TAG Infrastructure Chair Nomination #1655
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I am posting this as an official interest in running for Chair of the Infrastructure TAG. As a long-time open source contributor and maintainer of Atlantis, I’ve experienced firsthand the challenges and opportunities of shepherding a project into and within the CNCF. My journey with CNCF has been driven by a passion for practical collaboration: I co-founded and seeded the Infrastructure Lifecycle Working Group under TAG App Delivery, and have served as a technical lead for the TAG since, focusing on bridging the gap between platform engineering, infrastructure as code, and real-world operations. The Infrastructure Lifecycle Working Group was formed to address a critical gap. While cloud native practices and tooling have advanced rapidly, there remains a lack of technology-agnostic best practices for managing the full lifecycle of infrastructure across hybrid, edge, and multi-cloud environments. Our group’s mission is to deliver a practical framework, covering infrastructure as code, control planes, state management, disaster recovery, automation, testing, and observability, that empowers practitioners to build secure, resilient, and sustainable platforms. I have worked to ensure our efforts are collaborative, integrating feedback from other TAGs, vendors, and end-users to produce guidance grounded in real-world needs. As an engineering manager at Lambda.ai, I am working at the intersection of AI and platform engineering, and I bring a unique perspective that blends emerging technologies with proven operational patterns with a background in building resilient, scalable infrastructure for cloud native environments. My focus is on mentorship, transparency, and actionable guidance, helping teams adopt cloud native best practices while navigating both legacy and cutting-edge infrastructure challenges. I am committed to amplifying the visibility and impact of TAG Infrastructure, advocating for clear communication and community engagement so our work benefits the entire CNCF ecosystem. If selected as Chair, my priorities will be to foster cross-TAG collaboration and ensure that the guidance we provide to end-users and project maintainers keeps pace with the evolving needs of those practitioners. I want to make TAG Infrastructure a visible, approachable, and essential resource for everyone building the next generation of cloud native platforms. |
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I am posting to express my enthusiastic interest in running for Chair of the Infrastructure TAG. In addition to being a highly active open source advocate and evangelist, I have a unique history with hands on experience with all of the areas of the Infrastructure TAG. Almost 35 years of hands on experience in all areas of infrastructure gives me a unique perspective that I believe will help with guiding overall direction and allow for mentoring and helping those driving related subprojects and initiatives. My LinkedIn profile provides an exhaustive background of my experiences, but a short list of major experiences includes:
I have literally touched every part of the infrastructure stack at some point in my career. While proud of my infrastructure experience, I am just as proud of my experience in open source leadership. Starting with being one of the inaugural directors of the OpenStack Foundation, continuing on to lead open source at Dell EMC and Juniper Networks, then serving on Linux Foundation Networking TAC, Linux Foundation Edge Board, the AECC, and now leading the Mirantis Open Source Program Office. More important than serving in these various positions, I feel I've been an exemplary advocate of some times controversial, yet important changes in communities. For example, in 2014 I gave a presentation called "The Lie of the Benevolent Dictator" at the OpenStack Silicon Valley conference, where I highlighted a key gap in the overall structure of the OpenStack Foundation organization and advocated for better product management, which directly led to the formation of a product user group to provide direct feedback to different OpenStack projects. I have done the work of mediating between teams, mentoring individuals, and advocating for change. As a TAG Chair my number one priority will be listening to the various constituencies such as end-users, community members, developers, operators, and similar that we impact. Understanding their needs will help me work with the other Chairs and TLs to prioritize initiatives and subprojects appropriately. I also hope to initiate active discussions around individual project health of each project under the "Data, Storage, Network, DNS, Compute, Service Mesh, Infrastructure-as-Code, Edge, Sovereignty, Load Balancing" categories and work with the maintainers to improve project health as necessary. I also hope to promote project collaboration and white papers for each those same special interest/categories. Ultimately, the TAG Infrastructure is here to serve the cloud native community and contribute to all of our mutual success. |
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I’m putting myself forward as a candidate for Chair of the Infrastructure TAG and look forward to contributing in a leadership capacity. With over a decade of experience in open-source and cloud-native systems, including core contributions to PacketFence, a leading open-source network access control (NAC) solution, I design solutions that simplify software and empower engineering teams. Now at Akamai, I serve as a Senior Architect focused on building a Kubernetes-based internal PaaS that aims to democratize cloud-native practices via GitOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code practices across the organization. My work bridges startups and enterprises, driven by a passion for scalable, secure systems. Key Achievements:
As a leader, I prioritize consensus-building: whether aligning stakeholders on technical roadmaps or resolving critical architectural gaps, I balance agility with compliance, ensuring teams operate within defined scopes while fostering innovation. My experience mentoring engineers and collaborating across organizational boundaries equips me to drive TAG initiatives that unite the community, streamline processes, and amplify the impact of cloud-native infrastructure. |
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I am honored and excited to submit my candidacy for the role of Chair of the CNCF TAG Infrastructure. With over two decades of experience in cloud-native infrastructure, enterprise architecture, and platform engineering, I bring a depth of technical leadership and community engagement that aligns directly with the TAG's mission: to define and advance practices and standards for scalable, resilient, secure, and performant cloud-native systems. Throughout my career, I have driven impactful infrastructure strategies in both enterprise and open-source environments. Currently, as Strategy Lead in the CTO Office at Mirantis, I guide cloud-native transformation for strategic customers across AI/ML, Platform Engineering, and Sovereign Cloud domains—focusing on outcomes, not just technologies. My prior role as Consulting Architect at Mirantis and my leadership at SUSE as Lead Architect and Platform Engineering initiator reflect my commitment to advancing cloud-native best practices at the edge, in service mesh, and across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. My practical expertise spans infrastructure lifecycle management, compute, networking, storage, service mesh, and sovereignty—all domains within TAG Infrastructure's scope. I bring hands-on knowledge in open-source technologies like Kubernetes (v1.32 release team), k0s, k3s, Kairos, Metal3, KubeVirt, Linkerd, Istio and much more. This is complemented by my history of delivering strategic consulting across sectors such as automotive, telco, healthcare and finance, aligning technical excellence with business strategy. Beyond my technical background, I am a dedicated community advocate. As a CNCF Ambassador and Linkerd Ambassador, core organizer of KCD Netherlands, I have continuously contributed to community growth and knowledge sharing. I am an active member of TAG App Delivery's Platforms Working Group, and I’ve supported the CNCF ecosystem through public speaking (KubeCon, PlatformCon, GOTO and more), program committees, and open-source evangelism. I am passionate about bridging the gap between technical capabilities and practical adoption. As Chair, my goals would be to: Foster cross-TAG and project alignment to address systemic infrastructure gaps. Accelerate the delivery of high-impact initiatives such as multi-cluster performance benchmarking and disaster recovery patterns. Champion practices that reflect real-world operational needs, especially in regulated and sovereign environments. Ensure the TAG continues to attract diverse, capable contributors and future leaders. The CNCF ecosystem needs strong, collaborative technical leadership to evolve. With my combination of deep infrastructure experience, strategic foresight, and active community involvement, I am confident in my ability to serve as Chair and help drive TAG Infrastructure’s mission forward. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, |
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I’m very interested in running for Chair of the new TAG: TAG Infrastructure. I am a Tech Lead in the Cloud Native Storage team at VMware by Broadcom, working on building a storage platform for running Kubernetes applications on vSphere, and providing solutions for managing storage policies and storage quota, data protection, and disaster recovery. I am currently a co-chair of CNCF Storage TAG. I led the initiative of the Data on Kubernetes - Database Patterns Whitepaper, collaborating with the DoK community. I was also a co-author of the CNCF Storage Landscape Whitepaper. I am a co-chair of the Kubernetes Storage SIG, a co-chair of the Kubernetes Data Protection WG, and a maintainer in Kubernetes CSI. I was one of the founding members of the Kubernetes Data Protection WG. Since its establishment in early 2020, the WG has been identifying missing functionalities and working together to design features to enable data protection support in Kubernetes. The WG’s initiatives include a few features that I led such as Consistent Group Snapshot and Volume Snapshot. My contributions also include projects that aim at improving the resilience of the Kubernetes cluster such as Non-Graceful Node Shutdown and Volume Health. Before joining VMware, I was the Lead Architect of OpenSDS while working for Futurewei. I also worked at Dell EMC for many years and has developed deep expertise in storage, data protection, disaster recovery, cloud, and virtualization technologies. With the TAG reboot, I see a great opportunity to collaborate across domain areas. In addition to storage, now I’ll have the opportunity to work closely with people from networking, compute, and other areas, trying to fill some of the gaps identified by TOC in the infrastructure area. If elected, it will be my honor to continue to serve the community, help grow the next 10 years of the cloud native ecosystem. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yangxing/ |
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I am excited to submit my candidacy for Chair of the CNCF TAG Infrastructure. With over six years of hands-on experience as a maintainer of the CNCF project Metal3.io, I have been deeply embedded in the cloud-native infrastructure ecosystem. Throughout this time, I’ve contributed not only to the technical growth of the project but also played a key role in its governance and lifecycle—leading efforts that has transitioned Metal3.io into applying for the CNCF incubation stage. My work has focused on bridging the gap between cutting-edge Kubernetes deployments and the foundational realities of running them on bare metal in complex, distributed cloud environments. In my current role as an Open Source Architect and Product Owner at Ericsson Software Technology in Finland, I focus on Kubernetes-based infrastructure solutions tailored for bare metal and edge computing. My day-to-day work involves solving real-world operational challenges while helping shape long-term platform strategy through open collaboration and upstream contributions. In this process, I am also managing the technical contributions the team does towards open source ecosystem. I myself have been in the top 3 contributors in Metal3 over the past few years. Beyond project contributions, I am an active community builder. I have organized Kubernetes Community Days (KCDs) and local cloud-native meetups, and have delivered technical talks at both regional events and global forums such as lightning talks in KubeCon. I hold a PhD in Computer Science, and I bring a research-informed, practically grounded approach to infrastructure architecture, focused on resiliency, interoperability, and long-term sustainability. If elected as Chair, my priorities will include:
The CNCF has been a cornerstone of my professional journey, and I am eager to help shape the next phase of cloud-native infrastructure through service, leadership, and open collaboration. Thank you for your consideration. Kashif Khan |
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I would like to nominate myself. My name is Weizhou Lan, and my GitHub handle is weizhoublue . I currently serve as a Senior Tech Lead at DaoCloud, with over 15 years of engineering experience. I have been actively involved in the Kubernetes ecosystem since 2018. My current responsibilities include contributing to CNCF-related open source projects and leading my team in product development. My technical expertise spans networking, eBPF, observability, service mesh, AI, chaos engineering, and more.
Over the past 8 years, I have actively contributed to the cloud-native community across various domains. Although I have attended some TAG meetings, I have not yet contributed as a TAG member. Therefore, I hope to take this opportunity to nominate myself. Sincerely, |
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Thanks everyone for putting your nomination forward :) |
Following the TAG Reboot Timeline, we are opening nominations for (3) Chairs for TAG Infrastructure. If this interests you, please review the information on TAG governance and responsibilities in the TAG Governance doc and the draft charter for the TAG. Then, if you're still interested - please post your bio below and confirm your interest in running for chair.
Election timeline:
May 19: Nominations close for new TAG Chairs
May 19: TOC Vote opens for new TAG Chairs
June 2: TOC Vote closes for new TAG Chairs
June 2: Newly seated TAG Chairs announced
NOTE: Timeline is subject to change; check the TAG Reboot Timeline issue for the most up-to-date information.
Once the initial leads are seated, we'll work on refining the charters and really get things going. :)
Links:
TAG Restructuring Presentation - Feb 4, 2025
TAG Reboot Timeline Issue
TAG Governance Doc
Draft Charter
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