Michael Baumgärtner

Software & IT Infrastructure Development

Potrait von Michael Baumgärtner

About Me

I am currently studying at the TUM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and writing my Master Thesis at BMW. In 2024 I got accepted into the BMW Fastlane Scholarship Program, which offers Master students unique opportunities to explore the BMW Group and different areas within BMW. 

In 2021 I got accepted into the Global Engineering Education Exchange Program. This enabled me to go abroad to the University of Florida (USA). In 2019 I graduated with a Bachelor degree in Management and Engineering at Technical University Munich (TUM) with main focus on Electrical and Computer Engineering. I spent 5 months abroad at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. During this time I focused on Computer Engineering and International Trade. 

Currently I am the head of IT at HIO-Fitting GmbH, which I joined as one of the first employees. Since my start I worked on various different projects, but mainly on iOS-Apps (Swift), Cloud (Google Cloud), On-Premise Servers (Linux). I am also responsible for data analytics and now have a team of 3 developers working on increasing the reach and stability of the infrastructure.

In my first bachelor thesis I dealt with the integration of machine learning and IoT into the supply chain of companies. In my second bachelor thesis I setup and implemented a pipeline for the accurate determination of (virtual) sensor settling times and their scientific analysis. In my master thesis I perform an analysis of current performance of Vision Language Models (VLM) for context generation on infrared imagery inside of a car and fine-tune a model based on the results.

In my free time I enjoy playing golf, football and skiing during the winter months. I am also playing in the golf team at TUM and played football at UBC.

I have great interest in 3D-Printing, CAD-Modeling, DIY drones and technological progress in general.

Experience

Since 07/2023

HIO Fitting GmbH

Head of Software and IT infrastructure development

Leading multiple development teams focused on creating innovative software solutions.

Overseeing company-wide IT infrastructure, encompassing applications in production, sales, supply chain management, and customer relationship management (CRM).

Programming Languages: Swift, Python, C, Javascript

04/2024 - 09/2025

BMW Group Fastlane Scholarship

The „BMW-Fastlane“ scholarship program is a performance-oriented program to support high-performing and highly motivated students during their master’s studies. Participants in this program are expected to show above-average commitment, above-average performance, and a high degree of initiative throughout the entire duration of the scholarship contract. Components of the program include personality training, pitch training, brand and customer training, semester workshops, plant assignments, and practical assignments in various departments.

Departments: 

JC-95: Development GenAI Architecture for future car platforms

EG-21: Supervision and further development of series-production vehicles

DE-20: Concepts and Innovation for the next digital car development

Programming-Languages: Python, C++, VBA

09/2023 - 03/2024

Audi AG

Research-Internship in the Virtual Production Planning-Department

– Development of an autonomous 3D-Scanning Method for the production plants of the AUDI AG

– Testing of different Scan methods and Scanners

– Testing of different autonomous transport vehicles (SPOT, ANYmal, AGV, Conveyors)

Programming Languages: Matlab, Python

03/2022 - 12/2022

BMW Group

Research-Internship in the Autonomous-Driving-Department

Implementation of a validation pipeline of Reprocessing Units for faster feature development, quality assurance and ISO-certification. Feature development for the area “Reprocessing as a Service” (RaaS) and Feature development for the area “Reprocessing validation” (RDIFF)

Programming Languages: C++, Python, Java

10/2018 - 07/2023

HIO Fitting GmbH

Software Development Specalist

Development of IT-Infrastructure, which includes production, sales, supply-chain-management and customer-relations management applications. 

Programming Languages: Swift, Python, C, Javascript

10/2017 - 10/2018

HIO Fitting GmbH

Head of Software and IT-infrastructure development

Responsible for the development of production & sales applications. 

Programming Languages: Swift, Python

01/2017 - 09/2017

Wrangel Real Estate

Preparing meetings by researching, evaluating and analyzing data.
Assisted with sorting and collecting 1000s of data points for the internal data base.

Social Commitment

Since 10/2019

Volunteer internship at Mantahari Oceancare

Helping to reduce pollution in the oceans through support of the Marine Megafauna Foundation (MMF), which is a marine conservation organization that conducts research and science to educate the public and the Indonesian government about the causes of the problem of polluted oceans and to combat the problem at source.

Since 12/2017

Volunteer Ski instructor

Education

03/2025 - 08/2025

Master Thesis at BMW Group

Topic: Bridging the Gap: Fine-Tuning Vision-Language
Models for Infrared Image Understanding in the Automotive Context

• Benchmarking and fine-tuning state-of-the-art Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for automotive edge devices, focusing on infrared and RGB imagery.

• Enhancing VLM performance through custom prompt engineering and infrared dataset development for improved real-time automotive applications.

10/2023 - 08/2025

M. Sc. Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technical University Munich

01/2023 - 05/2023

Bachelor Thesis at BMW Group

• Setup and implementation of a pipeline for accurate determination of settling time for Reprocessing Units (RPUs)

• Adjustment of the existing reprocessing pipeline to simplify validation and recording of settling times

• Analysis and scientific breakdown of sensor settling times

08/2021 - 12/2021

Study exchange with the Global Engineering Education Exchange Program (E3) at University of Florida, United States of America

10/2019 - 09/2024

B. Sc. Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technical University Munich

06/2019 - 09/2019

Bachelor Thesis at HIO Fitting GmbH

• Implementation of an autonomous procurement system using LSTM-Neural Networks for predictive procurement to improve the supply chain processes.

08/2018 – 12/2018

Term abroad at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

10/2016 – 09/2019

B. Sc. Management & Technology at the Technical University Munich

2008 - 2016

Abitur at Staatl. Wilhelmsgymnasium München

Skills

Programming Languages

Swift 95%
Python 93%
Javascript 81%
C ++ 75%
Java 60%
HTML 50%

Software / Frameworks / Cloud / Dev Tools

Firebase Database 90%
UNIX (Linux, MacOS) 80%
Github & CI/CD Pipeline Tools 79%
Google Cloud 78%
GenAI (LLM, VLM, Adapters) 75%
Solidworks 75%
Apache 2 / Flask 66%
Airflow 64%
ROS 63%
AWS 40%

miscellaneous

05/2021

Winner of GPT-3 Makeathon @ TUM.ai

Winner of a GPT-3 Makeathon with a jury from Microsoft, IBM, OpenAI, TUM Venture Labs, appliedAI).
Project Mediport:
Creation of an easy to read and interactive report, which a doctor (specifically dentist) can generate automatically from the patients data, directly out of the patient management software. The aim is to empower the patient, give him more health awareness and therefore cares more about his health. This should lead to lower costs for health insurance companies, because preventing health issues is cheaper than curing them.

Presentation: Youtube Link to Presentation

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