
League Of Extraordinary People
- Meet the collective
League Of
Extraordinary
People
- Meet the collective
Our Team

Antti Pelkonen
CEO
Antti is an experienced leader in the software and digital services development business. He has worked in start-ups and big companies. The common nominator has always been growth. Growth for Antti means progressing in recruitment, sales, business development, and continuous refining of offered services. In Graend, Antti will be working with all of these areas with the rest of the team.
Antti is still interested in learning new technologies hands-on, which also helps evaluate candidates in recruiting and creating solution proposals for customers.

Maarit Kettunen
Chief People Officer
Maarit is a growth builder and a heavyweight all-rounder in people-work. In the last ten years, she has recruited and enabled almost 5000 people to find new career paths. Maarit has a passion for helping people and wants to provide them with a safe environment where it is easy to be who you are and grow as a professional.
In her free time, you can find Maarit in floorball halls, where she acts as a referee in the floorball F-league. Maarit is familiar with pressure, quick decisions, and situations that require solid leadership. If you can’t see her, you can still probably hear her laughter.
Maarit’s motto: Work hard, laugh harder!

Jukka-Pekka Heikura
R&D Team Leader
J-P is a people leader who enjoys challenges. In his career, he has launched and completed several complex projects. He understands what it takes to get the team to work for common goals and the dynamics of having different people in the group. J-P is a social person known for his positive mindset and can-do attitude.
J-P's motto is: No BS, kick some ass, and get things done.

Ville Huotari
DevOps & Cloud Architect
Ville started his career as a data engineer and a researcher with a target of a Ph.D. Instead of a glorious academic career, he ended upswept in the glory of the start-up world as a full-stack developer. Having worked in many different fields and positions, Ville can bring his architectural and DevOps breadth of knowledge to any stack. Ville loves to share this knowledge and mentor about what he is passionate about.
Motto: Let's make everyone's work easier through fostering a DevOps mentality, ways of working, and culture.

Toni Korhonen
Software Specialist
Toni is into hi-tech and is passionate about building great software for different platforms. He is a versatile developer with experience from almost all of major platforms from backend solutions to mobile front. Along with technical skills he likes to automate his home and (still) loves to tell bad jokes!
Motto: Creating great software and automating home. What else can you possible want?

Mikko Koskinen
Hands-On Software Architect
Mikko enjoys finding a way to enable tighter collaboration between business units and development teams. One of his passions is to automate manual steps to lower the maintenance cost and improve the solution's quality securely.
Motto: your business is unique - let's find a perfect solution for your needs together.

Samuli Körkkö
Software Developer
Samuli loves to automate things as much as possible and make teammates work hassle-free. So far, he has mainly focused on testing automation but expanding knowledge of DevOps to incorporate testing into modern pipelines.
All of this with the focus that actual software development would be as quick and easy as possible while ensuring that new features are adequately tested.

Mikko Salmela
Senior Software Engineer
Mikko started his technological journey by building websites as a hobby and continuing to more complex software development during his engineering studies & customer projects.
With over 13 years of work experience, Mikko has become an expert in full-stack web development. He has participated in building software products from scratch and developing new features to existing ones and is not afraid to take on a challenge. He has good communication skills and is a reliable addition to any team.

Jukka Ylikärppä
Technical Lead / All-arounder
Jukka always sees some positive in everything. He has 20 years of experience in numerous projects varying from web applications to complex systems and architecture designs. He's not afraid of challenges, and he is eager to learn, adapt to new technologies, and help teammates.
He says that "When I commit to a project, I go all in. There's nothing better than a happy smile on a satisfied customer".

Kimmo Äijälä
Design Lead
Kimmo hates making compromises. As a designer, he always aims to raise the bar, not settle for "good enough". He loves a challenge and always reaches for the best customer experience no matter what.
If you seek to work with a business-minded designer who is an innovative team player with a keen visual eye and top-notch communication skills, look no further.

Antti Pelkonen
CEO
Antti is an experienced leader in the software and digital services development business. He has worked in start-ups and big companies. The common nominator has always been growth. Growth for Antti means progressing in recruitment, sales, business development, and continuous refining of offered services. In Graend, Antti will be working with all of these areas with the rest of the team.
Antti is still interested in learning new technologies hands-on, which also helps evaluate candidates in recruiting and creating solution proposals for customers.

Maarit Kettunen
Chief People Officer
Maarit is a growth builder and a heavyweight all-rounder in people-work. In the last ten years, she has recruited and enabled almost 5000 people to find new career paths. Maarit has a passion for helping people and wants to provide them with a safe environment where it is easy to be who you are and grow as a professional.
In her free time, you can find Maarit in floorball halls, where she acts as a referee in the floorball F-league. Maarit is familiar with pressure, quick decisions, and situations that require solid leadership. If you can’t see her, you can still probably hear her laughter.
Maarit’s motto: Work hard, laugh harder!

Jukka-Pekka Heikura
R&D Team Leader
J-P is a people leader who enjoys challenges. In his career, he has launched and completed several complex projects. He understands what it takes to get the team to work for common goals and the dynamics of having different people in the group. J-P is a social person known for his positive mindset and can-do attitude.
J-P's motto is: No BS, kick some ass, and get things done.

Ville Huotari
DevOps & Cloud Architect
Ville started his career as a data engineer and a researcher with a target of a Ph.D. Instead of a glorious academic career, he ended upswept in the glory of the start-up world as a full-stack developer. Having worked in many different fields and positions, Ville can bring his architectural and DevOps breadth of knowledge to any stack. Ville loves to share this knowledge and mentor about what he is passionate about.
Motto: Let's make everyone's work easier through fostering a DevOps mentality, ways of working, and culture.

Toni Korhonen
Software Specialist
Toni is into hi-tech and is passionate about building great software for different platforms. He is a versatile developer with experience from almost all of major platforms from backend solutions to mobile front. Along with technical skills he likes to automate his home and (still) loves to tell bad jokes!
Motto: Creating great software and automating home. What else can you possible want?

Mikko Koskinen
Hands-On Software Architect
Mikko enjoys finding a way to enable tighter collaboration between business units and development teams. One of his passions is to automate manual steps to lower the maintenance cost and improve the solution's quality securely.
Motto: your business is unique - let's find a perfect solution for your needs together.

Samuli Körkkö
Software Developer
Samuli loves to automate things as much as possible and make teammates work hassle-free. So far, he has mainly focused on testing automation but expanding knowledge of DevOps to incorporate testing into modern pipelines.
All of this with the focus that actual software development would be as quick and easy as possible while ensuring that new features are adequately tested.

Mikko Salmela
Senior Software Engineer
Mikko started his technological journey by building websites as a hobby and continuing to more complex software development during his engineering studies & customer projects.
With over 13 years of work experience, Mikko has become an expert in full-stack web development. He has participated in building software products from scratch and developing new features to existing ones and is not afraid to take on a challenge. He has good communication skills and is a reliable addition to any team.

Jukka Ylikärppä
Technical Lead / All-arounder
Jukka always sees some positive in everything. He has 20 years of experience in numerous projects varying from web applications to complex systems and architecture designs. He's not afraid of challenges, and he is eager to learn, adapt to new technologies, and help teammates.
He says that "When I commit to a project, I go all in. There's nothing better than a happy smile on a satisfied customer".

Kimmo Äijälä
Design Lead
Kimmo hates making compromises. As a designer, he always aims to raise the bar, not settle for "good enough". He loves a challenge and always reaches for the best customer experience no matter what.
If you seek to work with a business-minded designer who is an innovative team player with a keen visual eye and top-notch communication skills, look no further.