Aaron Lake

Co-Founder

Washington, DC, United States31 yrs 4 mos experience

Highly StableAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Led large-scale enterprise GenAI platform deployment at Yahoo.
Drove cloud modernization and digital transformation at Verizon Media.
Established cloud-native infrastructure platforms at AOL.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and AdTech executive with extensive experience in infrastructure and platform modernization.

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Skills

Core Skills

Infrastructure ManagementTechnology ManagementAiCloud ComputingSoftware Engineering

Other Skills

platform strategyinfrastructure modernizationAI-enabled operating modelsdigital transformationplatform modernizationtechnology strategyGenAIengineering velocityoperational efficiencySRE automationcloud modernizationsecurity governancecloud platformscontainer platformsengineering operating costs

About

I'm a technology executive and advisor with deep experience leading engineering, infrastructure, platform, and enterprise technology organizations across consumer, media, telecom, and enterprise environments. My background is grounded in hands-on engineering and architecture, and I've spent my career partnering with leadership teams on complex technology and transformation initiatives at scale. I've led global organizations of up to 1,500 across startups and large enterprises, working across all phases of growth, scale, and transformation building and operating large-scale platforms and products while driving organizational, fiscal, and technology change that delivers both growth and efficiency. Today I advise select technology companies and investors on platform strategy, infrastructure modernization, and AI-enabled operating models through StonyCreek Group. At Yahoo, my teams drove one of the earlier large-scale enterprise GenAI platform deployments, delivering measurable gains in engineering velocity, operational efficiency, and SRE automation.

Experience

31 yrs 4 mos

Total Experience

6 yrs 6 mos

Average Tenure

6 mos

Current Experience

Vespa.ai

2 roles

Advisor

Oct 2025 – Present · 6 mos

Board Member

Oct 2023 – Sep 2025 · 1 yr 11 mos

Providing continuity following the successful carve-out from Yahoo, building on prior leadership of Vespa within Yahoo’s platform organization and contributing to governance, strategic direction, and investor engagement.

Stonycreek group

Executive Advisor

Sep 2025 – Present · 7 mos

Selective advisory engagements with technology companies and investors on platform strategy, infrastructure modernization, and AI-enabled operating models.

platform strategyinfrastructure modernizationAI-enabled operating modelsInfrastructure ManagementTechnology Management

Yahoo

CIO & SVP, Platform Engineering

Sep 2021 – Sep 2025 · 4 yrs

Led Yahoo’s horizontal technology and platform organizations as CIO & SVP, spanning global infrastructure, cloud, enterprise technology, developer and workforce platforms, security, AI/ML, and data platforms underpinning consumer, advertising, and subscription products used by hundreds of millions of users globally.
Drove Yahoo-wide digital transformation initiatives, including major platform modernization efforts and strategic M&A and divestiture activity, while partnering closely with executive leadership on technology strategy and long-term operating model evolution.

digital transformationplatform modernizationtechnology strategyInfrastructure ManagementTechnology Management

Verizon media

Vice President Cloud Platforms

Jun 2017 – Sep 2021 · 4 yrs 3 mos

Led the Cloud Platforms organization at Verizon Media, accountable for large-scale modernization and digital transformation across cloud, platform engineering, architecture, security, governance, and developer productivity for a global workforce.
Drove the transformation of thousands of applications to modern cloud and container platforms, delivering significant improvements in velocity, security posture, and operational efficiency, including a sustained reduction of more than 25% in engineering operating costs.

cloud modernizationdigital transformationsecurity governanceCloud ComputingInfrastructure Management

Aol

3 roles

Vice President Cloud Engineering (Advertising)

May 2015 – Jun 2017 · 2 yrs 1 mo

Led Cloud Engineering and application architecture organizations embedded within AOL’s advertising product engineering teams, with responsibility for cloud migration, platform architecture, security, governance, and cost optimization.
Drove large-scale application modernization and DevOps transformation across advertising systems, standardizing CI/CD and cloud-first operating models to improve engineering velocity, resource utilization, and cost efficiency, while supporting advertising-related M&A activity.

cloud migrationplatform architecturecost optimizationCloud ComputingInfrastructure Management

Vice President, Infrastructure Development and Operations

Promoted

Mar 2009 – May 2015 · 6 yrs 2 mos

Led global infrastructure engineering organizations responsible for building and operating AOL’s core infrastructure platforms as internal products, spanning compute, network, storage, private cloud, and control-plane services underpinning large-scale consumer and advertising platforms.
Drove modernization and replatforming efforts to reduce legacy proprietary technologies and migrate toward open standards and open-source software, establishing cloud-native, API-first infrastructure platforms that enabled self-service consumption, software-defined operations, and improved efficiency.
Owned the product strategy, architecture, and delivery of infrastructure automation, control planes, and auditing systems, shifting infrastructure from manual, operations-led execution to software-driven platforms that reduced provisioning timelines from months to minutes and enabled lights-out datacenter operations, while partnering closely with operations, security, and compliance teams.

infrastructure engineeringcloud-native platformsAPI-first infrastructureInfrastructure ManagementTechnology Management

Chief Architect (Media, Infrastructure, Operations) Organizations

Mar 2001 – Mar 2009 · 8 yrs

Hands-on architect and software engineer for AOL’s large-scale media platforms, spanning infrastructure, operations, and shared platform services.
Designed and built core platform and infrastructure software, working directly with engineering and operations teams to take systems from concept to production at scale.

platform architecturesoftware engineeringSoftware EngineeringInfrastructure Management