AI Infrastructure & Kubernetes Leader

Elena Neroslavskaya

Toronto, Canada 647-***-**** *******@*****.*** linkedin.com/in/neros github.com/lenisha

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Senior Solutions Architect, AI Infrastructure Leader, and Golden Kubestronaut with experience designing and delivering Kubernetes, cloud-native, and AI platforms for enterprise customers. Deep expertise in AKS, distributed inference, GPU-accelerated infrastructure, AI platform engineering, and large-scale Kubernetes operations. Currently leading strategic initiatives within Microsoft's Maia AI accelerator ecosystem spanning Kubernetes integration, developer platforms, AI inference infrastructure, SDK releases, and engineering enablement. Experienced working directly with executive stakeholders, engineering leadership, MLOps teams, and AI platform organizations to drive adoption of production AI systems and cloud-native technologies. Frequent conference speaker, technical evangelist, and trusted advisor on Kubernetes and AI infrastructure.

CORE SKILLS

Cloud-Native & Kubernetes: Kubernetes • AKS • Helm • Kubeflow • Istio • GitOps • Argo CD • Prometheus • Grafana • Terraform • Docker

AI Infrastructure: GPU Infrastructure • Distributed Inference • vLLM • Triton • ONNX Runtime • PyTorch • Hugging Face • LLM Serving • Model Evaluation

AI Engineering: Azure AI Foundry • Azure OpenAI • Claude •Microsoft Agent Framework • GitHub Copilot • Codex • Copilot Studio • MCP • Skills • Agents • RAG

Programming: Python • C# • Java • React • C++

CERTIFICATIONS

Azure: Azure Solutions Architect Expert • Azure AI Engineer • Azure DevOps Engineer Expert

CNCF: Golden Kubestronaut • Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) • Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)

Terraform: Terraform Associate • Vault Associate • Consul Associate

Github: GitHub Admin • GitHub Advanced Security • GitHub Actions • GitHub Copilot

Nvidia: NVIDIA-Certified Associate: AI Infrastructure and Operations

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP/ENABLEMENT

Contributor to open-source cloud-native and AI ecosystems projects (Kubeflow, Speech SDK, Azure OpenAI samples)

Maintainer of technical content and sample implementations related to Kubernetes, AI infrastructure, and LLM engineering.

Speaker at KubeCon, NVIDIA GTC, Microsoft Build, ODSC, and MLADS, presenting on Kubernetes, distributed training, PyTorch performance, and large-scale AI infrastructure.

Published technical articles on AI infrastructure, Kubernetes, cloud-native systems, and LLM engineering. Active technical blogger on Microsoft Open, Medium, and DZone.

Adjunct Professor at Gratz College, teaching Python and ML courses.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Microsoft Canada

Senior Technical Program Manager, Maia, Core AI Feb 2025 – Present

Partnered with AKS, runtime, and AI infrastructure engineering teams to define, prioritize, and deliver the Microsoft Maia Kubernetes Device Plugin and Kubernetes Operator, enabling accelerator-aware scheduling, Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA), and lifecycle management for Maia accelerator AI workloads running on Kubernetes.

Orchestrated collaboration across engineering, platform, runtime, infrastructure, and developer experience teams to define priorities, drive strategic alignment, streamline execution, and drive adoption of AI platform capabilities across internal and external stakeholders.

Designed engineering automation, release pipelines, telemetry, and validation frameworks supporting accelerator software quality and production readiness.

Supported development and onboarding of PyTorch-based Maia backend capabilities, enabling model developers to execute, validate, and optimize AI workloads targeting Maia accelerator environments.

Partnered with AI infrastructure engineering teams to design and operationalize Kubernetes-based AI inference platforms leveraging PyTorch, ONNX Runtime, vLLM, and Azure AI to support scalable LLM serving, distributed inference, and model evaluation.

Prototyped AI-assisted engineering workflows using Claude Code, SWE agents, and GitHub Copilot, evaluating their impact on software development and knowledge discovery.

Cloud Solution Architect – AI & App Innovation, Customer Success Jan 2018 – Feb 2025

Trusted advisor for strategic enterprise customers through executive engagement, architecture workshops, technical demonstrations, and Proof-of-Concepts for Azure AI and Generative AI solutions.

Provided architectural leadership for enterprise AI platforms, defining target-state architectures, modernization roadmaps, and adoption strategies across Azure OpenAI, Azure AI, Azure Machine Learning, AKS, and distributed inference environments.

Architected enterprise-scale AI solutions including RAG systems, LLM-powered copilots, agentic AI workflows, model selection and evaluation frameworks and intelligent knowledge platforms.

Designed and implemented AI platforms supporting model training, inference, evaluation, and deployment workloads using Azure AI, Azure ML, Kubernetes (AKS), PyTorch, ONNX Runtime, and distributed cloud services.

Built scalable cloud native platforms using Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, GitOps, Azure DevOps, and CI/CD automation, enabling reliable deployment, operation, and lifecycle management of AI workloads across cloud environments.

Collaborated closely with Microsoft engineering, product, account, and customer success teams to resolve technical blockers, prioritize customer requirements, influence platform capabilities, and drive successful customer outcomes.

Contributed to open-source and cloud-native ecosystems, including Kubeflow, Azure OpenAI samples, Speech SDK integrations, and AI infrastructure reference implementations

EDUCATION

MSc in Computer Science, Major in NLP and Artificial Intelligence

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