Meet our CEO Oskari Häkkinen

Hi! I'm Oskari, the CEO of Spatineo!

I started my professional career as an IT  and mathematics teacher. After a year of teaching, I realised I was thirsty for different challenges. I switched to embedded systems and started as a design engineer. I wrote code for bare metal microcontrollers and industrial Linux computers. I worked in a small company, so I also did various other things such as electronics design, automation programming and assembling automation systems. In my early career, I worked with the explosives industry, intelligent packaging and the food industry. After 3 years of doing everything, I changed to a bigger company with a more limited focus. I started as an embedded software programmer. I learned quickly good programming and project management practices and started working with embedded Linux systems in the mining industry, which was relatively new for me. I wrote code for machines that could weigh over 40,000 kg and were shipped worldwide, so no coding on my knee anymore, the program must work. I progressed to team leadership and sales quickly and got more customers and projects to handle. I worked with welding robots, sports analytics, e-commerce, rental applications, and industrial measurements, in addition to mining. One day, after I had finished leading a company’s resourcing meeting, which was kind of an extended management team meeting, Spatineo’s Chair Kristian called me about this possibility in Spatineo. It took a while to think of aspects of a change, but in May 2021, I accepted his offer and became a partner and the CEO of Spatineo. Ever since, it has been a speedy journey. 

At Spatineo, we have grown as a team in many ways. We’ve grown from a small startup to a well-structured company. We have many new colleagues and have more than doubled our revenue. It took a while, but we have also found our clear direction in driving innovations in location information services in defence & intelligence, climate & natural resources and Urban & Infrastructure Development. I have the privilege of having a great team that knows geospatial data analytics, earth observation, software development, and artificial intelligence, so I have every possibility to innovate new products and services with them. I see myself as an enabler of great ideas from the team and myself. Productising has been in the backbone of the company, and everyone here thinks of new product opportunities all the time. It is a fruitful ground for innovations, like the capacity map or MapMiner, a new AI-based search application for geospatial services. I see a bright future for us with the products and services around geospatial intelligence. We are working with the megatrends and have a team to meet the expectations.

In four years, I have also deep-dived into the geospatial world by being selected as chairman of Geoforum Finland, the umbrella organisation for Finnish geospatial companies. I am also fostering company cooperation in the Finnish Location Information Cluster of the Technology Industries of Finland. Even though our geospatial industry is relatively small, there are many opportunities, and most are related to safety and climate change. Earth observation is increasing business as the measurements done from the satellite are getting more varied. 

As I have told you, I like working with people and technology. In my free time, I, on the other hand, do things without technology and in peace. I love hiking and trail running in the wild. Currently, I’m training for my second marathon, and the step after that would be a mountain ultra run. I hope I don’t hit the news with the headline “A Finnish company CEO rescued injured from the Swiss Alps”; instead, I hope it will be more like “A Finnish company Spatineo’s AI-based earth observation solution is saving lives all over the world”. 

Running on the hills of Dubrovnik, Croatia.