Speakers of 2026

Bio

Hi, I'm Katharina Sick (or Kathi), passionate about building user-friendly solutions with a focus on Cloud Native technologies, Kubernetes, and developer experience. I began in mobile and backend development, where I found DevOps tasks frustrating: slow, repetitive, and complex. Discovering platform engineering showed me how improving workflows can reduce cognitive load and make developers' lives easier. Since then, I've focused on making DevOps more accessible and enjoyable. This passion led me to speak at meetups and conferences about developer experience and platform engineering. Now, as a Developer Programs Engineer at Dynatrace, I focus on developer experience, community building, and open source. Outside work, I love spending time with family and friends, connecting with tech and sports communities, inline skating, exploring new places, and tackling quizzes and games.

Sessions

• Turning Platform Engineering Right Side Up: Building Better Paths for Juniors

Bio

Dimi is Tech Lead @WhizUs with several years of experience working in the Kubernetes ecosystem and the Cloud Native domain.

Sessions

• EKS Hybrid Nodes Deep Dive: Cilium, Crossplane and On-Prem

Bio

Artem Lajko, certified CNCF Kubestronaut and Head of Platform Engineering, specializes in Kubernetes scalability and GitOps-driven workflows. He is the author of Implementing GitOps with Kubernetes and an IT freelancer writing for various publishers. As a Platform Engineering Ambassador, he supports companies and the community in adopting Platform Engineering, Internal Developer Platforms, and related technologies. Passionate about Open Source, he helps organizations choose the right tools, driving tech adoption and innovation.

Sessions

• Demystifying Managed Kubernetes

Bio

Tom leads the Business Unit Cloud & Platform Engineering at SQUER and is part of the leadership team in Munich. He is passionate about building cloud-native self-service platforms that empower engineering teams to move fast without compromising on security and governance. Before joining SQUER, Tom co-founded Unit 214, where he helped organizations modernize their software architecture and adopt cloud-native practices. When he's not designing Kubernetes-based platforms, you'll find him exploring the intersection of AI and infrastructure, which is exactly what brought him to this stage.

Sessions

• Beyond API Keys: Fine-Grained AI Agent Authorization for DevOps with OpenFGA

Bio

Marvin is a Cloud Software Engineer at ClickHouse, maintainer for the kcp project and CNCF Ambassador. He started out as a Linux sysadmin, and found himself gradually turning into a software engineer while automating Kubernetes cluster operations. He has been working with Kubernetes in various roles since 2018.

Sessions

• Stateful Workloads at Scale – Extending Kubernetes for Running OLAP Databases as a Service

Bio

Bootstrapped founder. Minimalist, grug-brained software developer. Creator of Tusk for macOS and GNOME. Background in engineering, research and sales, it is my mission to filter out the cruft in tech and orgs, and maintain a steady focus on value, delivering sustainable, long-term business outcomes.

Sessions

• AI Agents Aren't a Compliance Gap. They're a Compliance Blindspot.

Bio

Felix Hochleitner is a Lead Cloud Engineer at SQUER in Vienna. He has been breathing Kubernetes for more than seven years, designing multi-tenant platforms on AWS that turn complex cloud infrastructure into self-service experiences for development teams. His passion lies in building well-crafted platform APIs and GitOps-driven workflows that let engineers focus on shipping software rather than fighting infrastructure. When he's not engineering developer experiences, he's most likely reading a book.

Sessions

• EKS Hybrid Nodes Deep Dive: Cilium, Crossplane and On-Prem

Bio

Nick is a Platform Engineer at iits-consulting, focused on building and managing Kubernetes environments at scale using cloud-native technologies. Quite often he spends his evenings experimenting with new technologies and later enthusiastically tries to convince others that they are worth exploring.

Sessions

• Demystifying Managed Kubernetes

Bio

Anton is an AWS Community Hero and helps companies around the globe build solutions using AWS, and specializes in infrastructure-as-code, DevOps, and reusable infrastructure components. He spends much of his time as an open-source contributor on various Terraform & AWS projects, such as Terraform AWS modules (downloaded more than 2 billion times), Terraform best practices ebook (www.terraform-best-practices.com), doing serverless with Terraform (serverless.tf), Terraform Weekly (weekly.tf), Your Weekly Dose of Terraform (http://bit.ly/terraform-youtube).

Sessions

• No More Forks: Policy Transformation for Terraform at Scale

Bio

Aris is a Staff Software Engineer at RudderStack with over 20 years of experience building scalable, high-performance systems across telecommunications, banking, European institutions, and data infrastructure. A core contributor to the open-source rudder-server, he specializes in Go, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and cloud-native architectures. Aris is passionate about designing elegant solutions, driving engineering best practices, and sharing insights on scalable data pipelines, enterprise DevOps, and software architecture.

Sessions

• Hard-won lessons after processing 6.7T events through PostgreSQL queues

Bio

Paul Guschlbauer is a professional adventure athlete, commercial pilot, and entrepreneur who has spent the last fifteen years making decisions where the stakes are real. A seven-time Red Bull X-Alps competitor, he has raced across the Alps on foot and paraglider, flown off a remote volcano in Alaska after carrying the dream for nine years, and crossed 18,000 kilometers from Alaska to Patagonia in a small bush plane. As a long-time Red Bull athlete, he's learned that success rarely comes from a perfect plan — it comes from reading the conditions, adapting, deciding, and getting back up after failure. Today he shares those lessons on stage and through Wanderbird, his platform helping people find their own path, make clearer decisions, and stay human in a fast-changing world.

Sessions

• Fly Your Path - The Human Edge in an AI-Accelerated World

Bio

Nico Meisenzahl is the COO at white duck. As a Cloud Solution Architect and Microsoft MVP, he is passionate about topics such as AI, cloud-native technologies, and internal developer platforms. In addition, Nico is a sought-after speaker at conferences, user group events, and meetups.

Sessions

• Agentic AI Under Attack: Live Demos of Exploits Through Autonomy and Trust

Bio

Usman is a Staff Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs from Nuremberg, Germany. He works with the Open Source community on the community forum, GitHub and Slack. He has over 15 years of experience in IT and in Cloud Stack where he served multiple customers all over Europe, US, Japan, etc. He is an active international public speaker participating in multiple conferences and events. In his free time, Usman likes to spend time with his family, go out on occasional traveling and play games or read comics.

Sessions

• Observability for in-house or Cloud Native Platform via Open Source Tools

Bio

Krisztián is a principal engineer at Diligent with over a decade of hands-on experience in creating and maintaining software. Currently he is leading the movement of a diverse set of products towards the cloud. He is the founder of the Letscode.hu community, creating a supportive environment where individuals can thrive, share their knowledge, and collectively contribute to the advancement of technology.

Sessions

• You Call That an AI Agent?

Bio

Bartek is a seasoned professional with 13+ years in software development, cloud infrastructure, IT leadership, and training. Currently, as the Director of Cloud Quality Engineering, he leads efforts to build a top-quality organization that delivers exceptional cloud services at scale. Bartek holds an Executive MBA and is also a skilled IT trainer and university lecturer, with over 11 years of experience and 400+ individuals trained.

Sessions

• From CVE Noise to Action: AI-Assisted CVE Assessment for Container Images

Bio

Adrian is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat and is migrating processes at least since 2010. He started to migrate processes in a high performance computing environment and at some point he migrated so many processes that he got a PhD for that. Most of the time he is now migrating containers but occasionally he still migrates single processes. Currently he serves as the OpenHPC project lead.

Sessions

• Building the Next Generation of Checkpoint/Restore in the Open

Bio

Joep works at the overlap of socio-technical design, technical story-telling and platform engineering technologies. Driven by empathy to reduce burnout caused by platform obesity/complexity and tech industry hype. Organizer of devopsdays Amsterdam, FastFlowConf NL. Field CTO at Portainer.io

Sessions

• Platform Obesity, not Complexity, is killing our platforms

Bio

Marcel is a Senior Software Engineer with several years of experience working in the Kubernetes ecosystem and the Cloud Native domain.

Sessions

• Broadcasting Deployments: ORF's Journey to Bulletproof Kubernetes Releases

Bio

Marcelo S. Ancelmo has 23 years (and counting) of IT experience and has done a bit (or would it be a byte) of everything. A good old-fashioned troublemaker, he started his professional career as a Java programmer, fell in love with architecture (a passion he still pursues today), dove into middleware (with no regrets), built high-performing teams, and explored infrastructure and operations. Deeply engaged in the tech community, Marcelo joins Meetups wherever he goes, teaming up with JUGs, helping organize events when time allows, and contributing to working groups and committees. Along the way, he’s delivered consulting, training, mentorship, and conference talks. Today, he's Head of Solution Architecture at KPMG Switzerland, helping the company drive its digital transformation toward sustainable business agility, fueled by Architecture and DevOps, learning everything possible and enjoying the bumps along the ride.

Sessions

• AI Made Us Faster at Solving the Wrong Problems

Bio

Manish Gill works at ClickHouse Inc, where he is managing the AutoScaling team for ClickHouse Cloud. He is based out of Berlin and is deeply interested in Databases and Cloud challenges and still considers himself new to Kubernetes. In a past life, he worked in an ML research team doing Traffic prediction for at Global Scale and was a Data Engineer for more than half a decade before that.

Sessions

• Stateful Workloads at Scale – Extending Kubernetes for Running OLAP Databases as a Service

Bio

Rainer Stropek is co-founder and CEO of software architects, where he and his team build the award-winning SaaS solution "time cockpit." He has spent more than three decades in software development and is recognized as an expert in software architecture, cloud computing, and AI with numerous books, articles, and conference talks across Europe and the US to his name. Microsoft named him a Regional Director in 2015, and he has held MVP awards since 2010, when he became one of the first MVPs for what is now Microsoft Azure. Rainer also teaches the next generation of engineers at HTBLA Leonding, FH Hagenberg, and as a regular lecturer at the University of Education in Upper Austria. That mix of building, speaking, and teaching is what drives his current focus: how AI is reshaping the daily work of software and platform engineers.

Sessions

• Every Developer Is a Bandleader Now - Three facts about software engineering in the age of agents

Bio

Lukas Zainzinger is a high-impact Platform Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at willhaben.at, bringing over 8 years of experience in architecting resilient and scalable infrastructure. He currently leads a large-scale strategic migration from on-premise environments to AWS, specializing in high-availability systems, zero-downtime deployments, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Throughout his career, which includes DevOps roles at Siemens, shoepping.at, and Raiffeisen Informatik, Lukas has built a proven track record of automating complex environments and driving operational excellence. He is currently completing his Master of Science in Cloud Computing Engineering at Hochschule Burgenland , where his research focuses on architecting vendor-agnostic, cloud-native predictive maintenance frameworks to prevent vendor lock-in. Lukas is deeply passionate about scaling systems, embracing open-source technologies, platform engineering and guiding teams through complex cloud transformations.

Sessions

• Blueprint for Independence: Reclaiming Data Sovereignty with Open-Source

Bio

Arina Muracheva is a Cloud Security Consultant specializing in AWS and GCP environments. She focuses on onboarding teams to CNAPP platforms, translating security findings into actionable decisions, and aligning security with engineering workflows. Her work includes multi-cloud security assessments, IAM risk analysis, and building scalable security operating models in enterprise environments.

Sessions

• From Spreadsheet Compliance to Continuous Proof: Meeting NIS2 in Cloud-Native Environments

Bio

Aarno is a co-founder and partner of VSHN - The DevOps Company in Zürich, Switzerland. He has been working on DevOps and Platform engineering using Kubernetes and open-source software for over ten years.

Sessions

• Data Sovereignty Is Built, Not Bought

Bio

Kevin Niederwanger is a Senior Technical Account Manager at Red Hat, specializing in OpenShift. As a technical advocate for customers he has worked on various challenges of customers which might have resulted in one or the other talk at cloud native events.

Sessions

• Avoiding operational nightmares with Kubernetes Admission Control

Bio

Veronika Volokitina is a Software Engineer at Zalando working on Kubernetes-based routing and platform engineering. She contributes to Skipper and related open-source tooling, with a focus on validation, safer rollouts, and observability.

Sessions

• Fail Fast Routing: Reusing the Ingress Controller as a Kubernetes Admission Webhook

Bio

Christian Schabetsberger, the world's okayest developer, is a Freelance Software Engineer & Architect from Linz, Austria with over a decade of experience. Having spend half of his life in the .NET ecosystem (amongst others), he likes to stay on the bleeding edge of technology to become the (tech-savvy) ninja he pretends to be since he is six. He is also an active community member, organising the .NET Meetup in Linz and supporting other local user groups. Furthermore he is a member of the .NET Foundation.

Sessions

• CRAcking Compliance - The EU Cyber Resilience Act

Bio

Uwe Kirchengast is a Cloud and Platform Architect with a strong focus on cloud‑native technologies, Kubernetes, and developer platforms. He currently leads the Internal Developer Platform Team, a role he has held for the past two years, driving the adoption of modern platform engineering practices. Uwe was responsible for building the organization’s AWS-based Cloud Platform and co‑authored the ORF Cloud Strategy, shaping its long-term cloud direction. In his work, he focuses on bridging cloud and on‑prem environments, with experience in EKS, hybrid architectures, Cilium, and Crossplane.

Sessions

• EKS Hybrid Nodes Deep Dive: Cilium, Crossplane and On-Prem

Bio

Fabrizio Lazzaretti is a Managing Consultant at Wavestone and CNCF Ambassador who bridges cutting-edge cloud-native technologies with enterprise architecture. As maintainer of the CloudEvents project and co-author of “Crafting Great APIs with Domain-Driven Design,” he brings deep expertise in event-driven architecture and microservices to complex challenges. With over ten years in software architecture, development, and DevOps, he currently drives architectural transformation in the insurance industry, bridging the gap between business and IT.

Sessions

• Stop Building AI Models. Start Building AI Products - From Demo Applause to Production Value

Bio

Community leader and CNCF ambassador, Alessandro has spent the last few years building cloud native infrastructures for Microsoft customers, animating the Dutch community, and training others to pass the CKx exams. He has passion for all things cloud native, he's been around open source for 25 years and recently moved to a new Developer Relations role. Twitter handle: @bongo

Sessions

• Claw Native: Building a Kubernetes Operator for Multi-Agent AI Workloads

Bio

Maximilian Thüringer is a Technical Account Manager at Red Hat, specializing in OpenShift. He supports organizations in engineering reliable, sustainable, and innovative solutions.

Sessions

• Avoiding operational nightmares with Kubernetes Admission Control

Bio

Linda has been navigating the tech landscape for over a decade. She is specialized in Cloud Technologies, IT Process Optimization, and Agile Methodologies. When she is not guiding companies on their cloud journey, she is diving into AI/ML Services and Technologies, and sharing her insights at AWS community events and other tech platforms. Beyond her professional commitments, Linda is an AWS Community Hero and deeply involved in Women in Tech initiatives, advocating for greater representation and inclusivity. In Vienna, she is the familiar face behind AWS meetups and other community gatherings, creating a welcoming space where every voice is valued and heard. In addition, Linda holds the title of Chairperson for the AWS Community DACH Support Association and is member of the Funding Advisory Board of netidee.

Sessions

• Correct on Average, Wrong by Design: How data taught AI that tech is male

Bio

I’m a Manager of Cloud Security Engineering at Pegasystems, where I lead teams building secure and scalable cloud solutions. I specialize in cloud security, DevOps, and infrastructure automation, with a strong focus on best practices and compliance in AWS environments. I’m passionate about growing high-performing teams, mentoring engineers, and driving initiatives that improve both security and efficiency. Based in Poland, I enjoy combining technical depth with leadership to solve complex challenges in modern cloud environments.

Sessions

• From CVE Noise to Action: AI-Assisted CVE Assessment for Container Images

Bio

I was always interested in programming and playing video games. Since 2009 iam working as a professional developer and project manager. my passions include family, technology and faith.

Sessions

• Broadcasting Deployments: ORF's Journey to Bulletproof Kubernetes Releases

Bio

I'm a techy guy who love new technologies, learns how these things work… Over the years of IT experience help me map relevant cloud technologies to our customer's IT and business needs. I have worked in many different roles, thanks to it, I can work well with different areas. I like cross-role tasks that require strong knowledge from network to system or application operation 🕵️My current focus is on Azure Core solutions, including Networking, Private Endpoints, Azure Policy, and Automation. I am now expanding my knowledge to include cybersecurity. 🏆Recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in the Microsoft Azure category since 2023.

Sessions

• Accelerating Vendor IaC with AI

Bio

Albiona has spent over 6 years as a Senior Cloud Security Consultant, helping international clients navigate security and compliance challenge, from security reviews to large-scale process change, in cloud-native environments.

Sessions

• From Spreadsheet Compliance to Continuous Proof: Meeting NIS2 in Cloud-Native Environments

Bio

Constanze is an astrophysicist turned entrepreneur: she spent over 15 years designing and implementing resilient complex systems for finance and government. CS lecturer and key researcher. Created the K8s Stormcenter for Open Threat Intelligence. Her research is on improving security using modern and emerging technologies such as eBPF, WebAssembly and AI. Her vision is to create practical and achievable security implementations usable in defendable systems for a resilient society.

Sessions

• Zoom in and you shall find: Adaptive Kubernetes SOC that stays sovereign and reduces data volume

Bio

I am a Lead Data Engineer & partner at Data Minded with over 10 years of experience in the data industry. I specialize in building scalable data platforms on AWS, Azure and EU clouds and focus on the inner workings of distributed systems. I embracing technical challenges, and see complexity as an opportunity to innovate rather than an obstacle.

Sessions

• Your cloud strategy after the hyperscaler era

Bio

I help companies deliver impact by leading the design and implementation of Internal Developer Platforms, cloud architectures, and managing their critical applications in production. I offer a unique combination of hands-on experience operating high-stakes applications at scale, in different business domains, and a wide breadth of knowledge spanning the whole software lifecycle, from the single line of code up to production operations. I successfully migrated pipelines, delivered applications to production, guided teams to design and implement their IDPs, and more. These are the some of the topics I talk about: * How to design, build the team, and implement Internal Developer Platforms with DevEx in mind * ArgoCD, FluxCD & GitOps * Crossplane * Kubernetes operators and custom resources * Pipeline Design I organize Cloud Native Trento -> https://community.cncf.io/cloud-native-trento/ I organized the Vienna DevOps Meetup group -> https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-ziwnrlfj

Sessions

• Your Platform Is Probably Working - You Just Can't Prove It

Bio

Diana is a Developer Experience Engineer at VictoriaMetrics. She has worked as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer focused on Observability. She is an active member of the OpenTelemetry CNCF open source project, co-organizer of Cloud Native Days Romania, co-lead of neurodiversity working group (part of CNCF initiative merge-forward) and supports underrepresented groups in tech.

Sessions

• How to Defeat OTel’s Silent Killer, the Performance Overhead

Bio

Sebastian Kister is an influential figure in enterprise transformation and a top consultant for C-Level executives. Currently running for the Governance Board at CNCF, he combines hands-on leadership with visionary insights, spearheading a Competence Center at AUDI focused on IT infrastructure. A dynamic startup professional, Sebastian has played a pivotal role in guiding products from conception to market leadership through innovative, cutting-edge technologies. He is committed to challenging the status quo, fostering a culture of innovation, and driving continuous progress within organizations. Sebastian emphasizes the distinction between mere reorganization and true transformation. He advocates for a „people-first“ approach, believing that when organizations prioritize their people, they empower them to solve complex problems. Conversely, a „process-first“ mindset often leads to mere compliance rather than genuine problem-solving.

Sessions

• From Automation to Context-Aware Delegation - How to become the 5%

Bio

Ricardo leads the Platform Infrastructure team at CERN with a strong focus on cloud native deployments and machine learning. He has led for several years the internal effort to transition services and workloads to use cloud native technologies, as well as dissemination and training efforts. Ricardo got CERN to join the CNCF and is a lead of the CNCF Research User Group. Prior to this work Ricardo helped develop the grid computing infrastructure serving the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Sessions

• Cloud Native Above the Clouds: Lessons from a Round-the-World Glider Mission