After obtaining a doctorate through the Technical University Munich chair for communications networks headed by Prof. Dr. Ing. J. Eberspächer, Dr. Winkler joined the public communications network business area at Siemens AG in 1997.

In 2003 he was assigned to head up the communications technology research area at Siemens Corporate Technology. The research activities initially focused on a range of issues, from optical communications, wireless and wired networks and video/multimedia, to multimedia services infrastructures. The focus subsequently shifted to industrial and control networks, embedded networks, application protocols, future Internet and the Internet of Things.

Dr. Winkler has served as Senior Principle for industrial IoT at Siemens Corporate Technology since 2015.

He has been supporting fortiss since late 2019 with the establishment of the Industrial IoT IIoT) research division, the development of various research topics and embedding them in a local research and development environment.