Kubeflow Steering Committee Elections 2024 - Testimonial Phase - Francisco Javier Arceo

[akgraner]

Name (First and Last): Francisco Javier Arceo

Github ID: franciscojavierarceo

Why you are running and want to be part of the KSC:

We are at a pivotal moment for AI/ML. Open-source models have taken center stage, and resilient, scalable infrastructure has become critical to the success of AI. However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough—tools must inspire excitement and engagement among users.

As a Kubeflow Steering Committee member, my core focus would be to drive engagement and increase adoption by improving the experience and impact of Kubeflow for end users, ensuring it’s not only a robust platform but also one that people love to use. More precisely, I would focus on 6 key goals.

1. Expanding Kubeflow Adoption
   • Increasing awareness, adoption, and engagement through collaborations with enterprises and startups.
2. Making RAG a first class priority
   • The AI community has settled on Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) as a critical component for production AI, I will make this a new focus area for Kubeflow.
3. Improving the User/Developer Experience for Model Developers/Users
   • Simplifying workflows and enhancing usability to reduce barriers to entry.
4. Building a more Feature-Complete AI/ML Platform
   • Driving development of critical features to support end-to-end AI/ML workflows.
5. Improving Documentation
   • Ensuring comprehensive, user-friendly docs and resources for the community.
6. Strengthening the Community
   • Fostering a vibrant, inclusive contributor and user ecosystem to support Kubeflow’s long-term growth.

I believe I am qualified to help lead Kubeflow’s values and structure because of my past open-source contributions and professional experience.

As a leader, maintainer, and contributor to Feast, I have helped evolve a critical component of the MLOps ecosystem, driving innovation in feature storage and retrieval. My 12+ years of experience at the intersection of data engineering, AI/ML engineering, and MLOps include technical and managerial leadership roles at Red Hat, Affirm, Fast, Goldman Sachs, and others. Across these positions, I’ve designed, built, and scaled AI models and platforms in production, gaining a deep understanding of user pain points and opportunities to innovate.

I bring this experience to Kubeflow with a vision of making it the leading open source platform for scalable, production-grade AI/ML. By expanding adoption, improving the user experience, and delivering a feature-complete solution, my goal is to empower MLOps teams to build a powerful AI/ML platform that enables their success and expands the global impact of AI.

[woop]

Just want to endorse @franciscojavierarceo. I originally created the Feast project with the strong support of folks like Jeremy Lewi and David Aronchik at Google. The project (Feast) has undergone many phases over the years, and maintainers have come and gone. However, it's always had a very close relationship with Kubeflow, having been embedded into Kubeflow from the early days.

@franciscojavierarceo joined the small set of Feast maintainers about 1.5 years ago, and since then has really helped to shepherd the project. He's been active both strategically, helping set the vision and bringing together the community, and has also rolled up his sleeves and gotten things done on the ground

Definitely have my backing!

[assumednormal]

I strongly endorse @franciscojavierarceo for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. Having worked closely with Francisco at Marcus by Goldman Sachs on the personal loan product, I've seen him excel in multiple roles - from risk management to mentorship to technical leadership.

What consistently impressed me was his natural instinct for sustainable development and sharp sense of organizational priorities. Whether he was refactoring code during feature development to improve clarity and maintainability, advocating for and onboarding platforms like GDS Link to improve credit decisioning processes and reduce dependence on individual data providers, or advising the acquisitions team to focus on downstream loan outcomes rather than upstream conversion metrics, Francisco demonstrated a rare combination of technical excellence and strategic thinking. He consistently helped both his own team and partner teams stay focused on what mattered most.

I'm confident his leadership and perspective would be invaluable to the Kubeflow community.

[emgeee]

I strongly endorse @franciscojavierarceo for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. I worked directly with him to build out the data team at Fast. During the year we worked together, Francisco consistently stood out for his ability to gain consensus with partners both on and off the team as well as his skills as an IC shipping individual features. Francisco’s deep expertise in data and ML allowed him to not only contribute meaningfully to architecture discussions of our risk, fraud, and recommendations pipelines, but also allowed him to write the first recommendation algorithm from scratch. Furthermore, he established himself as a trusted resource and adviser for all things data to numerous colleagues, both technical and non-technical. Francisco was perfectly comfortable anywhere between mentoring jr engineers all the way to advising the CEO, head of engineering, and head of Risk Operations on the right dash-boarding solutions.

Since leaving Fast, I have also worked with Francisco on several Feast-related features and bugs. Through this work, I have seen how he effectively listens and leads the community through communication in Github issues, the community Slack, and on regular community calls.

I can think of no-one better to help steward Kubeflow.

[tarilabs]

I strongly endorse @franciscojavierarceo for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. I work together with him at Red Hat, and I look up to him as a great example in setting good project(s) directions, contributions and overall awesome Community and Open Source stewardship. I love the passion he brings into positive, constructive, and pragmatic conversations for the benefit of the project(s) and the communities. I believe Francisco is technically very skilled, and importantly has deep knowledge of the AI/ML domain, and I think his visions and contributions would be awesome as part of KSC. 🚀

[Jtcollins]

I enthusiastically endorse @franciscojavierarceo for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. Having worked closely with Francisco across multiple organizations (Fast, Affirm, and as a technical advisor at Friday Harbor), I've witnessed firsthand his exceptional ability to drive technical excellence while fostering collaboration and alignment across all levels of an organization.

Across these roles, Francisco has consistently demonstrated impact and technical leadership. At Fast, he was instrumental in launching our recommendations system, demonstrating both technical depth and an ability to navigate complex stakeholder requirements. At Affirm, he spearheaded the feature store platform initiative, successfully evangelizing the platform across diverse teams while securing leadership buy-in. Now as technical advisor at Friday Harbor, he has been pivotal in establishing our foundation as an AI-first company, advising on architecture for rapid experimentation while ensuring we build robust data moats and build our intellectual property.

What makes Francisco particularly well-suited for the Kubeflow Steering Committee is his rare combination of technical depth, strategic thinking, and community-minded leadership. He excels at guiding technical discussions toward practical outcomes while ensuring all voices are heard. His experience scaling ML platforms across different organizational contexts gives him valuable perspective on the challenges the Kubeflow community faces.

[ederign]

I am happy to endorse Francisco (@franciscojavierarceo) for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. Working alongside him at Red Hat and the Kubeflow community, I have seen his dedication to fostering community growth, improving the user and developer experience, and driving the adoption of Kubeflow.

[HaoXuAI]

I strongly recommend Francisco (@franciscojavierarceo) for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. Since 2021, we've collaborated closely, first at Fast and then at Affirm, where we developed foundational data and machine learning infrastructure. Francisco's deep expertise in data science, ML, and software engineering enables him to design reliable, scalable systems that have been widely appreciated by stakeholders.
Beyond our professional collaboration, we continued working together on Feast, an open-source ML feature store project. Francisco has demonstrated exceptional leadership by maintaining the project, supporting the community, and driving contributions from code implementation to high-level design. His efforts have benefited over 10 companies and thousands of developers.
Given his significant contributions and technical insight, I believe Francisco would be an invaluable addition to the Kubeflow Steering Committee, helping to guide the community's growth and strategic direction.

[ChristianZaccaria]

I strongly endorse @franciscojavierarceo for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. I have the privilege of working with Francisco at Red Hat. On every discussion and challenges encountered, Francisco approaches these with remarkable expertise, offering the best and most optimal solution to the problem based on his extensive previous experience plus his deep technical knowledge. He is highly skillful, and deeply knowledgable in AI/ML, and a very focused and driven person. Apart from the technical side, he is super friendly, and an exceptional person to work with. He is someone you can count on, and someone that you know his involvement is a gurantee of success for any project.

[anishasthana]

I strongly recommend @franciscojavierarceo for the KSC. I've been working with him for the last few months, and Francisco's balance of technical, community, and business mindset will be invaluable to the Kubeflow community. I think he has a lot of the right ideas for what the community needs to become succesful, and his background in AI/ML helps out. His personable nature makes him a great person to work with.

[etirelli]

I strongly endorse @franciscojaverarceo for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. Having witnessed first hand his stewardship of the Feast project, his commitment to building and engaging open source communities, his ethics and strong technical background, I believe Francisco can make a lasting impact for the benefit of the Kubeflow community.
On a more personal level, I have been working and collaborating with Francisco for the past year and he has always been an approachable, friendly figure, that puts everyone at ease, communicates well and promotes an environment of inclusivity.

[shuchu]

I wholeheartedly endorse Francisco Javier Arceo (@franciscojavierarceo) for a position on the Kubeflow Steering Committee. I have had the privilege of collaborating with Francisco on the Feast feature store project for nearly two years.

His dedication and passion for the project are truly inspiring. Francisco has been instrumental in guiding Feast onto the right path, ensuring its alignment with the broader Kubeflow ecosystem. His contributions extend beyond code, encompassing valuable documentation that empowers Feast users. Furthermore, he has been a tireless advocate for communication within the Kubeflow community, effectively bridging the gap between Feast and the larger ecosystem.

Feature stores are a critical component of modern ML/AI systems. The Feast project has been a significant part of the open-source community for several years. As both a contributor and user of Feast and Kubeflow, I am eager to see Feast fully integrated into Kubeflow's roadmap, ultimately benefiting our users by enabling them to build efficient and robust machine learning systems. Francisco is the ideal candidate to facilitate this integration and strengthen the bond between the two projects.

[Rostifar]

I fully endorse Francisco’s nomination for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. I was an early engineer on Francisco’s team at Affirm, and during that time I had the opportunity to observe Francisco’s deep technical knowledge, exceptional leadership and communication skills, and his love of open source software.

At Affirm, Francisco was one of the foremost experts in the ML lifecycle, from dataset preparation to model serving. His background in stats combined with years of industry experience in fintech made him an incredible source of knowledge for underwriting, fraud, and applied ML, and he was always willing to mentor and share this knowledge with his peers. Francisco’s technical expertise coupled with his infectious energy for all things data also made him an exceptional manager. During his tenure, Francisco spun up a new platform team focused on launching an ML feature store powered by the open-source framework Feast. Francisco oversaw its development from 0-to-1, leading to millions of ML features being served to Affirm customers all while contributing Feast improvements back to main. The latter point reinforces Francisco’s love of open source. Francisco has been a core maintainer of Feast since his time at Affirm and has since continued this work at Red Hat, with his contributions ranging from PR reviews, blog posts, and governance standards.

For these reasons, I believe Francisco would make an invaluable addition to the Kubeflow Steering Committee.

[astefanutti]

I'm more than happy to endorse @franciscojavierarceo nomination for the Kubeflow Steering Committee.

I've been working with Francisco for enough time at Red Hat now to appreciate his immense breadth and depth of technical expertise, remarkable drive and leadership, and absolute passion for open-source communities.

I'm sure he'll have a very positive impact on the project growth and strategic direction as a future member of the KSC.

[Bobbins228]

I highly endorse Francisco's nomination for the KSC.

Francisco has time and time again proved himself in his technical contributions, commitment and ideas. His level of passion and enthusiasm for AI/ML is truly awe inspiring. Not only is Francisco a fantastic contributor his leadership and foresight is something that we can all aspire to.

He has managed to use his experiences to positively impact the future not only through his work but through his interactions with others as well.

Without a doubt I believe Francisco will strive for meaningful change as a member of the KSC!

[varshaprasad96]

I would like to support @franciscojavierarceo's nomination for the Kubeflow Steering Committee. Having worked closely with Francisco, I can confidently say he brings a unique and invaluable perspective to the table. His deep understanding of what end-users and consumers of the project truly need has consistently guided us in making impactful and well-informed decisions.

He is always up-to-date with advancements in the field and possesses extensive knowledge of the entire MLOps pipeline. Beyond his technical expertise, he is approachable, collaborative, and highly supportive of fostering innovation. He creates an environment where team members feel encouraged to bring forward ideas, driving the project toward success.

Having someone like Francisco on the Steering Committee would be a great asset. His ability to align the project with the evolving needs of the community would ensure significant contributions to its ongoing development and growth.