Meet the gridscale team

Henrik is gridscale’s CEO. In this function, he is primarily responsible for the strategic development of gridscale, as well as important partnerships. Henrik has experience of 15 years in the hosting industry. In his last role, he took charge of the international realignment of the dedicated server business of one Europe’s largest hosting companies.

As our CPO, Michael is the central point of contact for our products that turn gridscale into what it is today – from the idea and implementation to the maintenance of existing products. For more than 12 years in the hosting industry, he has always been able to implement ideas with the attitude of “yes, you can””, where others only saw a “it does not work” and “we have always done it this way”.

Torsten is responsible for everything around the data center and operations. He is the guy who keeps our systems running, our network with low latency and takes care of our partners and customers with his awesome team.

Torsten has been working for more than 20 years with Unix and Linux server systems and gained a lot of expertise within the hosting industry. Back in 2005 he founded his first web hosting provider for shared web hosting services. In his previous role he was responsible for the International Network and Systems Department with a competitor.

Nicola is responsible for marketing and, in close collaboration with the founders, contributes above all to increase the brand recognition level internationally. In addition to her successfully completed MBA from the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, she brings along over 10 years of know-how and experience across all important business areas. She could not only prove her organizational and leadership strengths in her previous positions at IBM Germany and State Street Bank – she was also the founder and managing director of her own company, the Kölner Schatztüte.

Frank is responsible for sales and strategic partnerships at gridscale. For more than 30 years, Frank has been at home in the telecommunications-, hosting- and cloud- industries. As a passionate expert, he has been consulting in IT infrastructure projects for years. Frank signs responsible for some of the largest IT infrastructure setups in Europe. Prior to gridscale, Frank has worked at europe's no. 2 managed hosting provider and has accompanied numerous projects there.

Carsten is responsible for our web-backend development team and takes care of a smooth communication between all components. He joined the gridscale’s founder team in 2015 together with his brother Marc. Prior to his studies in computer sciences, he and Marc established the Dittmann Media GmbH in 2004. He has been able to realize his love for modern web technologies in many exciting projects.

With his expertise in the field of web front-end, Marc is responsible for all gridscale web applications. He joined gridscale’s founding team in 2015 with his brother Carsten. In 2004 the brothers established the Dittmann Media GmbH. The know-how and the experience gained from his computer science studies and the many highly complex projects of the past years make him a leading expert in the field of web front-end.

Tobias has been part of the team since the end of 2014 and is responsible gridscale’s figures as our CFO. His love to figures and finance are the common theme of his career – from his apprenticeship as a bank clerk to his diploma in business administration and tax consultancy. His many years of professional experience in tax consultancy and a three-year trip to the commercial audit at KPMG form the solid foundation of his business.

Martin is the lead developer of gridscale and responsible for the choice of software components and the design of the intelligent system architecture. He got to know gridscale through long-term contact with the founders, with whom he has already worked successfully in the past.

Before Martin switched into business world, he worked in the academic field for several years, working on the development of distributed systems, high-performance graph algorithms and databases. Martin is also extremely versatile outside the field of computer science, as his studies of the secondary subjects of physics and psychology show.

Marc is our first native English speaker, he was born in South Africa and worked professionally in the U.K as manager of the I.T and logistics departments for one of the fastest growing companies in the U.K. Having travelled a lot, he brings to the table a great deal of knowledge and capability to expand gridscale even further internationally.

Alida is a working student in software development DevOp. She studies Information Science and Language Technology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Professionally, she also brings techological know-how into the gridscale team. She worked for 2 years as a database / report programmer for a Dusseldorf consulting company and was previously involved in a renowned digital agency based in Dusseldorf Medienhafen in the field of digital marketing for 3 years.

Alida feels in good hands in the digital world and has an affinity to programming.

Marcus supports us as a system administrator in the area of managed hosting. He is primarily responsible for the installation, configuration and maintenance of customer systems. Incidentally, he is responsible for maintaining the monitoring system.

Ben is virtually the right hand of the devil of Torsten and thus also cares for all our productive, development and managed environment. With now more than 20 years of experience exclusively in the IT industry and his great affinity for Linux and general open source products, he has now found his personal Valhalla at Gridscale.

Thomas is driving the expansion of cloud platforms at gridscale. As an old stager of the hosting industry with background in software development and DevOps, he knows both classic and modern ailments and is happy to help out with more than just blows. With his love for scalable infrastructure, he is exactly right with gridscale!

Yannik is responsible for SEO and Analytics and ensures that gridscale is found quickly and easily on the net.
Yannik is currently studying Media Informatics at the University of Cologne.
In addition to studying and working, he is interested in everything related to the Internet and digital culture. Since he later wants to market his own video game, he is in good hands in our professional online marketing department.

IT student Florian supports us in marketing development. He makes sure that our content is well received by you and Google. Incidentally, he has the topic of SEO and Google Analytics in view. Florian loves to get to know new tools and also explains them to you in his tutorials.

Jan created websites and applications while still at school. In 2007 he finally turned his hobby into a profession.
At gridscale he mainly takes care of the frontend of the different panels, but he also likes to help out in the backend and in the area of the website.

Jan became aware of gridscale through an earlier collaboration with Marc Dittmann and got to know the product as an "earlybird" tester in 2015. The wish to contribute a part to gridscale himself he put into action in May 2018 - since then he has been part of our team.

Aldemuro is from indonesia. In 2015, he came to Germany for studying information engineering and computer science before joining gridscale‘s team. Since April 2018 he supports the gridscale team as a software developer. Currently, he´s responsible for extending test cases for our system and maintaining our API client.

Kristina supports us in various areas, especially in general organisation, such as travel and ordering, but also in Feelgood Management. But there is hardly a topic with which one cannot go to her. She has worked in various corporate cultures, brings a lot of experience with her and keeps track of things.

Philo supports Frank as a working student in the Sales team.
She already holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and sociology and is now studying "Culture, Aesthetics, Media" as a Master's student. Since communication with other people is very important to her, she perfectly fits into the sales department.

As Senior Account Manager at gridscale, Lisa is responsible for both new and existing customers. 10 years in the hosting & cloud industry and 9 years in sales of a well-known managed hosting provider - Lisa has a lot of experience and fits perfectly into the dynamic and motivated gridscale team.

As Product Owner Felix is the central point around our products and is responsible that our customers get not only a good but an excellent product. In this role he coordinates between the individual teams and is always at the pulse of time at gridscale.

With his background as a longterm player in the open source scene as well as founder and managing director of an open-source IT infrastructure service provider and hoster, he brings his many years of experience - both technical and commercial - to gridscale at all levels.

When Felix is not active in his gridscale mission, he gets involved as part of the board of the OSB Alliance, attends conferences or sits on a racing bike.

Deborah - or Debbie for short - is the new creative head at gridscale and provides us with fresh design. Already during her bachelor's degree at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, she worked as a working student at Schüco International KG, where she designed the icons for the SchüCal software. After graduating, she gained 5 years of professional experience as a graphic designer at brandbuero Media GmbH and is well versed in programmatic marketing.

Already at a young age Stefan developed a real passion for technology and always wanted to know how something works. If something didn't work, he stayed on the ball until it worked again, even if it had cost him the night - true to the motto "how do I get it done?!

Today he is the technical conscience of the sales department and a kind of translator towards the customer. At gridscale, he takes on the role of the technical all-rounder - he takes on customer requirements and implements them in a solution-oriented manner with the best possible mix of costs and benefits for the customer as an overall concept.

Nico is an online marketing manager with focus on SEO and is responsible for (organic) online marketing at gridscale. At the same time he is a good example for the fact that you can not only become a taxi driver by studying literature. He discovered his passion for SEO rather by chance, but has consistently expanded it since then: from startups, agencies to publishing houses, from B2B to B2C, from offpage to onpage.

Sydney is from now on part of the Research & Development team at gridscale.
About 3 years ago, the fire and passion for programming was ignited in him. After a completed apprenticeship in the field of informatics, he now wants to reach for the stars and studies informatics at the FH Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. His biggest dream is to work as a game developer one day.

Laura is another creative head at gridscale and supports Debbie in her day-to-day business. After completing her bachelor's degree in media design at the Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln in 2017, she first gained experience in marketing and worked as a barista until she realized that her heart beats for Photoshop and Co.

Ingo is broadly positioned. For more than 14 years he has been using exclusively
Linux and is a big fan of open source software. He knows his way around web application development, provisioning Linux-based systems and various virtualization technologies. Based on this he works quite interdisciplinary at gridscale.

Begoña - or just Bego is our new spanish internal developer. Originally from Bilbao she was living in Cloudy Barcelona before she moved to Sunny Cologne. Before she joined gridscale she was working with several innovative sustainability projects and now returned to the development nation.

Already since the 7th grade it was clear for Tobi that he wanted to do something with computer science. His career as a web developer started with the first HTML pages while he was at school. During his computer science studies he somehow got stuck in the web area.

At gridscale he supports Jan & Marc at Frontend, UX & GUI. He knows both of them - like some others from the team - from earlier cooperation. So you always see each other twice in your life.

Since March 2019 he has been part of the team, after having been a customer of gridscale himself before.

Linn is responsible for our People department, i.e. everything that has to do with recruiting and internal processes for gridscale employees. As a career changer, she discovered her heart for IT in 2012 and can now look back on more than seven years of professional experience in HR consulting and HR management.

Originally Marius studied media technology, but a few years ago he started programming with PHP as a career changer. Since March 2019 he is part of the gridscale team, after working for one of our customers for many years.

As a working student, Yuliya supports the marketing team in the areas of content marketing, PR and social media.
She studies multilingual communication with a focus on economics at the TH Cologne.
In addition to her studies and work, Yuliya is also interested in handletting, sports and cinema.

As Head of New Business Development, Daniel is responsible for lead generation at gridscale. He works as an interface between marketing and sales and, together with his team, ensures that sales is provided with qualified enquiries. He has 10 years of experience in sales and is a telemarketing specialist. At the age of seven, he got his first PC (386) and has been a technology enthusiast ever since.