Dietmar Pilz

Director of Technology, Engineering & Quality at European Space Agency

Discussion leader

Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality (D/TEC), European Space Agency (ESA); Head of Establishment, ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands.

Senior European Space Manager with over 20 years of experience in general management, engineering, site leadership, and space systems development. Known for strategic leadership, transformation initiatives, and cross-national team integration.

At ESA, Dr. Pilz leads a team of over 950 staff and 200 contractors, overseeing engineering and quality resources for all missions, R&D programs (GSTP, TDE, Discovery), and ESA’s educational initiatives. He chairs the European Cooperation for Space Standardization and drives ESA’s technology strategy, including AI and serialization centers.

As Head of ESTEC, he manages Europe’s largest space technology center, representing ESA in the Netherlands and overseeing site operations, safety, and public engagement.

Previous Roles: At Airbus Defence & Space, he held leadership roles including Head of Space Chief Engineering, Head of Site Friedrichshafen, and Head of Payloads and Life Support Systems. He led multinational teams, managed large-scale R&D and product lines (Astrobus, Eurostar Neo, OneSat), and spearheaded digital transformation in engineering and data management.

Earlier, he worked in border security systems in Saudi Arabia, naval radar development, and space electronics for TerraSAR-X.

PhD and Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical Engineering (1999, 1994); Postdoc at UCLA; over 25 publications and 10 patents.