David Lapsley, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO (Stealth). Distributed systems, AI-accelerated SDLC, and infrastructure at scale.

David Lapsley, Ph.D.

I've spent three decades building distributed systems and infrastructure platforms that work at scale. From research labs to global cloud providers to startups, I focus on one thing: shipping production systems that survive contact with reality.

What I’ve Learned

Most infrastructure projects fail the same way. They work beautifully in the lab, pass all the tests, and then break when real users, real data, and real failure modes show up. I’ve seen this pattern at research institutions, at AWS building networking infrastructure for global-scale workloads, at Cisco building enterprise platforms, and at startups where every architectural decision matters.

The difference between systems that ship and systems that don’t isn’t technical sophistication. It’s understanding the gap between demo and production, and planning for it from day one.

What I Do

I build and lead engineering teams that ship production systems. Whether it’s cloud-native infrastructure, AI platforms, distributed systems, or developer tooling, the challenge is the same: make deliberate trade-offs, ship incrementally, and survive real-world conditions.

Right now, that means helping enterprises deploy AI infrastructure that actually works. But the principles apply to any complex distributed system: plan for failure, optimize for operations, and ship something that works before you ship something perfect.

Career Highlights

Building at Scale

At AWS, I led teams building Intent Driven Networks and Network Fabric Controllers. The networking infrastructure that powers global-scale AI workloads. When you’re operating at that scale, you learn what breaks and how to prevent it.

At Cisco, I built container orchestration platforms (Cisco Container Platform), network automation systems (DNA Center), and open source projects (Contiv.io). Enterprise infrastructure where reliability and operations matter more than features.

Leading Through Growth

At Metacloud (acquired by Cisco), I led engineering as VP through acquisition and scale. Managed OpenStack as a Service. You learn a lot about systems and teams when you’re growing fast and everything is on fire.

At Corelight, I built security infrastructure for critical enterprise networks as VP Engineering. Network intrusion detection where false positives cost trust and false negatives cost security.

Research Foundations

Earlier in my career at BBN Technologies, NASA, and MIT Haystack Observatory, I worked on distributed systems, networking protocols, and high-performance data acquisition. Research that taught me to think from first principles and measure everything.

What I Write About

This blog covers what I’ve learned building production systems:

  • Distributed systems patterns that survive real-world failure modes
  • Infrastructure platforms that scale from prototype to production
  • Engineering practices that work when AI generates most of your code
  • Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures for complex workloads
  • Team building and culture that ships production systems
  • Cost optimization and operational excellence at scale

Technical Background

Ph.D., Engineering (Networking) - University of Melbourne
B.Sc., Computer Science - Monash University
B.E., Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering - Monash University

I’ve published research on distributed systems, networking protocols, and security. US Patent 8,719,930 for real-time network attack detection. Work on OpenStack architecture, VLBI data acquisition systems, and network optimization.

Community

I organize the Cloud Native Tampa Bay community through CNCF. Monthly meetups on Kubernetes, AI infrastructure, and production deployment patterns. Real practitioners sharing what actually works.

Let’s Connect

If you’re building production systems, I’d love to hear what you’re working on. Email me or join the community.