Hi, I’m Ingo, and I’d like to share a bit about my journey and my first six months at ShapeBlue.
Before joining ShapeBlue, I worked in a variety of roles across the IT infrastructure landscape — from Cloud Systems Engineer to Team Lead and eventually Head of Datacenter. My career has always revolved around infrastructure: on-premise environments, private clouds, and public cloud platforms. This broad background shaped how I think about scalable, reliable systems and how technology can support real business needs.
I joined ShapeBlue as a Cloud Architect and now have the honour of leading the Architecture team. From the very first month, it felt a bit like going back to my roots: getting my hands dirty, working closely with the technology, and deeply understanding how things really work. The onboarding experience was excellent, and the support from colleagues made it easy to feel welcome and productive right away. At the same time, I spent a lot of time understanding how ShapeBlue works as a company and continuously asking myself how I could best support the company’s strategy with the experience I bring.
A Cultural Change
One of the biggest changes for me was moving from a large corporation to a small, intimate, employee-owned company. Even though ShapeBlue is remote-first, I feel much more connected than before — which really shows that connection is more about attitude and culture than physical presence. Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do, and even though we mainly work remotely, we still make a point of meeting face to face twice a year, which strengthens our relationships even further.
My Role at ShapeBlue
I was given the opportunity to lead the Architecture team, which has been both exciting and rewarding. My role involves designing and building services such as our VMware migration offerings, working closely with customers to understand their needs, inspire them, and help them build their own cloud platforms. I’m also involved in designing and shaping new features together with the wider team. Internally, my goal is to give the team structure and clarity while enabling everyone to focus on what they do best.
CloudStack and Open-Source
My CloudStack journey started back in 2014, when I first used it as a customer. After evaluating many solutions, we chose CloudStack because it was the best fit for our requirements. Over the years, I’ve been actively involved in the ecosystem — organizing meetups, giving talks, and contributing through company-driven efforts such as Ansible-related integrations. We also worked closely with ShapeBlue to develop new features, which makes it especially meaningful to now be part of the company itself.
About Me
Outside of work, I’m a very hands-on person. I love long-distance running, especially ultra-trail races, and I enjoy motocross whenever I get the chance. I’m also passionate about home automation, always looking for ways to make my house smarter and more energy efficient. More generally, I enjoy crafting and building things myself — I like to understand how things work and ideally be able to do everything on my own.
Final Thoughts
I truly love working at ShapeBlue. Open communication, honest feedback, and collaborative culture make it a great place to grow — both professionally and personally. I’m excited about what we’re building together and what lies ahead.
Ingo is Head of Architecture at ShapeBlue, with a background spanning roles from Cloud Systems Engineer to Head of Datacenter. He brings deep experience across on-premise, private, and public cloud infrastructures, with a strong focus on CloudStack and open-source technologies. Outside of work, he enjoys ultra-distance running, motocross, and hands-on projects like home automation and DIY crafting.
