Brian Grant

CTO

Menlo Park, California, United States28 yrs experience
Highly Stable

Key Highlights

  • Original lead architect of Kubernetes.
  • Inventor on 15+ patents.
  • Over 30 years in high-performance computing.
Stackforce AI infers this person is a Cloud Computing Architect with extensive experience in high-performance systems.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Cloud ComputingSoftware EngineeringHigh Performance ComputingCompilers

Other Skills

Cloud API standardsInfrastructure as CodeDeclarative configurationKubernetesAPI designConfiguration ManagementPolicy AutomationGPU programmingC++VLIW compilerDynamic binary translationDebuggingScalabilityDistributed SystemsEmbedded Systems

About

CTO/cofounder of ConfigHub. Developing a new paradigm for provisioning, deploying, and operating cloud applications and infrastructure. If we haven't met, and you want to connect, please first make a significant, relevant comment on one of my posts. Original lead architect of Kubernetes and creator of its declarative configuration model: KRM, kubectl apply, kustomize. Founding member of the Kubernetes Steering Committee. Inaugural member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee. Former tech lead of Google's internal container platform, Borg. Founder of the Omega R&D project. https://github.com/cncf/toc/commit/e7de08f1c1b831c6405e7b62011637db22c44c04 https://github.com/kubernetes/steering/?tab=readme-ov-file#emeritus More than 30 years of experience with high-performance and distributed computing. Inventor on 15+ patents. Chief Architect and 3rd engineer at PeakStream, a startup that implemented high-performance computing on GPUs. Prior work on data-parallel computing, multi-threading, message-passing-based supercomputing, dynamic compilation, link-time optimization, profile-guided optimization, runtime partial evaluation, and dynamic frequency/voltage scaling. Ph.D. in Computer Science. Shifts: Shared memory -> Distributed memory Operation scheduling in hardware -> scheduling in software CPUs -> GPUs Single-threaded -> Multi-threaded Monolith -> Hub and spoke VMs -> Containers Infrastructure as Code -> Configuration as Data https://github.com/bgrant0607 https://twitter.com/bgrant0607 https://medium.com/@bgrant0607

Experience

28 yrs
Total Experience
4 yrs 5 mos
Average Tenure
1 yr 10 mos
Current Experience

Confighub inc

Technical Visionary (CTO)

Jun 2024Present · 1 yr 10 mos · United States · Remote

  • With Alexis Richardson and Jesper Joergensen, developing a new paradigm for provisioning, deploying, and operating cloud applications and infrastructure.

Google

Distinguished Software Engineer

Jun 2007Jun 2024 · 17 yrs

  • Google Cloud Application Ecosystem and Developer Experience (Uber Tech Lead, 2023-2024)
  • Steered Google Cloud API standards (aip.dev) and Infrastructure as Code efforts. Guided SDK, CLI, and console autogeneration and evolution.
  • Configuration & Policy Automation (Uber Tech Lead, 2020-2022):
  • Lead declarative configuration projects:
  • https://kpt.dev/guides/rationale
  • https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/
  • https://cloud.google.com/anthos/config-management
  • https://cloud.google.com/config-connector/docs/overview
  • Kubernetes (original architect and API design lead of Kubernetes, 2013-2019)
  • Defined the project's scope, architecture, and API model, and shaped the system design based on my experience from Omega and Borg. Declarative configuration innovator: creator of "apply", kustomize, kpt, and porch. Coined "Kubernetes Resource Model" and "Configuration as Data". Founding member of the Kubernetes Steering Committee. Founder of Kubernetes SIG Architecture. Inaugural member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee. Wrote the definition of "Cloud Native".
  • Background of the Kubernetes project is described here:
  • https://medium.com/@bgrant0607/the-technical-history-of-kubernetes-2fe1988b522a
  • https://medium.com/@bgrant0607/kubernetes-the-road-to-1-0-525a9420fdf0
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftKZN6k-K1k
  • http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2898444
  • https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/043-borg-omega-kubernetes-beyond/
  • Omega (founder, tech lead 2011-2012):
  • http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41684.html
  • Borg (tech lead, 2009-2010):
  • http://www.wired.com/2013/03/google-borg-twitter-mesos/all/ http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43438.html
  • Multi-core initiative (tech lead manager and intergrouplet founder, 2007-2008):
  • Initiated several efforts to expand use of multi-threading in Google's C++ codebase: Linux NPTL benchmarking, new C++ synchronization primitives, g++ compiler thread-safety annotations, thread profiling, multi-threaded HTTP server, education and documentation
Cloud API standardsInfrastructure as CodeDeclarative configurationCloud ComputingSoftware Engineering

Peakstream, inc.

Chief Architect

Jun 2005May 2007 · 1 yr 11 mos

  • Lead software engineer/designer, and employee #6 at a small software startup developing a software platform for high-performance computing on commodity GPUs and multi-core x86 processors -- yes, HPC on GPUs in 2005-2007 -- a bit too early. Played key roles in many areas, including product definition and design, software development (in C++), test-plan development, product roadmap development, advanced development, process development, patent filings, presentations, pitches, ... For example, designed a dynamic SPMD kernel generator for fused array-level operations and HLSL compiler. Debugged subtle GPU architectural bugs and performance issues. Also made major contributions to the design of the system's runtime and the profiler. Lead overall design of the multi-core product using SSE and multi-threading. Directly managed up to 5 other engineers and successfully guided several projects to completion.
High-performance computingGPU programmingC++High Performance ComputingSoftware Engineering

3plus1 technologies

Advisor

Feb 2005Jun 2005 · 4 mos

  • Advised company regarding contract negotiations with 3rd party to develop compiler toolchain for embedded multi-core DSP chip. Helped plan software toolchain roadmap and compiler tool development schedule. Helped write specifications for tools and their input languages.

Transmeta

Senior Principal Engineer

Jun 2000Jun 2005 · 5 yrs

  • Technical lead and senior software developer, with a focus on performance. Built an aggressive VLIW compiler backend and profile-guided whole-program link-time optimizer for Transmeta's Efficeon architecture: interprocedural register allocation and scheduling, forwards and backwards dataflow optimizations, ISA-specific optimizations, DWARF debug info remapping, ... Implemented and enhanced optimizations in dynamic binary translator (Code Morphing Software) and VLIW compiler backend. Developed online policies controlling multiple "gears" of translation, adaptive retranslation, and dynamic frequency/voltage scaling. Isolated, characterized, and/or worked around several major frequency-limiting paths in the 90nm generation Efficeon. Implemented and supervised much of the software-tools work for the 3rd-generation Efficeon core, which included new and changed instructions and major new architectural features.
VLIW compilerDynamic binary translationSoftware EngineeringCompilers

Lawrence livermore national laboratory

Intern

Jan 1992Jan 1994 · 2 yrs

  • Over 3 summers, investigated PVM and MPI message-passing performance, implemented collective-communication algorithms for massively parallel distributed-memory multi-computers, ported a global climate model to MPI, and analyzed message-passing performance of the climate model using ParaGraph and Pablo.

Ibm

Intern

May 1991Aug 1991 · 3 mos · Research Triangle Park, NC

  • Fun fact: I worked closely with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Ewing.

Education

University of Washington

Ph.D. — Computer Science

Jan 1993Jan 2001

Purdue University

BS

Jan 1989Jan 1993

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