Dirk Hoke was appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Airbus Defence and Space in April 2016 and also serves as a member of Airbus’ Executive Committee.

Before joining Airbus Defence and Space in January 2016, he had worked at Siemens, where he held various executive-level positions. His career spans 25 years and five continents in various industries, often focusing on digitalisation.

Dirk began his professional career in 1994 as Research and Development Engineer for process and software analysis in the automotive industry at Renault in Paris.

In 1996, he joined Siemens through an international trainee programme with assignments in Germany, Argentina and Austria. Less than a year after completing the trainee programme, he took over his first management position in the Transportation Systems Division. In 2001, he was tasked with leading a restructuring team to transform a light rail factory in Sacramento. Following this successful turnaround, he served from 2002 to 2005 as General Manager for the Transrapid Propulsion and Power Supply Subdivision – which also encompassed the Shanghai “Maglev” project. He was then promoted to President of Siemens Transportation Systems China based in Beijing, after Siemens became the country’s largest foreign railway supplier.

Dirk Hoke moved to Morocco in 2008 and was appointed the first Siemens CEO in Africa a year later. He returned to Germany in 2011 to become the Division CEO of Industrial Solutions, where he was tasked with building up the services business for the Industry Sector – including the digital platform business (now known as MindSphere). He was later called upon to restructure the Large Drives Business Unit.

He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Brunswick, Germany.

Dirk Hoke was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader Class of 2010, and went on to become a member of the Baden Baden Entrepreneur Talks in 2013. He is on the Presidential Board of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), and in January 2020 was elected President of the BDLI, the German Aerospace Association. He is also a member of the boards of Bitkom and AmCham Germany.

Born on 2 April 1969, Dirk Hoke is married with two children.