# Greg Neiheisel

> Greg Neiheisel is a Cincinnati-based software engineer, founder, and Engineering Fellow at Astronomer. His career moved from engineering roles and an early mobile startup to Differential, USERcycle, and the technical leadership of Astronomer, where a difficult data-ingestion problem became the seed of a company built around open-source data orchestration and Apache Airflow.

- **Role:** Founder and Engineering Fellow at Astronomer
- **Organizations:** Astronomer, USERcycle, Differential, Great American Insurance Group, Trippo, Outlyer Technologies
- **Education:** BS, Decision Sciences and Information Systems, University of Kentucky
- **Known for:** Co-founded Astronomer after helping turn USERcycle's data-ingestion obstacle into a broader data-platform opportunity., Led and publicly documented major architectural work as Astronomer's CTO, including a move toward open-source infrastructure., Helped establish Apache Airflow as the center of Astronomer's data-orchestration strategy.

## Career timeline

- **2009-2011** — Worked as a software engineer at Outlyer Technologies.
- **2011-2013** — Co-founded Trippo, an earlier mobile technology venture.
- **2011-2013** — Worked as a software engineer at Great American Insurance Group.
- **2013-2014** — Served as a partner at Cincinnati product studio Differential.
- **2014** — Joined work on USERcycle, an engagement-analytics product that was later rebuilt and repositioned.
- **2015** — Helped pivot USERcycle into Astronomer and participated in AngelPad's Fall 2015 class.
- **2016** — As Astronomer's CTO, documented the platform's shift from managed AWS services toward an open-source, portable architecture and explained the company's open-source philosophy.
- **2017** — Spoke at MesosCon North America.
- **2018** — Appeared on The Data Flowcast to discuss Airflow on Kubernetes and planned work on the Kubernetes executor.
- **2019** — Presented 'Running Apache Airflow Reliably with Kubernetes' at Data Council San Francisco.
- **2021** — Co-presented a preview of Next-Gen Astronomer Cloud at Airflow Summit.
- **2025** — Astronomer raised a $93 million Series D to expand its orchestration platform and international presence.
- **2026** — Public executive directories list Neiheisel as Astronomer's Founder and Engineering Fellow.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Astronomer after helping turn USERcycle's data-ingestion obstacle into a broader data-platform opportunity.
- Led and publicly documented major architectural work as Astronomer's CTO, including a move toward open-source infrastructure.
- Helped establish Apache Airflow as the center of Astronomer's data-orchestration strategy.
- Presented practical guidance on running Airflow reliably with Kubernetes at Data Council San Francisco in 2019.
- Co-presented Astronomer's next-generation cloud direction at Airflow Summit 2021.
- Contributed to the Apache Airflow project and participated in technical design discussions around execution and scaling.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Public executive directories identify Neiheisel as Founder and Engineering Fellow at Astronomer.
- **2025-05** — Astronomer announced a $93 million Series D for R&D and international expansion; the company said Airflow had been used by more than 80,000 organizations and downloaded more than 324 million times in 2024.

## Links

- Website: https://www.astronomer.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-neiheisel
- GitHub: https://github.com/schnie
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shn_ejTBLJI

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/greg-neiheisel
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-27