When Janne Hirvimies, the Chief Technology Officer at QuantumGate, began his engineering studies in his native Finland, he never imagined his career would take him to Abu Dhabi. Yet, a series of unexpected turns, from his first job to a chance meeting, have shaped a career at the forefront of system security and post-quantum readiness.
It started with a childhood fascination for taking things apart and putting them back together. That instinct led him to study electronics and then microelectronics, where he learned how chips and computers are built. But during his studies, Hirvimies realized his interests lay more in software than hardware. He pivoted and landed at Nokia.
“It was a bit of an accident that I ended up in the team working on platform security for Nokia devices,” he recalls. “But it was a good accident. I’ve been doing the same kind of work ever since.”
That work, building secure systems, eventually took him to Huawei. But it was an opportunity to meet with His Excellency Faisal Al Bannai in 2016 that introduced him to the Middle East.
The 45-minute conversation with the founder of DarkMatter and EDGE Group, who today also serves as the Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council, would prove to be instrumental. H.E. Al Bannai was laying the foundations of a tech ecosystem in Abu Dhabi that has since exploded in scale and ambition. Hirvimies’s early involvement gave him a front-row seat to its evolution. Although still based in Finland at the time, he began traveling frequently to Abu Dhabi.
When the opportunity to join QuantumGate came in 2024, it felt like a natural next step given the focus, on data security. But what truly drew him in was the startup energy.
“I missed the chaos of the early days, the satisfaction of building something with your own hands,” he says.
QuantumGate focuses on post-quantum cyber security, designing solutions that can withstand the threats posed by future quantum machines. As the CTO, Hirvimies wears many hats. While the company already had strong technical leadership in place, Hirvimies brought deep experience in turning engineering prototypes into viable products— a skill honed over 25 years in system security.
“The biggest challenge isn’t just technical; it’s building something that lasts, that evolves with the customer’s needs, and that works beyond the lab,” he says.
Another major focus of his is business development. As global awareness of quantum threats grows, fueled by rapid advances in quantum hardware, more organizations are beginning to explore solutions.
“When we launched last year, people were asking, ‘Why now?’ That’s already changed,” he says. “The question today is, ‘What should we do first?’”
Helping clients navigate that shift, from awareness to action, is now central to Hirvimies mission.
Looking back on his career, Hirvimies says none of it was part of a grand plan. Just a series of good accidents.
“I didn’t aim to work in security, or end up in Abu Dhabi,” he says. But every step led me somewhere better.”
Now, he’s helping others prepare for the next big disruption and this time, on purpose.