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Building products
that matter.

Leading teams that deliver. Combining deep technical expertise with strategic product vision.

Director R&D at Visma · Tampere, Finland

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About

Technology leader.
Architect. Builder.

Experienced technology leader combining deep technical expertise with strategic product vision. Currently Director R&D at Visma, leading development of cloud-based access control, workforce management, and space management solutions.

Previously Head of Platforms & Services at Vincit, steering 35+ employees delivering ITIL-based service management and Cloud DevOps. Long history as a Senior Software Architect leading award-winning digital platforms serving hundreds of thousands of users — including the IBU Biathlon digital ecosystem and the Finnish Wildlife Agency platform.

Passionate about leveraging AI in product development, building scalable cloud architectures, and fostering engineering teams that ship with confidence. Strong advocate for information security as a core product value, not an afterthought.

18+
Years in software engineering
2M+
Users across platforms built
7+
Years in engineering leadership
15–35
Engineers led
3
Industry awards
M.Sc.
Tech with honors, TUT

Recommendations

What colleagues say

When the IBU chose Vincit as new partner to revamp its digital ecosystem, Kyösti was one of the driving forces during the RFP process and subsequent development phases, overseeing the implementation of a cohesive architecture involving required platforms and necessary third party services. He is data-driven, solution-oriented, and excellent to collaborate with.

RD

Rene Denfeld

Head of Digital, International Biathlon Union

I have had the pleasure of working with Kyösti during the development of Oma riista service for the Finnish Wildlife Agency. As a Product Owner I've learned to know him as a professional software architect and a talented lead developer, who was able to positively surprise us by delivering easy-to-use, reliable solutions to our somewhat complex use cases.

AK

Ari Kontiainen

Product Leader — Client, Finnish Wildlife Agency

In 2012, Kyösti designed and implemented the first version of Belectro's backend server for position data acquisition and distribution, based on somewhat vague specifications. The same backend still handled the vastly increased traffic during the 2019 hunting season, without any signs of architectural limits or deficiencies. A pleasure to collaborate with — resourceful and flexible.

JL

Jussi Lahdenniemi

Chief Architect at Natlink

He is relentless when it comes to finding the best and optimal solutions and ways to work, and never settles to just ok. Kyösti can also handle pressure and gets things done. He excels both at big-picture strategy and granular details.

JJ

Jarkko Järvenpää

Entrepreneur & Founder at Aines

Experience

Career path

2025 — Present

Director R&D

Visma

  • Leading R&D for cloud-based access control, workforce management, and space management solutions
  • Products: Megaflex, Otta, Movenium — serving enterprise and SME customers
  • Driving cloud transformation and ISO/IEC 27001 security compliance
  • Building and mentoring high-performing engineering teams
Java Python C/C++ Embedded Linux AWS Azure ISO 27001

2023 — 2025

Head of Platforms & Services

Vincit

  • Steered core continuous services teams of 35+ employees delivering ITIL-based service management, software maintenance and Cloud DevOps platform support
  • Financial management (P&L), competence area utilization and recruitment decisions
  • ISO 9001 Quality System & ISO 27001 ISMS development
  • Delivery portfolio management, strategy and ambition work for Lifecycle Services business
ITIL DevOps ISO 27001 ISO 9001 P&L Leadership

2019 — 2023

Technical Director & Senior Consultant

Vincit

  • Technical pre-sales, solution architecture, and offering development
  • Cloud Offering Manager — bridging sales, specialists, cloud partnerships and recruitment
  • DevOps evangelist — accelerating DevOps tools and practices across customer projects
  • Technical and project management audits for healthcare, finance, and entertainment clients
  • Cybersecurity consulting using OWASP ASVS and AWS Well-Architected Framework
Solution Architecture Pre-sales AWS OWASP Audits DevSecOps

2011 — 2021

Senior Software Architect

Vincit

  • Lead developer of the IBU (International Biathlon Union) digital ecosystem — website, mobile apps, real-time live data
  • Chief developer and project lead for Oma riista (Finnish Wildlife Agency) platform since 2013
  • Architect for distributed access control systems, fleet management, big data analytics
  • Technical due-diligence audits, AWS Well-Architected reviews, OWASP ASVS assessments
  • Full-stack development from embedded systems to cloud-native microservices
Java Spring Boot AWS React Next.js Docker PubNub Embedded

"We wanted to have something extremely reliable because we are implementing a live data feed."

— Kyösti Herrala, PubNub Case Study

2008 — 2011

Software Engineer

Advant Games

  • Data mining and player behaviour modelling using random tree forests and neural networks
  • Developed secure online collaboration platform for Pelastakaa Lapset Ry (Master's thesis)
  • Full-stack web development with Liferay CMS, Java, and GWT
Java Data Mining GWT XMPP

2007 — 2008

Research Assistant

Tampere University of Technology — Digital and Computer Systems

  • Studying applicability of self-organizing maps in online gaming behaviour analysis
  • GUI programming and designing tools for data mining
Java Machine Learning Research

Featured Projects

Work that shipped

IBU biathlonworld.com — World Cup calendar page showing Kontiolahti event with countdown, venue photo, and upcoming competitions
Grand One Grand Prix 2022 Red Dot Award 2022

biathlonworld.com

Web Platform & Native Mobile Apps

IBU Digital Platform

Complete digital ecosystem for the International Biathlon Union — biathlonworld.com website, iOS and Android apps with real-time live competition data, personalized fan experiences, and marketing automation. Served as Lead Developer and Architect. Won the Grand One Grand Prix and Best Mobile Service — the jury called it "a game-changer for Biathlon" reflecting "the traditions of Scandinavian design: simplicity and functionality."

2M+
Unique visitors
400K+
Registered users
20K
Daily users
biathlonworld.com Press release Case study
Oma Riista mobile app — catch reporting form with topographic map, species selection, and geolocation in Finnish forest
3rd · Suunnannäyttäjät 2017

oma.riista.fi

Web & Mobile Platform · Open Source

Finnish Wildlife Agency

Digital platform for the Finnish Wildlife Agency — electronic hunting cards, catch reporting, and advanced geospatial features including wildlife observation mapping, zone-based harvest quotas, and topographic route planning. Serving Finland's entire hunter community on AWS with Suomi.fi authentication. Roles spanned Lead Developer, Architect, and Project Lead from inception, later transitioning to Account Manager.

190K+
Active hunters
300K+
Users
MIT
Open source
oma.riista.fi Source code Press release
B-Bark GPS dog tracking system — GPS collar with B-Bark logo and Samsung rugged phone showing topographic map with real-time dog positioning

b-bark.com

GPS Backend Infrastructure · IoT

B-Bark GPS Platform

Built the entire backend infrastructure for B-Bark — a real-time GPS dog positioning solution for Finnish hunters and dog owners. The system tracked dogs over 2G networks, serving thousands of loyal users for over a decade. Customer demand was so strong that the service lifespan was extended beyond the originally planned shutdown, with users unwilling to give it up until the 2G network sunset forced migration. Acquired by Tracker (Natlink Oy) and migrated to their unified platform in 2025. Served as Backend Architect and Developer from inception to deprecation.

12yr
In production
1000s
Loyal users
Acquired
by Tracker
Lifespan extension Migration announcement
Megaflex access control terminal — wall-mounted Greenbox IoT device for cloud-connected access management

megaflex.fi

Cloud Access Control · Embedded IoT

Megaflex Access Control

Helped a security industry vendor build Megaflex — a multi-tenant online access control system where embedded Greenbox IoT terminals communicate to a highly available cloud management backend. Served as Project Lead, Technical Lead, and Architect across a full scrum team, with personal contributions ranging from Linux kernel and crypto hardware drivers to message queue integration layers and web frontend. Now part of Visma's product portfolio serving 200+ Finnish organizations.

200+
Customers
IoT
Edge-to-cloud
SaaS
Multi-tenant
megaflex.fi

Presentations & Media

On stage & in print

Video · Vincit Community Event

Reducing Carbon Footprint in Digital Services — Case IBU

Presenting the carbon emissions analysis of the IBU digital ecosystem. The platform generates approximately 88,000 kg CO2e per season across ~190 terabytes of data transfer — roughly equivalent to one Finnish citizen's annual footprint.

Slides · Vincit Teatime 2014

Kokemuksia Cassandra NoSQL:stä

When is choosing a NoSQL database justified? Experiences with Apache Cassandra — data model design constraints, the Gossip protocol, consistency trade-offs, and lessons learned from real-world production use.

View on SlideShare

Article · Tivi

Koodi siirtyi konttiin — julkaisu on ihan supernopeaa

Featured in Tivi on container technology adoption — how Docker and containerization transformed deployment workflows and enabled super-fast software releases.

Read on Tivi

Article · Tivi 1/2017

Nettipalveluiden peruspilarit natisevat

Expert commentary on the evolution of web server technology — the LAMP stack's place in modern architecture, Apache vs. Nginx trade-offs, and the shift toward managed PaaS cloud services. Quoted alongside industry peers on real-world architecture decisions.

Aamulehti article about Mantelichat

Newspaper Article · Aamulehti 18.11.2010

Pelastakaa Lapset ry:n chatissa voi purkaa vaikeitakin asioita turvallisesti

Aamulehti feature on the Mantelichat launch — the secure online support chat platform for Save the Children Finland's peer support groups.

Read article (PDF)

Education

Academic background

Mantelichat — secure chat interface for Save the Children Finland

M.Sc. (Tech) · Diplomi-insinööri · 2011

Signal Processing & Communications Engineering

Tampere University of Technology

GPA 4.14 / 5.00

Master's Thesis

A Rich Internet Application for Confidential Real-time Messaging

Designed and built Mantelichat — a secure, extensible real-time messaging platform for Save the Children Finland's online peer support groups. Built on the XMPP protocol and Google Web Toolkit (GWT), with emphasis on security, extensibility and web architecture patterns.

Read thesis (PDF)
Software Architecture Distributed Systems XMPP GWT · Java Security
AdaBoost weight update formula — D_{t+1}(i) exponential update rule and final hypothesis H(x) from face detection thesis
Face detection — Viola-Jones algorithm with AdaBoost cascade detecting a face with red bounding box

B.Sc. (Tech) · 2009

Signal Processing & Multimedia

Tampere University of Technology

GPA 4.55 / 5.00

Bachelor's Thesis

Kasvojen paikannus — Face Detection

Analysis and practical evaluation of the Viola-Jones face detection algorithm — AdaBoost cascade classifiers, Haar-like features, and integral image computation. Tested robustness to feature occlusion and rotation (±25° tolerance in over half of test cases).

Read thesis (PDF)
Machine Learning Computer Vision AdaBoost Signal Processing Pattern Recognition

Research Papers & Seminar Presentations

Self-organizing map (SOM) cluster visualization — gamer behaviour modelling with coloured topology maps

Research Paper · Advant Games 2008

Online Gamer Behaviour Modelling

Player segmentation and behaviour modelling using self-organizing maps (SOM), decision trees, and random forests — for predicting game engagement patterns and supporting new game development.

Read paper (PDF)
Face detection final seminar — slide showing occlusion test results with whitebox/blackbox/blur conditions and rotation tolerance graph (±27°)

Seminar Slides · TUT January 2009

Face Detection — Final Presentation

Final thesis seminar: AdaBoost feature selection, cascade classifier structure, and practical results on occlusion tolerance and in-plane rotation robustness of the Viola-Jones detector.

View slides (PDF)
Face detection — Viola-Jones algorithm detecting a face with red bounding box

Seminar Slides · TUT November 2008

Face Detection — Topic Introduction

Bachelor's thesis seminar: topic overview, challenges in robust face detection, and comparison of knowledge-based vs. data-driven approaches including the Viola-Jones attentional cascade.

View slides (PDF)

AI in Product Development

Amplifying engineering
with intelligence

From architecture decisions to code reviews, AI is reshaping how we build software. I actively integrate AI tools into the development workflow — not to replace engineering judgment, but to amplify it.

Claude Code GitHub Copilot Replit

AI-Assisted Development

Using Claude Code and GitHub Copilot for real-time code generation, refactoring, and review — accelerating development while maintaining quality standards.

Intelligent Test Generation

Using AI to identify edge cases and generate comprehensive test suites, improving coverage and reducing regression risks systematically.

Rapid Prototyping

Leveraging Replit and LLMs to accelerate prototyping cycles — from concept to working demo in hours, validating ideas before committing to full implementation.

Architecture & Documentation

AI-powered exploration of architectural patterns and trade-offs, generating technical documentation, and maintaining living architecture decision records.

Information Security & Certifications

Security by design

Security is not a checkbox — it's a mindset woven into every architectural decision. From ISO 27001 compliance to hands-on security auditing, I bring security into every layer of the development lifecycle.

2024

ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management

Security management training

2024

Internal Security Auditing

Security audit certification

2019

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Amazon Web Services

2013

Cryptography I

Stanford University · Coursera

2012

Certified ScrumMaster

Scrum Alliance

—

Google Cloud Sales Credential

Google Cloud

Open Source & Community

Contributing back

Arctic Code Vault Contributor

pika

Contributor to pika — pure-Python AMQP 0-9-1 client library for RabbitMQ message broker integration.

Python

freenas-crashplan-howto

Contributed documentation update to the FreeNAS + CrashPlan setup guide — updated instructions for CrashPlan 4.8.0 compatibility.

Docs

querydsl

Upstream contribution to QueryDSL — fixed spatial query support by migrating JTS geometry imports to the modern org.locationtech namespace and upgrading GeoLatte, restoring JPA and SQL spatial querying for Java applications.

Java

View all repositories on GitHub

Hobby Projects

After-hours engineering

Grafana dashboard with HVAC metrics, temperature graphs, electricity pricing, and AI voice assistant

marmorikatu-home-automation

Building automation data visualization system collecting measurements from WAGO controllers, Ruuvi sensors, and Thermia heat pump via MQTT. Seven Grafana dashboards for HVAC monitoring, heat recovery efficiency, and freezing risk analysis. Includes an MCP server with 15 query tools for Claude Desktop integration.

Python InfluxDB Grafana MQTT Docker MCP
Real-time bus departure dashboard showing next departures for lines 8A and 8B with countdown timers and schedule table

marmorikatu-bus-timetables

Real-time bus departure dashboard for a home kiosk display. Monitors nearby Tampere bus stops with live countdowns, urgency alerts when departure is within 2 minutes, and interactive MapLibre minimaps. Three-tier data pipeline with ITS Factory API.

React TypeScript MapLibre GL Node.js Docker
Mapbox Studio Classic split view — rendered Finnish topographic map on the left, CartoCSS style editor on the right

mml-vectortiles

Vector tile pipeline for MML maastokartta — processes Finnish topographic shapefiles into vector tiles served via Tessera and Nginx. CartoCSS styling for web-based map visualization.

CartoCSS Docker Nginx Vector Tiles GIS
Electrical outlet wiring diagram from WAGO PLC control system

wago-webvisu-adapter

REST API and MCP server for controlling WAGO PLC light switches. Speaks CoDeSys binary protocol directly — no browser needed. Background polling caches status of 47 physical lights in SQLite. Claude Desktop integration enables AI-powered natural language light control at home.

TypeScript Node.js Python CoDeSys MCP SQLite

docker-mapnik-python

Docker container for Mapnik Python bindings — a cartographic rendering toolkit for generating map tiles and GIS visualizations. Packaging for reproducible geospatial rendering pipelines.

Docker Python Mapnik GIS

mml-maastotietokanta-etl

Clojure ETL tool for processing Finnish National Land Survey (MML) topographic map data from GML files into a PostgreSQL database. Geospatial data pipeline for cartographic rendering and analysis.

Clojure PostgreSQL GML GIS

mml-mapserver

Docker image for serving MML maastokartta — Finnish National Land Survey topographic maps as a self-hosted tile service. One-command setup for local map rendering.

Docker Python GIS MapServer

Contact

Let's connect

Whether you're looking to discuss technology leadership, explore collaboration opportunities, or just talk shop about cloud architecture and information security — I'd enjoy hearing from you.

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