# Martin Klenk

> Martin Klenk is the German software engineer, co-founder and chief technology officer of Celonis. A childhood spent experimenting on a 286 computer led to school Linux install parties, computer-science studies at the Technical University of Munich and, eventually, a student consulting assignment whose overlooked event logs became the seed of Celonis. Since co-founding the company in 2011 with Bastian Nominacher and Alexander Rinke, Klenk has directed its technical development as process mining grew from a research field into enterprise software used around the world.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Celonis
- **Organizations:** Celonis, Kubermatic, Academy Consult München, Technical University of Munich
- **From:** Herrenberg, Germany
- **Nationality:** German
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Technical University of Munich, Master's studies in Computer Science, not completed after founding Celonis, Technical University of Munich
- **Known for:** Co-founded Celonis in 2011 and has led its technical development as CTO., Helped translate process-mining research into enterprise software capable of working across large, varied corporate IT environments., Received the 2019 Deutscher Zukunftspreis with Alexander Rinke and Bastian Nominacher.

## Career timeline

- **2003-2005** — Led the Linux working group and helped build and operate the student internet café at Schickhardt-Gymnasium in Herrenberg.
- **2006** — Graduated with the best Abitur result in his year, won the Ferry Porsche Prize for mathematics and physics, and took first prize in Germany's national mathematics competition.
- **2006-2010** — Worked independently as an IT trainer specializing in IT security infrastructure.
- **2007-2010** — Studied computer science at the Technical University of Munich and earned a Bachelor of Science.
- **2008-2010** — Led IT and worked on client projects at the student consultancy Academy Consult München.
- **2009-2010** — Co-founded ticker2.de, a content-management system for digital signage and information screens.
- **2010** — Worked with Bastian Nominacher and Alexander Rinke on a Bayerischer Rundfunk consulting project that produced the prototype behind Celonis.
- **2011** — Co-founded Celonis and became chief technology officer, responsible for technical development.
- **2011-2016** — Helped grow Celonis for its first five years without external investment, financed through customer relationships.
- **2019** — Received the Deutscher Zukunftspreis with co-founders Alexander Rinke and Bastian Nominacher for making process mining practical at enterprise scale.
- **2021** — Joined Kubermatic's board following an investment in the cloud-native infrastructure company.
- **2023** — Spoke at Slush with Accel partner Harry Nelis about scaling a European company globally and internationalizing engineering.
- **2024** — Delivered an International Conference on Process Mining keynote on extending process mining beyond conventional process problems.
- **2025** — Spoke at the Passau Data Summit about data products and the next phase of process mining.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Celonis in 2011 and has led its technical development as CTO.
- Helped translate process-mining research into enterprise software capable of working across large, varied corporate IT environments.
- Received the 2019 Deutscher Zukunftspreis with Alexander Rinke and Bastian Nominacher.
- Won first prize in Germany's national mathematics competition in 2006.
- Received the 2006 Ferry Porsche Prize for excellent performance in mathematics and physics.
- Co-authored work on Celonis Process Query Language, a domain-specific language with more than 150 operators for process analysis.
- Built Celonis with its co-founders for five years without external funding before the company took institutional investment.

## Latest updates

- **2026-11** — Scheduled to appear in Heilbronn as a speaker at the Munich Management Colloquium's 2026 event.
- **2025-06** — Appeared with AWS in Hamburg to discuss how process intelligence supplies operational context for agentic AI.
- **2025-04** — Spoke at the Passau Data Summit on how data products could redefine process mining.
- **2024-10** — Delivered an industry keynote at the International Conference on Process Mining on applying process mining to unconventional problems such as data lineage.
- **2023-11** — Joined Accel partner Harry Nelis on the Slush founder stage to discuss how European companies scale globally and how Celonis internationalized development.

## Links

- Website: https://www.celonis.com/insights/authors/martin-klenk
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-klenk-40b81a14

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/martin-klenk
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-26