Randall Hunt
VP Cloud Strategy and Solutions at Caylent
Randall Hunt, VP of Cloud Strategy and Solutions at Caylent, is a technology leader, investor, and hands-on keyboard coder based in Los Angeles, CA. Previously, Randall led software and developer relations teams at Facebook, SpaceX, AWS, MongoDB, and NASA. Randall spends most of his time listening to customers, building demos, writing blog posts, and mentoring junior engineers. Python and C++ are his favorite programming languages, but he begrudgingly admits that Javascript rules the world. Outside of work, Randall loves to read science fiction, advise startups, travel, and ski.
Randall has recently featured in Onalytica's Who's Who in Cloud report.
How did you get to become an expert in your key topics?
In college, I studied physics, languages, and computer science. My first real job, while I was still in school, was working for NASA Langley and then NASA Ames in the Intelligent Robotics Group. I primarily wrote modest python programs to deal with mass properties and KML files. This was my first exposure to AWS.
I dropped out of school shortly after my year at NASA and spent a summer as a “hackNY” intern at a small startup called SpotOn, which would go on to be acquired by AirBNB. At SpotOn I got my first exposure to very basic machine learning using collaborative filtering and singular value decomposition. I left SpotOn and college to join a small company in New York called MongoDB (technically, back then, they were still called 10gen). MongoDB went on to be incredibly successful. That’s where I developed familiarity with cloud computing, programming, and developer advocacy.
In my time at MongoDB I started working on large scale AWS projects and developed a deep background on the platform. Next I went to SpaceX where I ran the CI/CD infrastructure, among other applications, on AWS in AWS’s still relatively new GovCloud. This was my first hybrid on-prem + cloud experience and I developed deep experience with direct connect and other enterprise level networking offerings from AWS.
Next, I spent 5 years at AWS on various teams as a software engineer, a developer advocate, a blogger, and a solutions architect. During my time at AWS I began investing in startups building on top of AWS. After AWS I worked at Facebook where I ran developer advocacy for the PyTorch team.
What sub-topics are you most passionate about?
- Databases
- NoSQL
- Frontend
- Backend
- FullStack
- High Availability
- Machine Learning
- Data Science
- End-user communication systems
- Hiring
- Learning and Development
Who influences you within these topics?
- Colm MacCarthaigh
- Charity Majors
- Rick Houlihan
- David Yanacek
- Clare Ligouri
- Marc Brooker
- Becky Weiss
- Chris Munns
- Seth Eliott
And many more.
What do you think the future holds in this space?
V8 Isolates for edge computing look like a good near-term bet.
What brands are leading the way in this space?
- AWS
- Azure
- Oracle is growing but faces a strong negative momentum from their past behavior.
If a brand wanted to work with you, which activities would you be most interested in collaborating on?
What are your passions outside of work?
What would be the best way for a brand to contact you?
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