Lars Kordes (DE)
Head of UX Design and UI Development at Hapag-Lloyd
Based in Hamburg, where he is also active in our local design leadership community
Meet Lars at:
Boye Aarhus 26 conference
Track: Design Leadership
Presentation: TBD
Dates: 5 November
About Lars Kordes
Lars is a UX and digital experience leader with more than 14 years at Hapag-Lloyd, where he has built his career around humanizing technology and putting people at the center of enterprise software design.
Lars started at Hapag-Lloyd as an IT System Analyst, handling requirements engineering, concept design, and software development for maritime systems such as equipment steering and maritime operations. He went on to take on Integration Manager and IT Project Manager roles, managing software development projects across container operations, maritime operations, and e-commerce, before moving into UX leadership.
As Head of FIS3 UX Design and UI Development for seven years, and now as IT Director of UX Design and UI Development, Lars has successfully built and led four international teams comprising 30 user researchers, UX designers, and UI developers. His teams focus on designing and developing a modern user interface framework for Hapag-Lloyd's internal freight information system. Lars has been instrumental in establishing DesignOps and embedding user-centered design into product development processes, ensuring the user experience stays front and center in everything the teams build.
Colleagues describe Lars as an exceptionally empathetic leader, known for aligning stakeholders around practical UX strategies and elevating team performance through a collaborative, user-centric leadership style — all while navigating the complexity of large-scale enterprise software critical to a global organization.
About Hapag-Lloyd
Hapag-Lloyd is one of the world's leading shipping companies, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. With a fleet of container ships operating across major global trade routes, Hapag-Lloyd connects businesses and economies by transporting goods across oceans and continents, supporting international trade at scale.
Behind the ships and containers lies a substantial digital operation: coordinating logistics, freight information, and customer-facing systems that keep goods moving efficiently around the world. Hapag-Lloyd has increasingly invested in modernizing these systems, embracing user-centered design and DesignOps practices to make its internal freight and logistics platforms more intuitive and effective — work that touches the daily operations of a genuinely global business.
Past conference appearances
Boye Aarhus 24 conference
Presentation: Design Ops @ Hapag-Lloyd
Track: Design Leadership