A Coffee With… Daniel Meyer, CTO, Camunda

Daniel Meyer is that rarest of things in the modern tech world: A one-company man. The Camunda CTO joined the process orchestration firm when he was still at university. At the time, the German startup had only a handful of employees and initially offered consultancy around process management.

In fact, Meyer says he played a key role in the decision of founders Bernd Ruecker and Jakob Freund to build the Camunda platform, which launched in 2013, and helps businesses manage their processes.

Now CTO, Meyer is focussed on how Camunda’s clients – which include some of the world’s biggest banks – can leverage generative AI and large language models to make their process orchestration more automated.

He sits down for a coffee with TI at Camunda Con in Amsterdam, where he has just given a keynote presentation on this automated future.

You’ve talked a lot about agentic AI and said it shouldn’t just be an add-on. Can you explain that view?

Many enterprises are progressing from manual work to local task orchestration, then to full process orchestration — and agentic AI is following a similar path. Initially, it was seen as a human assistant, suggesting next steps or managing outcomes within case management systems. That’s helpful, but not true automation.

We’re now seeing task agents that handle isolated problems, like connecting two systems or replying to emails. But the real potential lies in moving agentic AI to the process layer, where it can guide end-to-end workflows. At this level, it doesn’t just make tasks more efficient — it can eliminate some entirely.

Eventually, agentic AI can support entire business processes: how an enterprise serves customers, collaborates with suppliers, and operates. That’s where the real transformation happens.

AI has evolved rapidly and there are many models out there – how can you support this complexity?

Our existing orchestration and automation platform makes it easy to handle the complexity of AI models. Instead of hardcoding every step, we create entry points where AI can make decisions within the process.

Our flexible connector framework also integrates seamlessly with LLMs (and we are LLM agnostic) allowing us to embed them without reinventing the wheel. These connectors plug directly into the orchestration engine, which manages the overall flow and determines the next steps.

Camunda is a relatively small company in a huge market. What have been the biggest challenges in taking the next step up?

Our biggest challenges are twofold. The first is helping people to understand the value of end-to-end process orchestration. While this is gaining prominence, it is not a battle that has been won, because you still see many organisations only thinking on the local task level.

The second challenge is helping our customers articulate the value of this approach to the wider business. To help them communicate why you can drive exponentially more value with this approach than using something more off the shelf.

What inspired you to get involved in tech?

I initially wanted to become a sound engineer, having built a home studio and recorded with a band. But lacking formal music training, I pivoted toward software engineering — I’d always been coding and was fascinated by the technical side of sound. While studying at the University of Potsdam, I started a design company that sparked my interest in workflow engines, eventually leading me to Camunda. I joined the company as a student, and after graduating, took on more responsibility over time.

Do you still dabble in music?

I am a drummer, but I took a bit of a break with music because I was writing code all the time. Around two years ago I started playing the drums again and last year I started to learn to play the guitar.

What is the main thing you do to relax outside of work?

I really enjoy cooking because it is the opposite of what I do inside work. When I make decisions at work, they have consequences, but when I am cooking it is more ephemeral – it is this creative thing, and when it is gone, all that is left if the memory.

It also involves learning technique and there is a gear factor, where you can buy all kinds of equipment such as knives or appliances.

Do you have a go-to dish that you like to cook?

I live in Boston, Massachusetts, close to the coast, so something I like to make is a lobster salad. I go down to the beach and buy the lobsters and then cook them up, and I like to try to do something different with the salad every time.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned while working at Camunda?

I have been there for the entire journey. From learning how to build a scalable system, on the engineering time, but also building a team, and how to manage that as it grows.

I had to learn how to hold people accountable for skills I might not have myself, such as product design.

One of my biggest lessons is not to get distracted by hype, or what analysts say, but instead to follow the customer. Stay true to the vision that we have while also asking: What do they need?

We did that with agentic AI. Initially it wasn’t clear to us what our agentic orchestration vision was. We saw that many other vendors were leaning in that direction but recognised that our approach is different. We wanted to build it right into our existing orchestration framework – that was something people didn’t get in the beginning, but it is working well.

How do you take your coffee?

I’m a bit of a coffee snob: I like Italian coffee, so when I get up in the morning, I will immediately make cappuccino, and I have my fancy coffee machine at home. It is interesting, because I live in the US now, and it’s hard for me to start the right sort of Italian coffee beans, but I’m getting there.