Leadership: The Deep-Tech Task Force

Palaimon is led by a team of experts bridging the gap between high-level academic research and industrial-grade engineering. We don’t just consult—we build, optimize, and secure the infrastructure that powers sovereign AI.

Sonja Strothmann

Managing Director | Strategy & Process Automation

Sonja is the architect of Palaimon’s operational excellence. With over 15 years of experience in digital transformation and process automation across industry leaders like Victorinox, Namics, and the public sector, she specializes in translating complex AI capabilities into tangible business value for government and industrial clients.

Expertise: Digital Transformation Strategy, Public Sector Procurement (Vergaberecht), Requirement Engineering, and Agile Project Leadership (Scrum Master).
Track Record: M.Sc. in Strategic Marketing (Maastricht, Top 10%); Former Group Lead at the Berlin Fire Department; senior leadership roles at Victorinox (Online Operations), Namics (Consulting), and ECC Köln (Market Research); secured >€1.2M in R&D funding for collaborations with BMVI, Hessen Mobil, and Autobahn GmbH.
Focus: Bridging the gap between C-level strategy and technical execution to ensure “Speed to Value” in sovereign AI and public sector digitalization.

Dr. Immanuel Bayer

Head of R&D | PhD Computer Science & Machine Learning

Immanuel provides the “Deep Brain” thinking required for Palaimon’s most complex technical challenges. His pedigree bridges rigorous academic research—including a PhD internship at Google Research—with senior industrial leadership at Swiss Re and New Yorker. At Palaimon, he spearheads R&D in computer vision and imagery analysis, ensuring that our solutions remain at the absolute frontier of Machine Learning performance and mathematical rigor.

Expertise: Deep Learning, CUDA Performance Tuning, Spatial-Temporal Modeling, Stochastic Optimization, and Scalable AI Infrastructure.
Track Record: PhD in Machine Learning (Konstanz) and Dipl.-Ing. (RWTH Aachen). Research Phase: PhD Internship at Google Research (Mountain View); Diploma research at Bayer AG; Lead Architect of fastFM (1.1k+ stars). Industry Phase: Tech Lead at Swiss Re (NatCat Modeling); Staff Data Scientist at New Yorker (Supply Chain Optimization); PI for R&D projects with a total research volumes of >€25M.
Focus: Hardening AI infrastructure for industrial deployment, optimizing on-premise GPU utilization, and steering Palaimon’s strategic R&D roadmap.

Felix Schönenberger

Head of Engineering & Infrastructure Architecture | M.Sc., Information Engineering

Felix architects the low-level environments and high-performance systems that define Palaimon’s technical “Task Force.” Bridging the gap between deep-tech research and industrial-grade production, he specializes in building sovereign, reliable infrastructure optimized for extreme hardware utilization and real-time data processing.

Expertise: Cloud-Native Infrastructure (Kubernetes, Helm), Distributed Systems (Kafka, MQTT), Low-Level Engineering (C99, CAN bus), and Algorithmic Research.
Track Record: M.Sc. in Information Engineering (Grade 1.0); research tenures at ETH Zürich and University of Konstanz; proven track record in migrating enterprise stacks to Kubernetes and optimizing real-time industrial IoT systems.
Focus: Leading “Strategic Architecture” for on-premise AI deployments and supervising the engineering of Palaimon’s autovi and autoStream product lines.

Why Our Leadership Matters

In an era of generic AI wrappers, our leadership team offers Architectural Validation. We are the experts called in when standard IT teams hit a wall with performance-tuning, data sovereignty, or complex implementation on-premise.