He has been active in the RIPE community and the Internet industry for over 30 years. He was RIPE Chair from 2014 to 2020 when he took on the position of Managing Director for the RIPE NCC. He has extensive first-hand knowledge of IP address policy development from his time as Chair of the RIPE Address Policy Working Group. Hans Petter was also a member of ICANN's ASO Address Council since its formation in 1999 until 2013, with ten years as Chair and Co-Chair. Later on, he served on the ICANN Nomination Committee for five years.
In 1991 he was one of the founders of Oslonett, one of the first Internet Service Providers in Norway. He worked in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, building networks and Internet services for Schibsted Nett, Scandinavia Online and the city guides Allt om Stockholm and Alt om København before he took on the position as Technical Manager in Tiscali in Norway and was later the Nordic Network Director. Before starting at the RIPE NCC, he worked for Visma for 15 years as Chief Information Security Officer and prior to that as its IT Director. He graduated from the University of Oslo with and Cand. Mag. in Informatics, Mathematics and Physics in 1988.