Ray Kao
Principal Solutions Engineer - Dev Tools & Platform Engineering Cloud & AI Global Black Belt Team
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRay Kao is a Principal Solutions Engineer on Microsoft's Cloud & AI Global Black Belt Team who helps technology leaders convert developer experience into a competitive advantage by standardizing delivery, removing friction, and enabling faster, safer innovation. With 13 years of hands-on experience and two decades in tech including a decade at Microsoft plus founder and startup leadership roles, he blends enterprise-grade platform engineering with entrepreneurial instincts. He specializes in cloud-native platforms, GitHub and Azure automation, and researching how AI and coding assistants reshape developer ergonomics and platform owner workflows. Ray contributes to practical open-source hackfest projects—working full-stack on Azure AKS demos and building backend APIs, caching layers, CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure scripts that teams actually use. Based in Toronto, he pairs public speaking and community publishing with active advisory roles, bringing both strategic guidance and implementable patterns such as golden paths to scale. Colleagues rely on him for translating cultural change, tooling, and AI-driven insights into measurable developer productivity improvements.
13 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Certification, Apple Certified Support Professional, Apple Certified Technical Coordinator, Certification, Apple Certified Support Professional, Apple Certified Technical Coordinator at Witz Apple TrainingBSc, Psychology, Biology, BSc, Psychology, Biology at York UniversityToronto Metropolitan University
Stackoverflow
157reputation
7kreached
1answer
4questions
Github Skills (36)
api-rest10
kubernetes10
javascript10
api-design10
restful-api10
mongodb-database10
ruby10
azure-aks10
azure-kubernetes-service10
sinatra10
front-end-development10
vue10
kubernetes-pods10
rest-api10
nodejs10
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
Azure/kubernetes-hackfest
Jul 2018 - Mar 2019
Delivering modern cloud-native applications with open source technologies on Azure Kubernetes Service
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:1 review, 55 commits, 28 pushes in 8 months
Contributions summary:Ray contributed to setting up the infrastructure and core services of the project, delivering cloud-native applications on Azure Kubernetes Service. They developed and implemented a data API using Ruby and Sinatra, connecting it to a MongoDB database. Additionally, the user created a cache API using Node.js and Redis, enabling data caching. The user also worked on the CI/CD pipeline and created scripts to create and configure an AKS cluster, including setting up monitoring.
cloud-native-applicationskubernetes-servicenative-applicationsazure-kubernetestechnologies
Azure/blackbelt-aks-hackfest
Jan 2018 - Jun 2018
Microsoft Intelligent Cloud Blackbelt Team :: Hackfest Repo
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:42 commits, 1 PR, 10 pushes in 4 months
Contributions summary:Ray made several contributions across both the front-end and back-end of the application. They modified the `mongo.js` file, which suggests back-end API adjustments related to data retrieval and modification. They also updated front-end components (`Home.vue`, `Rating.vue`, `Leaderboard.vue`, and `Footer.vue`) and the `webpack.config.js` file, indicating UI and build configuration changes. These changes involved modifying code and adding an `IMAGE_TAG` to various components.
gcpkubernetes-deploymenthackfestexplorekubectl
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