Thomas completed his doctorate on liquid crystalline polymers at the University of Ulm in 1993, where he then worked as a post-doctoral researcher. He joined Robert Bosch GmbH in 1995 and was responsible for new functional materials in the Corporate Research until 2003. From 2003 to 2016, Thomas founded and managed the newly established Bosch Lab Systems unit for automation solutions in formulation development (High-Throughput Formulation Systems). Since 2009, he has been responsible for the Engineering Pharma Service department and now additionally the new OSD Customer Center, first at Robert Bosch Packaging Technology and now at Syntegon Technology.