Volker Wagener joined Deutsche Welle in 1989. After a time as a politics editor at German public broadcasting radio station Deutschlandfunk, Volker spent five years as head of what was then DW's Croatian Service and later as North Rhine-Westphalia correspondent for Deutschland Radio.
From 2007 onwards, he worked in a number of different posts at DW, including as deputy head of the German-language Central Programming Directorate. He was responsible for Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian at DW from 2019 to March 2024.