Dieter Plaetinck, a principal software engineer at Grafana Labs, has played a pivotal role in the company's development and growth since its inception. Initially joining forces with co-founder Torkel, Dieter has been instrumental in building open-source monitoring solutions, particularly focusing on MetricTank and Grafana Cloud's evolution. His responsibilities have expanded to include product management for Hosted Metrics Graphite, team leadership, and hiring management, while he still finds time to contribute code and review pull requests. Based in Malta, Dieter frequently travels to Cyprus, Greece, Belgium, and New York, and enjoys hiking and mountain biking in the southwestern U.S. Although he finds noise highly distracting, he has developed strategies to maintain focus during complex coding tasks. Despite his aversion to ice cream, he has a penchant for coconut-flavored products.