
app downloads across mobile & web at ZEISS
3+ yrs
shipping product at ZEISS Group
6+
countries spanned by teams I've led
1.2
B.Sc. grade — top 20 in 10 years of program
02 / Toolkit

What I work with.

// 3 disciplines, 17 tools
Product
Product ManagementRoadmap ManagementStakeholder ManagementUser ResearchSCRUMJIRAConfluence
Design
UX DesignFigmaPrototypingDesign SystemsLocalisation
Engineering
React NativeReact.jsTypeScriptNext.jsJavaSpring BootSQL
04 / Work

Selected projects.

// owned, designed or built
ZEISS Secacam app icon
// flagship product

ZEISS Secacam

iOS · Android · Web — 200,000+ downloads — Product Owner since 2024

A trail camera is only as good as the app behind it. Secacam moves every capture from the forest to your pocket in seconds, then lets AI do the sorting — which species, which night, which corner of the territory.

App Store screenshot: camera overview showing the service plan, remaining transmissions and a grid of subscribed cameras. Headline on the image (English): “Manage & operate your cameras”.
Every camera, its status and its plan on one screen.
App Store screenshot: remote camera settings for sensitivity, flash mode, photo size and video recording. Headline on the image (English): “Change your camera settings remotely”.
Capture, photo and video settings changed without leaving the house.
App Store screenshot: photo gallery grouped by date with an active “Animal & Object” filter and detection boxes on the thumbnails. Headline on the image (English): “Filter based on Animals”.
The AI filters a full gallery down to the species you care about.
App Store screenshot: in-app video player showing two deer at night, with download, share and favourite actions. Headline on the image (English): “Videos directly in your app”.
Full HD video streamed straight into the app.
App Store screenshot: a colourised night capture of a deer with an AI detection box around it. Headline on the image (English): “Animal Recognition & Color the Night”.
Color the Night turns a greyscale infrared shot into a lifelike night image.
App Store screenshot: satellite map view showing the camera’s attachment location with an “Open in Maps” button. Headline on the image (English): “Track your camera”.
SecaTrack reports the camera’s GPS position every ten minutes.
App Store screenshot: the same photo gallery rendered in dark mode. Headline on the image (English): “Darkmode available & in 20 Languages”.
Dark mode, and twenty languages.
Open the case studyView on the App Store
Coming soon

Something new with ZEISS

Announcement soon

The next ZEISS project is already in the works — same team, new product surface. Details are still under wraps.

ZEISSIn progress
R&D

Dynamic Localisation System

Bachelor's Thesis · Grade 1.2

Built a system enabling real-time UI and feature adaptation per region without an App Store / Play Store release — feature flags + Lokalise + Unleash.

React NativeUnleashLokaliseFeature Flags
Web

ZDH-ZERT Website Redesign

Sole designer & developer

Led the full redesign from concept to launch. Newsletter pipeline end-to-end, plus automated certification forms that cut manual entry.

WordPressUXAutomation
Client work

Freelance — 4 client sites

Design + build, end-to-end

Custom sites across four industries while studying — including a fully functional e-commerce store. Owned requirements, design and implementation.

WordPressFigmaE-Commerce
Internal tooling

JIRA Issue Tracking Process

Process design

Designed and rolled out an internal problem-tracking workflow in JIRA at ZEISS Consumer Products that measurably improved team response times.

JIRAProcessOps
05 / Side projects

Things I build outside of work.

// festival app · thesis · uni · exploration
Yourt app icon
// personal project

Yourt

iOS · Android · Web — solo build in 3 weeks — zero to one with AI

“Which artist are you going to see?” — the one question a festival weekend keeps producing, and the one nobody could answer without a dozen screenshots in a group chat. Yourt puts the lineup, your friends and the shared money in one app.

App screenshot: home screen with a “Recommended now” card for a live act and a “Friends right now” row showing which friend is at which stage.
What is on right now, and where the crew is standing.
App screenshot: festival timetable by stage and day, with marked sets highlighted and friend avatars on the acts they are attending. Headline on the image (English): “Same festival, same plan.”
Mark a set, and see who else in the crew marked it.
App screenshot: map of the festival site with stages, food courts, shared pins and live friend positions. Headline on the image (English): “Lost your friends?”
Friends, stages and shared pins on the actual festival grounds.
App screenshot: shared shopping list with a progress bar, items still needed and items already bought, each showing who paid. Headline on the image (English): “How much do I owe you?”
One shopping list the whole group edits.
App screenshot: expenses tab showing your balance, total spent, group total, a “Settle up” button and per-person balances.
Group balances and a settle-up flow at the end of the weekend.
App screenshot: rating screen for a single set with star ratings for music, energy and show plus an optional comment field. Headline on the image (English): “Best set of the weekend?”
Rate each set on music, energy and show.
Open the case studySee the screens

Freedom Calc

Exchange · Vietnam

Web-based financial freedom calculator built with two Vietnamese students. Visualises wealth growth vs. life costs over time and generates an optimised asset portfolio based on Markowitz Portfolio Theory.

TypeScriptReact.jsFinancial Modelling
→ github.com/liamskydamien/freedom-calc

Aldavia — Student Job Platform

Grade 1.0

Student job platform built for HBRS in two sprints with a team of six. I served as Product Owner Proxy, Software Architect, and Programmer.

Spring BootJavaVaadinSCRUM
→ github.com/liamskydamien/Aldavia

IW-Junior Voting App

National competition

Designed a digital engagement layer for a national student company competition — a voting app where event guests could virtually invest in participating startups.

FigmaDesign ThinkingMobile

Something new for freelancers & agencies

Coming soon

An AI-focused project built for freelancers and agencies is taking shape. Not ready to be shown yet — the reveal is coming.

AIFreelancersAgencies
© 2026 Liam Hess · Built with AI and Passion
ImprintCVliamhess.dev

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