Dynatrace Life

Meet Henrik, Principal Developer Advocate and Dynatracer behind "Is It Observable". Once, he almost said no to the job that shaped his whole career because he only recognized one word in the sentence.

His career path was anything but a straight line. 👇

It started with code. As a student, he and a few friends built what was basically the local Netflix of France — long before streaming was a thing. Then came the moment that redirected everything: someone asked if he wanted to try "load testing." The only word he recognized was "testing," so his first reaction was a flat no.

He did the research anyway. That curiosity turned into a skill, then a service offering, then performance projects for major insurance companies, retailers, and car manufacturers. In 2007, while leading a performance center of excellence, he came across Dynatrace, tried it, and got hooked — following every release and blog post from then on.

A decade after he first tried the product, Dynatrace offered him a DevRel role specializing in real user experience. 👨‍💻

On day one at Dynatrace, plans pivoted—and Kubernetes landed on his plate, a completely new world for him. He was thrilled. Learning new things and staying at the forefront of technology is simply in his nature.

Out of that came "Is It Observable," which grew into something bigger than brand awareness: a vendor-neutral, hands-on place where engineers — whatever tools they use — can learn how observability actually works under the hood.

Off the clock, he's an ultra-trail runner 🏃— 3x Marathon des Sables, 15+ marathons, 20+ ultra-trails across the Alps and southern France. And the lesson carries straight back to engineering: a big goal is just a long series of small, well-managed steps.

His advice to engineers is the throughline of the whole story:

"Don't be afraid of the word you don't recognize. Treat new technology like Lego blocks — pick it up, see how it clicks together, build something small, and share it." 🚀

➡️ If staying at the forefront of technology is in your nature too, our R&D team is hiring: https://dynatr.ac/44ylDyl
🔗 Read the full story on Dynatrace Community: https://dynatr.ac/4vIP1xv

Hi, I'm Austin, Sr Principal Logs Specialist at Dynatrace. For years, I was one of the customers—an early adopter, in every preview program, the kind who pushed the platform to its edges.

What drew me in wasn't a pitch. It was the people. I'd seen the culture firsthand long before I joined. 🚀

Once I was in, I got to do the job I love at a scale I couldn't have imagined from the outside.

Logs are a problem of economic scale — one of the biggest, messiest data sets in observability, and the one everyone wants to do more with while spending less. I solve that for customers of every size and stage, from "what's a log, and why does it matter?" to petabytes across thousands of divisions.

Solving that well takes serious engineering muscle behind you. We're an R&Dcompany at heart, and it shows. I have the kind of philosophical technical debates with doctorate-level product architects that make me a giddy kid at my core. When I want to understand how something really works, I can reach out to the developer who built it, and they're more than happy to nerd out with me. 🧑‍💻

In many companies, that kind of access to R&D folks simply doesn't exist. And it isn't just access, it's impact. I own the field product feedback for logs and meet regularly with our product teams. Direct field feedback actually shapes the product every day.

Honestly, where I am now versus a year ago is almost unimaginable. My goal has always been to surround myself with people who make me think, "I need to go learn that," and then go share it. Dynatrace has offered that, again and again.

➡️ If this is where you want to be, apply for a Logs Specialist role or any other spot on our sales team: https://dynatr.ac/4tZeYrb