Welcoming new team members!

Open source cloud computing is our passion at Nextcloud GmbH and we’ve built a great team of experts around it. Our engineers, designers, and support professionals work as an integral part of the wider Nextcloud community to give customers direct access to the most advanced, in-depth knowledge they need for success.

We have 6 new team members join us in that mission and we thought it’d be nice to introduce them to you! We’re thankful that they shared with us what they love to do in their free time but also what they’re passionate about!

André Höche

Account manager

With over 15 years of experience in IT, software development, and Operations, André worked for several companies like Nero, Citrix Online, 1&1, and most recently Open-Xchange. He has worked with a wide range of customers and partners, always with a strong focus on customer needs and requirements. Striving for user’s privacy and security using open source software is what keeps him going.

We asked him to share some thoughts:

Since the internet came up and computers got connected, data privacy and security have always been very important to me, and after joining 1&1, I was very excited to work with Open-Xchange and get to know the business behind open-source software.

With the growing power of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, it became clear to me that I want to spend my time on software and projects that value the privacy and security of their users, and in the end, this can only be guaranteed by using open-source software. So I made the decision to stay in the open-source software business and first joined Open-Xchange and now Nextcloud.

As a private Nextcloud user for years, I’m happy to get the chance to work for Nextcloud, and I’m looking forward to working with our customers.

In my free time, I’m writing and producing a lot of music, play the piano, and enjoy hiking with my two dogs (if the weather is good though).

Julien Veyssier

Software Engineer, Full-stack/app developer

Julien has a master’s degree in computer science and does public research for 10 years as a scientific computing engineer in biology and geographical data processing. He loves interactive maps, collaborative tools, and is passionate about the Free Software movement. He started contributing to ownCloud and then Nextcloud five years ago and has developed 6 apps since then. He has much experience in data processing and computing optimization.

I’m glad to see things moving in areas like online privacy, data sovereignty, internet decentralization, etc. Developing software that empowers and respects the users is fun and rewarding. Users becoming contributors is an amazing thing to witness! Being part of a huge community is also a good way to learn and get helped or inspired by others. So I’m very glad to have the opportunity to get closer to the Nextcloud community.

On the technical side, there are so many possibilities that I don’t exactly know what I’ll be doing. I’ll probably maintain my apps, try to push the Maps app further, and possibly explore new areas to bring new kinds of features in the Nextcloud ecosystem. I’m eager to learn new stuff about Android development and also in web front-end frameworks.

Maybe the info I want to share is that I was very surprised by the amount of feedback and enthusiasm you get when you publish and maintain a Nextcloud app. For the apps I created, I would say more than half of the effort is produced by the people posting issues, testing development versions, translating, suggesting improvements, making pull requests and many more.

Kevin Ottens

Software Engineer, Desktop client

Kevin Ottens has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence which led him to focus on Ontology engineering and multi-agent systems. As a student, he fell in love with the KDE community and never stopped contributing code. Lately, he has been also helping with the community stewardship, for instance participating in the creation of the KDE Manifesto. Nowadays he spends time rethinking his job, having a strong interest in software craftsmanship and graphics facilitation.

He shared some thoughts with us:

It all started with my involvement in the KDE community where I’ve been doing a few things here and there. For a while, I also contributed to Qt as part of my day job and spent some time helping with Qt 3D (a soft real-time simulation engine that happens to do 3D rendering).

Before having a job involving Qt, I was doing research in AI and I’m not sure it developed any intelligence in a computer or myself but I got some skills out of it: I can hold ground for longer than average chatting in a room full of linguists, and I generally know how to navigate a room to snatch as much finger food as possible during a party. These were the basic survival skills at the time!

Back to my Free Software involvement, lately I’ve been toying around with Python scripts to visualize community dynamics and study them. Obviously with a strong bias toward looking at KDE teams. You can find my ramblings on the topic there: ervin.ipsquad.net/tags/data-analytics/. And I’ve been thinking about taking some time to do this around Nextcloud as well. We’ll see if I find the time to do so.

I also like cooking although lately, I do it less than I’d like and I’m not a particularly good cook but I like the activity nonetheless.

And last but not least, I’ve been practicing aikido for a few years. Again, I’m not particularly good at it… a long way to go still (especially if you would hear the complaints from my teacher). Still, this is a very good activity I can only recommend.

Marija Puselja

Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator

Marija has a master’s degree in Journalism and Public Relations. During her studies, she was passionate about news photography and mostly everything creative in journalism, and already as a student started working for various media outlets and the University she studied at.

Through time, she discovered creativity and innovation in all areas have become a great passion in a way of well-executed layout and design and kept evolving within, marking experience at jobs such as a digital and creative media professional and photographer.

Marija adds:

I’m inspired by everything around me, either nature that I absolutely treasure, humans or their creations, and diversity. Fun fact about me (although it wasn’t always fun) is that I moved around 15 times since I was… born, living in different countries around the globe. I love passionate people and extraordinary stories of good causes and this is something that certainly led me to Nextcloud!

Vanessa Steeg

Executive Assistant

Vanessa has a degree in Media Design and qualifications as Executive Assistant in various languages (German, English, and Spanish). She worked at Nextcloud partner Struktur AG before, where her duties regularly interfaced with Nextcloud team members, especially around marketing and project management. Her experience ranges from project management to graphic design, marketing, and communication. She shared:

I have 3 dogs that I adore. I’ve always had dogs and can’t live without them. In my free time, I enjoy photography and traveling. There’s almost nothing more exciting to me than exploring new places, cultures, and food (of course). I mostly travel on my own because I love the freedom that comes with it and it’s easier to meet people when you’re not traveling in a group of friends.

I’ve been thinking about working for Nextcloud fulltime for a long time because I always enjoyed the collaboration with Nextcloud team members. And I think it’s fantastic how everyone here is immensely motivated and wants the best for the Nextcloud product and the community.

Nils Kühne-Hellmessen

Account Manager

After an apprenticeship in publishing and a communication management study, Nils worked over 20 years in different industries. Stations in the management of marketing, sales, and account management followed each other, all with a strong customer focus.

Nils shared with us:

To compensate, I rocked stages and clubs at night as a bassist, rhythm guitarist, and singer of various hard ’n heavy bands.