Lei Cao

Lei Cao is a tech lead currently advancing data center technologies and operations with interests in distributed systems, parallel file systems, key-value stores, and application middleware. Lei earned a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, summa cum laude, from Binghamton University and a Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Previously, Lei worked as a Principal SDE at Microsoft, contributing to Azure Storage and DPU-based acceleration, and held roles at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Junior Research Scientist and Summer Intern. Lei also served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Parallel Data Laboratory and completed a summer internship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Currently, Lei is a Principal SDE at Microsoft and a Technical Lead at a stealth startup focusing on AI backend networks.