Building it from the ground up: Cegeka's Data & AI Hub

Three years in, Cegeka’s Data & AI team is becoming a hub. What kind of projects are you working on now?
First, I’d like to highlight our main goal: to support customers across industries, from automotive and insurance to pharma and manufacturing — in becoming truly data-driven organizations. How do we achieve that? By delivering services such as data platform setup, dashboarding and BI reporting, data modelling, data migration, generative AI, just to name a few. We also have customers who are in the early stages of their data journey, so they need maturity assessments, proofs of concepts, and innovation workshops. We help our customers gather the right data and transform it into actionable insights.

With 3 team members based in Greece and 6 in Romania, how do you bridge the physical distance? 
Having a strong team culture is vital, and that’s why we hire in cities where we have a physical office. While team members can work remotely when needed, we value regular in-office collaboration (1-2 days per week), when colleagues gather to share knowledge or socialize. Colleagues from Greece and Romania meet in cross-team events that take place in Belgium or the Netherlands. I often travel to Athens and meet my colleagues in our office facing the beautiful Acropolis. Therefore, we have plenty of opportunities to bond.
Besides these valuable face-to-face moments, we connect through our recurring virtual meetings. Greek and Romanian people share a lot of similarities (family and social structures align well), which also helps us grow as one team.

Your team has rich expertise in data engineering, BI development, data analysis and migration. Do technical competences provide enough of an edge in this day and age?
For sure, technical expertise is a must, because it allows us to implement reliable, high-quality software solutions. But technical competences alone are not enough. What truly matters is that our software solutions solve real business problems and bring value to our customers. For example, a beautiful Power BI dashboard is useless if it doesn’t help customers make better decisions. A predictive model on Demand Forecast for a Pharma company is only efficient if it ensures that medicine is available where and when patients need it. That’s why our team always strives to understand the “WHY” behind the request.
Our customers also expect from us the ability to advise them. Some of the companies we work with are just starting their Data journey, so they need more than an IT supplier: they need a strong consultant that can guide them. That’s why consulting is a core skill in our Data & AI team.

Data & AI are changing the world as we know it. How does the team stay on top of technological advancement?
We take learning & development very seriously. Team Leads are equipped with the right coaching skills and budgets so they can actively support the growth of their team members — not just as managers, but as mentors. Every team member is encouraged to take ownership of their development path. We support them through Data Academies (e.g., Architecture, Data Project Management) and Competence Centers (Data Migration, Data Governance, AI, LLM, etc.) spanning several countries.
Moreover, we evangelize Data & AI across the entire company. With the rise of generative AI, interest in data has spread across other IT domains (Infrastructure, Security, Software Engineering, Digital Workplace). That’s why we’re leading the way in building a culture of AI, making Data & AI accessible for everyone in Cegeka.

It sounds like the Data & AI team is focused on all-around growth.
That’s true, and Ioannis Vigkos, a senior Data & AI team member, is someone who truly embodies this growth mindset. Apart from the project work, Ioannis is a co-leader of the Data & AI Guild within the Global Delivery Center and is enrolled in a MSc in Data Science. I want to share with you what Ioannis says about the Data & AI team in Cegeka Greece:

“We stay ahead by committing to disciplined learning and strong fundamentals. We invest in practical upskilling, certifications, and cross-team collaboration. In a world shaped by Data and AI, leadership starts with a growth mindset — learning deeply, thinking critically, and delivering value with clarity and consistency."

Since the team is growing, tell us who would be the perfect fit.

We’re not searching for a “perfect fit” — because our team relies on diversity, curiosity, and learning. Each open role, from data science to AI and strategy & governance, has its own technical requirements. Besides the tech stack, here are 4 qualities we value:

• Consulting mindset: the ability to understand the customer’s needs and taking the initiative to propose approaches.
• Excellent communication: efficient collaboration within the hybrid teams at Cegeka and clear communication with customer non-technical stakeholders – data storytelling
• Bravery & curiosity: the tech landscape is evolving, so we need colleagues to stay up to date on new technologies (AI Agents, LLM, etc.) and comfortably step into new projects and domains.
• Last but not least, we value people who are open, friendly, fun, human. We don’t hire robots because collaboration and empathy are the ingredients that make our team succeed.