2025. 11. 07.
Professional excellence is not just a matter of knowledge – it’s about inner motivation, humility, and a passion for progress. Zoltán Komáromi’s story shows how an engineering career can become a true mission.
How and when did your career at Audi begin?As an electrical engineer, I was always looking for development challenges, so it never crossed my mind that I could one day work for Audi Hungaria – I assumed they only hired mechanical engineers. Then a manager at Audi, whom I already knew, was building a team of electrical engineers for the new vehicle plant. The goal was to focus on electronic systems and vehicle analysis. They reached out to me, the opportunity sparked my interest and I said yes.
I started in the summer of 2011 in quality assurance, where my main task was analyzing cars that returned from internal and external test drives with faults. Although this wasn’t classic development engineering, system-level thinking was a huge advantage here as well.
Nearly fifteen years have passed since then, but I still remember the moment I first sat in an Audi model. My colleagues were testing the interior lighting of a TT with special instruments, and I just sat there, observing – and began to understand why this four-ring brand had always fascinated me, even before I truly got to know it.
Did you feel right away that you were in the right place – both in the car and in your job?
Yes. Mainly because our team was full of young, motivated colleagues, and our work brought new challenges every day. We dealt with issues that sometimes occurred during test drives – and reproducing them wasn’t always easy. At that time, I specialized in engine electronics for internal combustion engines. From 2011 to 2014, I worked in Győr and trained myself in engine electronics. Then came an offer to go to the USA and later to Germany to support the launch of the A3 Sedan and TT models as an analysis engineer.
That was in 2014. After four months overseas, I began a two-year assignment in Germany for the TT market introduction. When the assignments ended, I became a team leader and stayed in quality assurance until 2020. During this period, we successfully completed a multi-year project that enabled wireless reading of fault memory in control units using our own electronics. The CarAllIn system came to life through a collaborative brainstorming process with two of my colleagues. This modernized a task required at both the start and end of test drives, sped up the process, and delivered significant cost savings.
As you already mentioned, five years ago you changed fields. Where did you move, and why?
I moved to technical development, where I started working on power electronics, focusing on electric motor control. There were several reasons for this change. Previously, I had joined a leadership program with managerial ambitions. Although my indicators were positive, I realized that professional commitment mattered more to me than that path. I left the program and understood I needed new impulses and fresh technical challenges, so I made the switch.
The new area aimed to develop inverters for vehicle drives in-house instead of sourcing them externally. During COVID, I spent five months in Ingolstadt under travel restrictions, working on the MEBeco project. My responsibility was to design the end-of-line test concept for our in-house power electronics. This work was closer to development engineering, which made it feel more natural – and it was unique within the VW Group. Today, four sites collaborate on this, and our workload keeps growing. Five years ago, power electronics started with just a few people; now it’s an independent department with forty employees.
Two years ago, something interesting happened in my career. The chief engineer in the hardware development team asked me to support them, then went on two months of parental leave – and never returned. Since then, I’ve been the lead designer for the electronics of our first in-house inverter to go into series production (MEB ECO).
Alongside technical expertise, professional humility is equally important. The more we know, the more we realize how much we still don’t know – which is why lifelong learning and openness to new ideas are essential.
A core element of my personality is the desire for continuous improvement. As an engineer, system-level thinking is especially important to me because it helps me see the big picture, understand the complexity of tasks, and set priorities correctly. Reliability is just as crucial: completing the tasks I commit to on time. If, for any reason, that’s not possible, I believe in communicating this promptly – because that preserves credibility, which is also a key value for me.
Is this how someone becomes a true professional and a role model for colleagues?
Effective work requires good communication with colleagues – and, above all, loving what you do. Because if you have professional passion, inner motivation, and the right attitude, progress and tangible results will follow.
What makes your work beautiful?
In hardware development, we create tangible products, and testing and commissioning are part of our tasks. We even built a fully functional e-lab on our own initiative – and have already outgrown it, which shows how much we’ve developed. I’m proud that our achievements in power electronics have put Győr on the VW Group’s development map. Today, we’re seen as an equal development site. These results make our work rewarding, and our electronic footprint will be present in every car we produce. That’s not just a professional success but also a personal motivation – as an engineer, I get to work on solutions that truly make the world better.
How do you see your future and the future?
Seeing the upcoming projects, I’m excited about the period ahead. We are on the brink of significant progress; within the Group, the world of electronics is still at the very beginning – both in terms of development and manufacturing technology. The same applies to our team in Győr, which has already achieved results that allow us to take on larger, more complex task packages. A huge step forward would be if we could handle complete power electronics development from here in Győr.
I believe it’s always worth raising the bar – while realistically assessing our knowledge and capacities. This is how we can keep learning, growing, and stepping out of our comfort zone. To do that, we need to recognize opportunities, understand the “playing field,” and, of course, believe in ourselves, our colleagues, and each other.
I guess it’s important to switch off sometimes…
To avoid burnout, it’s essential to close the laptop – though I can’t always turn off the “problem-solving button” in my brain during free time. Even in unexpected places and moments, I see things that I immediately connect to my work. Besides mental fatigue, I like to get physically tired too – DIY projects, gardening, and sports help with that. Swimming is one of my favorites. True, I fight monotony by keeping my mind busy while I swim…
Check out our video with Zoli as well, click the play button to watch:
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