CEO MONTHLY / JANUARY 2026 11 Simplified and Secure Managed Kubernetes on Hetzner Kubernetes is an open-source platform focused on automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications, making it vital in modern cloud-native infrastructure. Syself has made it its mission to see that Kubernetes becomes the gold standard for serious software, without forcing every company to build a giant platform team. We caught up with Syself’s own Sven Batista Steinbach, recognised here as the Most Influential CEO 2026 – Cloud Computing (Germany), for more. Syself delivers Enterpriseready Kubernetes on Hetzner (cloud and dedicated root servers in Germany and the EU), bringing the reliability, security, and compliance foundations organisations expect. Setting itself apart, the company is no stranger to achievement, with Syself being shaped by such initiatives as building the Cluster API Provider Hetzner (which is today the leading opensource way to run Kubernetes on Hetzner) and positioning itself as the safe landing point for organisations moving away from the likes of AWS and Azure. Using Kubernetes as a standardisation layer, rather than just to run containers, Syself builds its own APIs and controllers to replace manual operations. This is the closest the industry has ever come to a vendor-neutral operating model, and it works because almost everything can be run on it. Moreover, what Syself offers in this space is more than a tool, it is an operating model complete with real people delivering 24/7 support, in-house consulting, and a trusted network of partners/agencies working tirelessly to keep things seamless. Guiding Syself – aside from its core values of productionreadiness by default, safe and predictable change, a secure foundation that can be built on, full ownership and transparency, and software backed by real operators – is CEO Sven Batista Steinbach. The man responsible for outcomes (reliability, security, upgrades, and keeping customers sleeping at night), Sven’s days see him jump between product, design, engineering, sales, and hiring. He explained: “I might review lifecycle architecture in the morning, sit with our designer for hours to make a complex workflow feel obvious, join a migration call in the afternoon, and then close the loop with the team so we ship what actually reduces risk.” Regardless of which of these tasks he is doing, Sven’s guiding philosophy remains unchanged: go deep and then simplify. Whereas most teams build features on shaky foundations, Sven makes sure Syself’s foundations are continuously rebuilt until they are rock solid. An autodidact, fan of oneon-one meetings, and big believer in information moving as fast as possible, Sven’s affinity for computing dates back to when he was just three years old, and he got his first Apple Mac. Whilst most children would be interested in clicking the icons, Sven wanted to know what was underneath. By the time he was 16, Sven was running Gentoo Linux and had compiled his own kernel, an experience that taught him something key: if you do not understand the lowest layer, you will pay for it at the highest layer. This continues to guide Sven in his work to this day, as does the discipline that comes from him having competed professionally in 10-dance (a blend of Latin and ballroom). This is not dissimilar from the work his company carries out as on stage you do not debug, you execute what you have rehearsed. He added: “This is how we approach incident response and upgrades.” “Provisioning is day one. The real work is day two: upgrades, recovery, and security posture – ensuring stability across a complex infrastructure.” Having successfully built a team today capable of operating some of the largest Kubernetes on Hetzner with unrivalled reliability, Sven is now looking ahead to the future for Syself, which is all about taking the company from managed Kubernetes to something much bigger: an operating model for distributed systems. This is not simply a container management tool or orchestration tool – it is a web-based interface designed to interact with Kubernetes like a real system. Commenting on his own career, Sven told us how he plans to double down on the elements which made Syself into the success story it is today for those in search of a Kubernetes alternatives to AWS/Azure for Europe: deep technical understanding, product taste, and relentless education. Staying close to the hard parts whilst building new leaders within the company, the discipline this CEO has taken from dancing leads him to one inarguable truth: on stage you do not debug – you execute what you rehearsed. This is a fitting metaphor for how Syself approaches upgrades and incident response across its operation. In essence, the main take away is this: if a company’s cloud bill grows faster than their business, then there is a better model – and it’s already running in production, offering enterprise-ready Kubernetes on Hetzner and helping to reduce cloud spend with European infrastructure. More on all of this can be found at the link below. Contact: Sven Batista Steinbach Company: Syself Web Address: https://syself.com/
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