Dispel names new CTO as it reshapes engineering leadership

Dispel promoted Ken Young to chief technology officer and moved founding CTO Chris DiLorenzo into a founding engineer role as the industrial cybersecurity company scales its Zero Trust Engine. The changes are meant to sharpen day-to-day execution while giving DiLorenzo more room for architecture and applied research.

Why it matters: - Dispel is changing its technical leadership structure as it scales secure remote access products for industrial and critical infrastructure customers. - The move separates day-to-day engineering management from long-term architecture and research work. - The company is signaling that speed, compliance and technical depth all need to grow together.

What happened: - Dispel promoted Ken Young from vice president of engineering to chief technology officer. - Dispel moved Chris DiLorenzo from CTO to founding engineer. - The changes were announced Oct. 1, 2026. - Dispel is based in Austin, Texas. - Ethan Schmertzler, Dispel co-CEO, said the promotion reflects Young’s track record scaling engineering teams and that the role change for DiLorenzo frees both leaders to do their best work.

The details: - Young will own technical direction end to end, including architecture, engineering culture, product delivery and security posture. - Young will lead engineering and IT. - Young will work with the CEO and executive team to turn business goals into technical strategy. - Young will make architectural decisions on Dispel’s most complex systems. - Young will also help build an engineering organization where staff grow into stronger practitioners. - The role is especially important because Dispel serves high-compliance environments such as FedRAMP and critical infrastructure. - Young joined Dispel in March 2025. - Before Dispel, Young was vice president of engineering at NTT Security Holdings, where he led an Azure-based XDR/MDR service and two cloud security platforms. - Earlier, Young was vice president of engineering at Spreetail, where he led engineering for e-commerce marketplace integrations and logistics platforms. - Young spent more than five years at Google as a senior manager overseeing data center operations and analytics. - Young said he wants to keep the engineering organization shipping at the pace customers need while raising security and compliance standards. - DiLorenzo will define and defend the multi-year architecture of the Dispel Zero Trust Engine. - DiLorenzo will lead applied research in secure networking, moving-target defense and protocol design. - DiLorenzo will decide which research efforts become product programs. - DiLorenzo will serve as senior technical advisor to the CTO, co-CEOs and executive team. - DiLorenzo will provide guidance on certification architecture with Dispel’s compliance stakeholders. - DiLorenzo will own some of the hardest production, reliability and security problems at the company. - DiLorenzo has been Dispel’s CTO since February 2020. - DiLorenzo previously served as director of engineering and engineering lead at Dispel. - DiLorenzo was the fourth person to join Dispel. - Before Dispel, DiLorenzo was CTO of TripleMint and moved from Sweden to New York to join as the company’s first employee. - DiLorenzo holds a Master of Science and Engineering from Uppsala University.

Between the lines: - The structure gives Dispel a clearer split between execution and long-horizon technical strategy. - That can help a fast-growing company avoid bottlenecks when product demands, compliance requirements and architecture decisions collide. - DiLorenzo’s move also suggests Dispel wants more formalized research output tied to product direction as AI changes software development. - DiLorenzo said he wants to avoid chasing “token spend” and keep engineering discipline tight while AI reshapes the software development lifecycle.

What's next: - Young will run engineering day to day as Dispel continues scaling the Zero Trust Engine for industrial environments. - DiLorenzo will focus on architecture, applied research and technical problems that are harder to solve within normal product cycles. - Dispel is steering toward more AI-native engineering practices while keeping compliance and reliability central. - The company directs readers to its about page for more information on leadership, culture and open roles: Dispel leadership and careers.

The bottom line: - Dispel is betting that a sharper split between operational leadership and deep technical research will help it grow without losing control of security and compliance.