As Dispel Accelerates Growth, Ken Young Named CTO and Chris DiLorenzo Named Founding Engineer

Dispel's next phase of growth brings a new CTO to run engineering day to day, freeing its founding CTO to go all in on architecture and research.

AUSTIN, Texas — October 1, 2026 — Dispel, the leader in Secure Remote Access (SRA) for Operational Technology (OT), today announced two leadership changes: Ken Young has been promoted from Vice President of Engineering to Chief Technology Officer, and Chris DiLorenzo is transitioning from CTO to Founding Engineer, a more hands-on technical role. 

The changes come as Dispel continues scaling the Dispel Zero Trust Engine for industrial and critical infrastructure environments, deepening its engineering leadership bench while creating space for its founding technical architect to focus on the applied research and AI-native engineering practices reshaping how the company builds. 

“Since joining Dispel, Ken has scaled our engineering teams and delivered at the pace our customers demand. This promotion reflects that outstanding track record," said Ethan Schmertzler, Co-CEO of Dispel. "Chris has been core to this company since its founding, and this move unlocks capacity to execute on the hardest technical problems we have. Growth at Dispel means making room for both leaders to do their best work.” 

As CTO, Young will own Dispel's technical direction end to end, from architecture and engineering culture to product delivery and security posture. He will lead Engineering and IT, working alongside the CEO and executive team to translate business goals into technical strategy, make architectural calls on Dispel's most complex systems, and build an organization where engineers grow into stronger practitioners. The role carries particular weight at Dispel, where high-compliance environments including FedRAMP and critical infrastructure demand technical decisions that meet rigorous standards without slowing delivery. 

Young joined Dispel as Vice President of Engineering in March 2025. He previously served as Vice President of Engineering at NTT Security Holdings, where he led development of an Azure-based XDR/MDR service and two cloud security platforms. Earlier, he held the same title at Spreetail, leading engineering for the company's e-commerce marketplace integrations and logistics platforms, and spent more than five years at Google as a Senior Manager overseeing data center operations and analytics. 

"I'm honored to step into this role and build on the foundation Chris and the team have spent years establishing," said Ken Young, Chief Technology Officer of Dispel. "My focus is straightforward: keep our engineering organization shipping at the pace our customers need, while elevating the security and compliance standards this industry demands. We have some massive milestones ahead of us this year, and I can't wait to see what we achieve together." 

As Founding Engineer, DiLorenzo steps into this role with domain expertise and organizational impact equivalent to a Vice President, carrying authority that is technical, earned, and organization-wide. He will define and defend the multi-year architecture of the Dispel Zero Trust Engine platform; lead applied research in secure networking, moving-target defense, and protocol design; and determine which lines of research transition into product programs. He will also serve as senior technical advisor to the CTO, CEOs, and executive team; provide authoritative guidance on certification architecture alongside Dispel's compliance stakeholders; and own resolution of the hardest production, reliability, and security problems the company faces. 

DiLorenzo has served as Dispel's CTO since February 2020, following prior roles at the company as Director of Engineering and Engineering Lead, and was the 4th person to join Dispel. Before Dispel, he served as CTO of TripleMint, relocating from Sweden to New York to join the company as its first employee. He holds a Master of Science and Engineering from Uppsala University. 

“Ken is a fantastic engineering leader, and having him here means I know the team is in good hands,” said Chris DiLorenzo, Founding Engineer at Dispel. “I'm excited to step into this new role at a moment of real change in how engineering gets done. AI is reshaping every part of the software development lifecycle, from how we write and ship code to the very architecture, products, and services we build. I want a front row seat in making sure we don't just chase token spend, but maintain rigorous engineering discipline. I want to enable brilliant and hardworking engineers to have much more impact than they used to, and my new role will let me get hands-on to make that happen.” 

Learn more about Dispel's leadership, culture, and open roles at dispel.com/resources/about-us.