The Art and Science of Engineering

In the summer of 2020, we delivered the first ever supercomputer in a public cloud.

- Nandan Prabhu

It is one of the top five most powerful known systems in the world, capable of running extremely large artificial intelligence models. Rewind exactly one year and we were at the starting line, figuring out how to solve this unsolved problem – to innovate, to engineer, and deliver. My team and I executed successfully on this wonderful opportunity, and I will share my perspective on life as an engineer.

I joined Microsoft straight out of college back in 2004. I am passionate about engineering, computer science and improving the lives of everyone on this planet. In my career as a leader and software engineer, I have had such opportunities throughout, with contributions across file systems, compiler design, databases, distributed caching, and cloud platforms. Currently, I lead key initiatives in cloud platforms, ranging from native infrastructure at planetary scale to greenfield innovation of specialised systems – supercomputer, bare-metal infrastructure, and hypervisor multiplexing.

WHY BE AN ENGINEER