Eike Hein
Chief Architect at KDE
Berlin, Germany
Summary
👤
SeniorEike Hein is a seasoned chief architect and open-source stalwart with 21 years of experience designing and shipping software across desktops, automotive infotainment, smartphones, gaming handhelds and industrial HMI. Based in Berlin, he currently leads architecture for Mercedes‑Benz's next‑generation MBUX and has driven the platform's adoption of open-source components like Wayland to improve interoperability and robustness. A top contributor and former KDE maintainer, he helped shape KDE Plasma's core UI, won recognition for application maintainership, and serves as Vice President of KDE e.V., where he grew sponsorship and community engagement. He pairs hands‑on coding (from UI refinements to backend tooling such as a pastebin helper for bpython) with team building and strategic leadership. His career blends product delivery at scale with deep platform-level engineering and community-facing stewardship. Less obvious: he has repeatedly transitioned large projects across major stacks (Subversion→git, X→Wayland)—a sign of practical experience leading complex technical migrations.
20 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
English, German, Korean
Github Skills (21)
debug10
python10
qtquick10
ui-design10
subprocess10
uid10
front-end-development10
bpython10
configuration-management9
error-handling9
url-parser8
cprogramming-language8
api8
user-interface8
url-validation8
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
KDE/plasma-desktop
Apr 2014 - Aug 2019
Plasma for the Desktop
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:1115 commits in 5 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Eike primarily contributed to the UI development of the Plasma Desktop, with changes focused on visual enhancements and user interaction improvements within the window management components. They addressed several usability issues by implementing new features and fixing bugs related to the tab bar and other aspects of the user interface. The contributions demonstrate a focus on enhancing the overall user experience through refined UI and feature implementation.
electronlinuxc-plus-pluschromeosdesktop
bpython/bpython
May 2012 - May 2012
bpython - A fancy curses interface to the Python interactive interpreter
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:18 commits in 1 day
Contributions summary:Eike primarily contributed to enhancing the `bpython` interactive interpreter by implementing a pastebin helper feature. This involved adding a configuration option for an external executable to upload code to pastebin services, providing an alternative to the existing XML-RPC method. The user refactored code to improve code quality and added error handling, including URL validation. The contributions increased the flexibility and usability of the pastebin functionality.
pythonpython-interactivebpythoninterpreterfancy
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