This Dynatracer probably doesn't need an introduction. 😎
If you've ever stumbled on a suspiciously well-produced video about instrumenting yet another piece of cloud-native tech, odds are you've already met @HenrikRexed — the Dynatracer behind Is It Observable.
His videos and guidance are clear and generous, his path here, however, was anything but straight... grab your coffee and enjoy your read!
Hello, Henrik! Shed some light on your journey. How did you become a Dynatracer?
Hi everyone!
I'm Henrik, and if you've ever stumbled across a slightly over-enthusiastic video explaining how to instrument yet another piece of cloud-native technology, there's a good chance it was mine.
My path here was anything but a straight line. It started with code. As a student, a group of friends and I built what was essentially the local Netflix of France long before streaming was a thing. I owned the back-office application that stored our DVD catalog, plus the algorithm that shaped and prioritized orders before they shipped. After a successful launch, I got curious about what IT looked like inside large organizations, so I joined a services company and spent my days coding all kinds of projects in all kinds of languages.
Then came the moment that quietly redirected my entire career. Someone asked if I wanted to do "load testing." Honestly, the only word I recognized in that sentence was testing, so my first reaction was: no way. But I did a bit of research, and I realized this was a fascinating discipline that almost every application could benefit from. So I did what any passionate engineer does: I built the skills, launched a service offering, and started winning projects. Before long, I was running performance projects for major insurance companies, retailers, and car manufacturers.
While leading the Performance Center of Excellence at one of the biggest European insurance companies, I invested heavily in tooling, and in 2007, I came across a product called Dynatrace. I tried it... and I loved it. From that day on, I was hooked, following every release, every feature, every blog post.
That passion followed me to Neotys, the French load-testing vendor behind NeoLoad, where I spent 11 wonderful years starting in presales, becoming a consultant leader, and eventually the company's DevRel. What I loved most was extending the product by building plugins. One of them was the NeoLoad–Dynatrace integration, and later the Keptn integration. So even before I was a Dynatracer, I was already building content for Dynatrace Perform (mainly the HoT Day sessions). Year after year, my connection to Dynatrace and to @andreas_grabner kept growing.
Ten years after I tried the product for the first time, Dynatrace offered me a DevRel role specialized in real user experience. With my performance background and my connection to the community, it was the perfect fit. Then, on day one, they decided to change gear and asked me to work on Kubernetes instead. It was a completely different world for me, but learning new things and staying on the forefront of technology is simply in my nature so I was thrilled by the opportunity.
To grow our visibility in the do-it-yourself community, I launched Is It Observable. I started out producing simple videos and worked hard to raise the quality of my production over time which took a lot of personal investment (learning and gears). Fun fact: my very first dream job, as a kid, was to be a sound engineer. This was the perfect way to fuse my love of technology with my passion for audio and video, with full creative control over the content I wanted to build.
One last detail I'm a little proud of: I was one of the very first EMEA R&D remote employees. My integration into the company turned out to be quite an adventure, I started during the pandemic and didn't physically set foot in the lab until nine months after my first day! Interacting with the rest of Dynatrace over Slack, on a mission that was a bit unusual, meant I had to put in extra effort just to get on the radar of the people I needed to work with. Being independent and self-driven turned out to be a real advantage in that situation. It taught me a lot about staying connected, productive, and motivated when you're building something on your own, from a distance.
What do you work on, and what interesting things are you currently involved in?
As a DevRel focused on the community, a big part of my job is to follow the trends and investigate new technology to figure out how to bring the value of the solution to Dynatrace users. Anything that's OSS, cloud native, or the latest AI framework, chances are I've already done some research and run a few experiments on it. I love to learn, and I love to share what I learn.
My strength is helping practitioners or inspiring them by solving a real technical challenge. I genuinely believe that talking only about features, without actually solving a problem, is not how a vendor earns the trust of the technical community. I'll admit I can be a little stubborn on this point but I always put myself in the shoes of the user.
All the content I build requires heavy research and investigation, and I follow a consistent flow. It usually starts with a deep dive in the form of an Is It Observable episode, always backed by a GitHub repository and I make a point of attaching Dynatrace dashboards and notebooks so our users can pick the topic up and run with it immediately. Along the way, if a solution doesn't surface the observability details it should, I'll start contributing to the project to level it up. From there, I bring a more Dynatrace-centric angle through a video series called Observe & Resolve. So a single topic typically travels all the way from "let's understand how this technology actually works" to "here's exactly how a Dynatrace user gets value out of it."
There's no such thing as a truly typical day, which is exactly why I love it. A given week might be spent building Kubernetes clusters and deploying solutions in my homelab, then turning that work into a GitHub repo where anyone can replicate my examples in their own environment. Then comes the video part recording and editing. And to give back to the cloud-native community, I build challenging CFPs where I'm either comparing technologies or improving the troubleshooting experience (which often forces a bit of upstream contribution along the way). Preparing a conference talk is real technical work but I'm convinced people can feel the generosity and energy in my talks.
I also spend a lot of time with the OpenTelemetry community across various projects, the Collector, profiling, custom connectors, and the semantic-conventions SIG. The goal is to stay on top of the latest changes coming from the community, because being aware of what's next is essential to helping users, customers, and internal teams alike.
My proudest achievement since joining Dynatrace is the recognition from the cloud-native community, and Is It Observable itself. It started as a way to grow brand recognition in the DIY community, but it became something bigger: a place where engineers regardless of which vendor they use can learn how observability really works under the hood. That vendor-neutral, hands-on approach is, I believe, the best advertisement Dynatrace could ask for. When people understand why observability matters, they make better decisions, build better systems, and quite often become Dynatrace fans along the way.
Your "aha!" moment with Dynatrace — was there a recent problem you solved using our product?
My most recent "wow" moment came when I started using dtctl. Being able to work in YAML instead of wrestling with complex JSON was a real relief. And once I combined dtctl with the Dynatrace AI skills, I could remove the step where I used to build my dashboards by hand. Now I let agents generate a first draft, and I simply refine it from there. It's a small change in the workflow, but it saves a surprising amount of time.
What makes the Dynatrace Community important to you?
"Community is where you find your mentors, your honest feedback, and the people who'll happily debug a YAML file with you at 11 p.m."
Everything good in my career came from a community of some kind, Neotys, Dynatrace, CNCF.
If I had one piece of advice, it's this: don't be afraid of the word you don't recognize. I almost said no to load testing because I only understood one word in the sentence. I almost felt out of my depth on day one when I was handed Kubernetes. Both turned out to be the best things that ever happened to my career. Treat new technology like Lego blocks pick it up, see how it clicks together, build something small, and share it. The sharing part matters as much as the building. The community gave me a platform; the least I can do is keep handing the ladder back down.
What are your hobbies or passions? What keeps you motivated and brings you the most joy?
I live in the south of France, which is a bit of an unfair advantage when your hobbies are running, biking, sailing, and hiking, I get to practice all of them almost year-round.
I'm a big believer in challenge, and in managing your effort to reach a goal and nowhere has that shown up more than in trail running. I used to compete extensively, taking part in the southern France ultra-trail mountain running challenge. Over the years I've completed 3 Marathon des Sables, more than 15 marathons, and over 20 ultra-trails across the Alps and my own region in the south of France. Endurance racing teaches you something that translates directly to engineering: a big goal is just a long series of small, well-managed steps. I also love being on the water, windsurfing, sailing, or simply paddling out on a SUP.
My first dream, as a kid, was to be a sound engineer, and that creative itch never left me, so outside of sport I'm deep into photography and videography, which feeds straight back into the production quality of Is It Observable.
And then there's home: I have three beautiful daughters, 18, 16, and 13. Living in a house with four women is, let's say, a continuous and joyful challenge. 😄 That same do-it-yourself spirit spills over into the house, too. I'm always building something: construction work and committing to long hours don't scare me one bit.
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