Adi Polak

Adi Polak has a diverse work experience in various roles and positions. Adi started their career as a Machine Learning Researcher at Deutsche Telekom Innovation Labs from October 2012 to October 2015. They then joined BIPA as an Alumni, leading a multicultural team and developing an extensive Concept Document on improving user services using real-time data and gamification tools from September 2016 to February 2017. Adi later worked at Akamai Technologies as a Software Engineer, contributing to service architecture design, mentoring senior developers, and maintaining the production environment of Cloud Intelligence products. This role lasted from October 2015 to October 2018.

At Microsoft, Adi held multiple positions, starting as a Sr. OS Software Engineer and later being promoted to Sr. Manager, Cloud Scale Analytics. In the latter role, Adi led the Cloud-Scale Analytics DevRel team, responsible for technical architecture solutions using various Microsoft cloud services and open sources. They worked with technologies like DeltaLake, Apache Spark, Kafka, Redis, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Kubernetes, and more. Adi joined Microsoft in October 2018 and left in November 2021.

Adi also worked as an Author and Instructor at O'Reilly Media, where they published the book "Scaling Machine Learning w/Spark" and delivered online technical trainings on data engineering and data lakes best practices. This role started in January 2020 and has no specified end date.

Adi's other experiences include being an Official Member of the Forbes Technology Council from January 2022 onwards and serving as part of the Product Advisory Council at Kensu starting in March 2023. Their most recent role is as the VP of DevEx at Treeverse, where they are responsible for growing the Developer Experience department and leading initiatives to attract and engage users, produce educational content, and foster the lakeFS community. Adi started this role in November 2021 and it is ongoing.

Adi Polak holds a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in Software and Information System Engineering, specializing in Machine Learning program, which they obtained from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Adi completed their master's degree from 2013 to 2015. Prior to that, Adi earned a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in Software and Information System Engineering, also specializing in the Machine Learning program, from the same university. Adi completed their undergraduate studies from 2010 to 2014.

In addition to their formal education, Adi Polak has obtained various certifications. These include "Prevent Toxic Work Cultures as a Manager" and "Tips to Win Arguments and Influence Like a Lawyer" from LinkedIn, which were obtained in January 2023. Adi also earned the certification of "Speaker: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021" from The Linux Foundation in October 2021. Moreover, they obtained the certifications of "Leading at a Distance," "Cloud Architecture: Advanced Concepts," and "Communicating Across Cultures" from LinkedIn in June 2021 and April 2021 respectively. Previously, Adi completed the certification course "Guy Kawasaki on Entrepreneurship" from LinkedIn in June 2020.