Siemens Digital Industries appoints Dirk Didascalou as CTO

Dr. Dirk Didascalou will become Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Siemens Digital Industries (DI), effective September 1, 2021.

“We are very excited to welcome Dirk — an accomplished technology executive and exceptional leader — to the Siemens team,” said Cedrik Neike, member of the managing board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries. “With two decades of experience in R&D, deep technology expertise in mobile communications, cloud computing and hyperscale architecture, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and IoT solutions, he is the right leader to further accelerate our strategy of merging the digital and the physical worlds.” 

Didascalou joins Siemens from Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he was vice president for the Internet of Things, based in Seattle, Washington. In his new role at Siemens Digital Industries, he will report directly to CEO Cedrik Neike. The CTO function will be leading the overall technology and architecture strategy for DI. Based in Germany, he will have global responsibility and a strong presence in all major regions.

Didascalou will also oversee strategic industrial engagements with partners and joint customer initiatives, for example in the automotive industry. Besides his duties for DI, he will also take on a leading role on the Siemens AG‑wide IoT board, driving digital transformation across all businesses at Siemens.

“I have seen Industrial IoT make a significant impact on many customers as they undergo digital transformation to be data-driven and move at the speed of software. Siemens is both an automation and industrial software leader with a strong engineering culture, and I look forward to joining the company and helping lead this digital transformation for industrial customers, large and small,” said Didascalou. 

Prior to his time at AWS, Didascalou worked for Microsoft as corporate vice president technology. He moved to Microsoft with that company’s acquisition of Nokia Corp.’s Mobile Phones entity, where he held various leadership positions.