Ross Kukulinski is a technical product leader with 11+ years building cloud-native businesses at the intersection of open source, developer experience, and infrastructure. He led Kong’s transformation from on-prem software to a cloud-first platform that became the company’s majority business and later scaled product and engineering at Tailscale as VP of Product and interim VP Engineering. At VMware and Heptio he helped define the Tanzu strategy and drove upstream open source projects like Cluster API, Velero, Sonobuoy, and Contour, blending product strategy with hands-on engineering. Comfortable in early-stage scrappy roles and large-matrix organizations alike, he has a track record of launching unified runtimes, developer platforms, and acquisition-led feature strategies. A Carnegie Mellon ECE alum and one of the early Certified Kubernetes Administrators, he combines deep technical credibility with commercial outcomes and a knack for turning open source projects into enterprise offerings.
11 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
High School, High School at Buckingham Browne & Nichols
B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering, B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
Contributions:44 PRs, 86 pushes, 20 branches in 10 months
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