In this episode of The Techne Connect, Youssef Demitri, VP of Engineering at Wingtra, lifts the lid on building robots that map the world at scale. He explains how Wingtra’s end-to-end platform spans hardware, firmware and software to turn vast sites into accurate 2D and 3D digital twins for construction, mining and environmental monitoring.
He shares what his day really looks like, switching between long-term strategy and hands-on technical decisions, and why reliable hardware at scale is so hard to achieve. He traces his journey from Egypt to Germany and ETH Zurich, the early breakthroughs in VTOL design, and the lessons that come from seeing a product through from research to widespread use.
We dig into customer-led innovation, systems thinking, and why great engineers balance constraints rather than chase complexity. He highlights data skills as future-critical, the practical role of AI, and a powerful search-and-rescue use case. He also offers grounded career advice and the skills Wingtra is hiring for across the full stack.