Summary
Mark Gruetzner is a hands-on technology leader and serial founder with over two decades of software engineering experience and 12 years in senior leadership roles, currently serving as CTO and Founder of Blue Ocean Software. He combines deep systems-level experience—from Windows device drivers and GPIB hardware at National Instruments to cloud-hosted SaaS and ISP billing/network management systems—with a knack for translating customer processes into practical software solutions. Mark has led and scaled engineering teams of 20+ across development, testing and operations, introduced Agile practices, and managed complex infrastructure migrations supporting hundreds of VMs. He has a proven track record of integrating diverse technologies (e.g., image recognition, UPC scanning, MikroTik/Ubiquiti APIs) to solve domain-specific problems for industries like wireless ISPs, pipeline, and construction. Based in Lincoln, Texas, he pairs entrepreneurial instincts with meticulous engineering rigor—evident from a 4.0 Computer Engineering degree from Texas A&M and early work on computer vision and VR at NASA. Colleagues describe him as the kind of CTO who still dives into code and servers to ensure solutions are both elegant and operationally resilient.
12 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering, 4.0, Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering, 4.0 at Texas A&M University