Ken Ahrens


I'm a proud family patriarch and occasional developer of ill repute. At work I'm a Founder and the CEO at Speedscale where we help companies test applications better to run faster with less errors in production.


Experience

Founder, CEO

Speedscale Inc

Speedscale automatically generates realistic API test suites for cloud native application architectures like Kubernetes. We launched in August 2020 and are backed by YCombinator, Sierra Ventures, Tech Square Ventures, Soma Capital and others.

January 2020 - Present

Founder, CTO

WiseCracker LLC

As a side hobby my brother Mike and I design and manufacture bottle openers and bicycle frame components (Made in USA). We sell them online and through distribution.

July 2014 - Present

Senior Director, Solution Architects

New Relic

I helped to establish a dedicated Architects team to work with some of our largest customers with the most complex monitoring needs. It's always great to see these customers share their case studies or talk about their success at our FutureStack events. I'm a firm believer in learning from real world engagements and have my team collect our best practices and share them across our organization.

July 2017 - September 2019

Principal Architect

New Relic

Recognized as the Enterprise Technical Sales MVP back-to-back in 2016 and 2017. The APM market has changed, users need something easy to use that monitors more technologies than ever before, and can be used to communicate back to the business. We call that the Digital Intelligence Platform at New Relic.

August 2014 - June 2017

Enterprise Sales Engineer

Pentaho (acquired by Hitachi)

Worked with Enterprise clients to help understand the right use cases for them and guide them through how Pentaho Data Integration and Business Analytics can solve their challenges.

January 2014 - August 2014

Senior Director, Presales

CA Technologies | DevOps Division (acquired by Broadcom)

After the acquisition of ITKO, I stepped in to manage the Application Delivery Presales team for North America. A key focus area for me was to keep the existing team intact. We doubled the team, trained 300 CA folks and tripled our revenue within about 18 months. Our BU also had the lowest Presales attrition during my tenure.

September 2011 - January 2014

Solutions Architect

ITKO (acquired by CA Technologies)

Work closely with my sales team to present cutting-edge technology and demonstrate live during proof-of-concept engagements. Share best practices for validating SOA-based applications, including Service Virtualization (SV) to improve test coverage and speed development. Focus on Middleware/ESB for TIBCO, webMethods, Oracle/BEA, IBM, etc.

October 2007 - September 2011

Presales Consultant

CA Technologies | Wily Technology Division (acquired by Broadcom)

Help close sales by gaining the technical win. Engage in pilot projects, sales meetings, technical presentations and demonstrations. Educate prospects about best practices for Application Performance Management (APM) of Java/J2EE (WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss) and .NET web applications.

April 2006 - October 2007

Systems Engineer

ILC (later acquired by DataPath)

Built quotes and proposals to respond to customer requirements for Network Management Systems (NMS). Owned the tradeshow demonstration and performed technical demonstrations and proof-of-concepts at customer locations. Ran corporate co-op program including hiring and supervising 7-10 co-ops per semester. Developed simulator programs in Java used internally and sold for over $400K in revenue. Performed on-site software “clean-up” work to close out tough projects and obtain final payments.

August 2001 - April 2006

Education

Georgia Tech

Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering

Coop Program


Skills

Languages & Technologies
Workflow
  • Built-In Unit, Functional & Performance Testing
  • Containerized
  • Cloud Ready
  • DevOps Deployment with CI/CD/CD

Interests

I enjoy the outdoors, mountain biking with NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) or camping with the Boy Scouts.

At home you'll often find me in the basement programming the Raspberry Pis to collect some kind of data. Or laundry.

I love reading mostly SF and Fantasy but also like to keep up with the (Hacker) News.


Awards & Certifications

  • Enterprise Technical Sales MVP (New Relic 2017)
  • Technical Sales MVP (New Relic 2016)
  • President's Club (ITKO 2011)
  • Named Fellow (ITKO 2010)
  • Company MVP (ITKO 2009)
  • President's Award (CA Technologies 2007)