Samuel Wittlinger

I joined Rise in 2025, and I now set the technical direction of our projects from the first decisions through to production. The road there started in 2018, when I took my first paid client work while I was still at secondary school. Websites came first. Mobile apps, SaaS products and internal systems followed, and the work kept getting bigger until building complex software was simply the job.

My job sits between the product question and the technical one, and a good part of it is deciding what the team should not spend its attention on. So I start by pinning down what the client is actually trying to solve and what the finished thing has to do. Only then do I put a solution on the table that their business can live with.

Most of the trouble on a project comes from something small that nobody raised in time. So I keep the conversation open and direct, and I would rather ask an awkward question early than explain a surprise later. Communication counts for as much here as the code does. Client, designer or developer, everyone should know where the project is going, why a particular call was made, and what I need from them.