cncf
TAG Workloads Foundation Chair Nomination
Following the TAG Reboot Timeline, we are opening nominations for (3) Chairs for TAG Workloads Foundation. If this interests you, please review the information on TAG governance and responsibilities in the TAG Governance doc and the draft charter for the TAG. Then, if you're still interested - please post your bio below and confirm your interest in running for chair.
Election timeline: May 19: Nominations close for new TAG Chairs May 19: TOC Vote opens for new TAG Chairs June 2: TOC Vote closes for new TAG Chairs June 2: Newly seated TAG Chairs announced
NOTE: Timeline is subject to change; check the TAG Reboot Timeline issue for the most up-to-date information.
Once the initial leads are seated, we'll work on refining the charters and really get things going. :)
Links: TAG Restructuring Presentation - Feb 4, 2025 TAG Reboot Timeline Issue TAG Governance Doc Draft Charter
Hi CNCF community,
I’d like to self-nominate to be a co-chair (preferred given my recent co-chairing experience) or technical lead of TAG Workloads Foundation. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and share relevant work from the groups and projects I’ve been leading. Thank you for taking the time to consider my candidacy—I truly appreciate your support.
Bio: Yuan is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat AI. Previously, he has led AI infrastructure and platform teams at various companies. He holds leadership positions in open source projects, including Argo, Kubeflow, KServe, and Kubernetes. He's also a maintainer and author of many popular open source projects. In addition, Yuan authored three technical books and published numerous impactful papers. He's a regular conference speaker, technical advisor, leader, and mentor at various organizations.
I believe the future of foundational cloud native workloads is driven and inspired by requirements, use cases, and demands from AI workloads. I’ve witnessed a lot of excitement, innovations, and initiatives from the groups and projects I’ve been leading, including the following that are relevant to TAG Workloads Foundation:
- K8s WG Serving (serving, orchestrator, deployment, dynamic scaling): hardware-accelerated AI/ML inference and focus on solving novel challenges of compute-intensive online inference, including standardized benchmarking tool and gateway extension for inference.
- KServe (serving, serverless, orchestrator): standardized and production-ready inference platform on Kubernetes for both predictive and generative AI workloads.
- Kubeflow Trainer (batch, scheduler): distributed model training and fine-tuning on Kubernetes.
- Argo (orchestrator, batch, scheduler, CI/CD): workflow-engine and declarative continuous delivery for Kubernetes.
I’ve also been involved in a variety of CNCF events and activities, including:
- KubeCon and co-located events program chair:
- Program Chair of Cloud Native + Kubernetes AI Day (Europe, North America, China), 2024 - 2025
- Program Committee Member of KubeCon AI/ML Track (Europe, North America, China, Japan, India), 2024 - 2025
- Program Chair of Data on Kubernetes Day at KubeCon North America, 2023
- Regular speaker at KubeCon and co-located events (list of public talks)
- Mentoring CNCF projects: Kubeflow (2024 and 2020) and Argo (2022)
Super excited about this opportunity and I hope my experience can bring value to this group!
Best,
Yuan
I am excited to submit my candidacy for the Chair of the CNCF TAG Workloads Foundation. With over 20 years of hands-on experience in systems engineering, infrastructure design, and platform operations—and a consistent focus on cloud-native transformation—I am deeply aligned with the mission of this TAG: to define and advance practices for workload execution environments and lifecycle management across cloud-native ecosystems.
In my current role as Strategy Lead in the CTO Office at Mirantis, I guide technology and business leaders through complex workload transformation journeys across modern paradigms such as serverless, WebAssembly, VMs, and containerized environments. My focus areas include Platform Engineering, Sovereign Cloud, and AI/ML infrastructure—domains that rely fundamentally on mature and flexible workload orchestration, deployment, and runtime strategies.
Throughout my career, I have operated at the convergence of workload technologies and business outcomes, whether architecting large-scale container-based solutions for telecoms at SUSE, contributing to enterprise CI/CD patterns at Hitachi Vantara, or implementing hyperconverged and batch solutions in hybrid environments. My practical experience spans Distributed Systems, HPC, Kubernetes, CI/CD tooling, orchestrators, and emerging paradigms like WASM.
I am also deeply engaged in the CNCF community. As OSS Contributor, a CNCF Ambassador, Linkerd Ambassador and a contributor to the TAG App Delivery Platforms Working Group, I am dedicated to community-driven advancement. My active roles in KubeCon program committees, Kubernetes release communications, and organizing KCD Netherlands have sharpened my ability to listen, facilitate collaboration, and guide community priorities.
If elected Chair, my key goals for TAG Workloads Foundation would be to:
Deliver actionable guidance for hybrid workloads, including containers, VMs, and Wasm, as part of evolving runtime standards.
Champion GitOps and CI/CD best practices for dynamic scaling and orchestrated deployment strategies.
Coordinate closely with other TAGs and CNCF projects to align on foundational execution environment practices.
Encourage broad participation from practitioners and projects to ensure relevance and adoption of TAG outputs.
By focusing on real-world use cases and enabling practical standards, I aim to ensure this TAG becomes a source of clarity and innovation for workload execution in the CNCF ecosystem. My background uniquely positions me to contribute to this vision with both strategic leadership and a deep technical foundation.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely, William Rizzo Strategy Lead, CTO Office – Mirantis CNCF Ambassador Linkerd Ambassador LinkedIn GitHub Bluesky
I am honored to nominate myself as Co-Chair or Technical Lead of the CNCF TAG Workloads Foundation.
Hongcai Ren is a Senior Open-Source Engineer at Huawei Cloud. He has been deeply involved in cloud-native ecosystems since 2019 and has held leadership roles in critical CNCF projects, driving innovation in multi-cluster orchestration, workload management, and cross-project integration.
Key Contributions and Roles:
Kubernetes Ecosystem: As an approver for Kubernetes SIG Instrumentation and SIG Multicluster, he maintains and evolves foundational components for observability and distributed workload management.
- Served as approver for work-api, cluster-inventory-api, and custom-metrics-apiserver, advancing multi-cluster workload portability and metrics-driven automation.
- Launched kubernetes-sigs/cloud-provider-huaweicloud and kubernetes/autoscaler/huaweicloud to enable hybrid cloud integration.
Karmada Project Leadership:
- Maintainer since 2021, helping Karmada become the most popular multi-cluster orchestration platform, which now has been widely adopted for both traditional and AI workloads.
- Collaborated deeply with CNCF projects including Istio, Argo, Flux, Gatekeeper, and Kyverno to extend their capabilities to multi-cluster environments through technical integrations in service governance, GitOps workflows, and cross-cluster policy enforcement.
Technical Expertise: Authored Go Expert Programming, a widely recognized technical book that distills best practices for cloud-native development. CNCF Community Engagement: - KubeCon Program Committee Track Chair/Member, focus on selecting innovative and interesting topics for the events. - CNCF Ambassador: Promoted cloud-native adoption through workshops, KCD events, and mentorship programs. - Regular speaker at KubeCon since 2019
I am excited to bring my experience in running workloads at scale, particularly in multi-cluster environments, to the TAG Workloads Foundation. My work aligns closely with TAG’s technical focus areas—containers, schedulers, CI/CD, scaling, and multi-cluster orchestration. By leveraging my technical experience and community-focused mindset, I aim to support more projects and users, foster cross-project/cross-tag collaboration, and deliver value to the TAG and the broader CNCF ecosystem.
I would like to nominate myself to the role of chair for TAG Workloads Foundation.
My day job is at Sopra Steria, based out of Norway, where I help clients adopt cloud native technology and platform engineering. Besides that, I spend a lot of time presenting at conferences, driving various community projects, and mentoring. I am a CNCF Ambassador, a Microsoft MVP, and I was previously a HashiCorp Ambassador.
I have been an active contributor to the CNCF since joining the GitOps working group in 2021, now the OpenGitOps project, and I have throughout the years been focusing my work in TAG App Delivery.
My last roles in TAG App Delivery was being chair of the TAG itself, as well as serving as Tech Lead for the Platforms Working Group after stepping down as chair in that group.
As an active member of TAG App Delivery, I have had the following honors:
- Help write the GitOps Principles
- Co-found the Platforms Working Group
- As Platforms WG chair, support the creation and publishing of:
- The Platforms Whitepaper
- The Platform Engineering Maturity Model
- As TAG chair, support the creation of multiple working groups
- Host the TAG kiosk at multiple KubeCons
- Speak at several KubeCons and other conferences as a representative of the CNCF
- Help with the creation of the new Platform Engineering Community Group
Hello, I am nominating myself @srust for TAG Workloads Foundation Chair!
Most recently in the CNCF I was a co-chair of TAG-Runtime, and am currently a Principal Architect at Akamai Cloud, formerly Linode.
At Akamai, I lead the architecture for Akamai’s Cloud Native products, and internal platforms. We build the Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE) managed Kubernetes service, and the internal core cloud infrastructure that we build our cloud on, including other managed services.
As co-chair of TAG-Runtime I organized and helped lead bi-weekly TAG meetings that provided a forum for projects to gain visibility, as well as help and guidance for moving levels. I provided both verbal and written project domain technical review recommendations of runtime-specific projects to the TOC, and attended weekly TOC meetings as a TAG representative, presenting regular TAG updates. I was part of the DTR working group this past year and played a part in engaging with other TAGs, and helping to formalize the project review process, including the TAG-Runtime specific template. At KubeCons, I organized TAG-Runtime Project Pavilion booths for runtime-specific projects, prepared slides for both project lightning talks, and maintainer track sessions, speaking as a representative of the TAG. This past year I also served as a Track Chair of KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe 2025.
I have a long history in open source, having contributed to the Gnome Project, the Docker project, and most recently in Kubernetes through CSI plugins, the Crossplane Provider for Linode, and engaging with the Flatcar project. I promote involvement in open source on my teams at my company, contributing back patches and projects where possible.
It has been a pleasure to serve with my fellow co-chairs and tech leads in TAG-Runtime. The new TAG structure provides an opportunity to engage with new members, more closely support and promote projects, and the communities - which is what this is all about. My prior TAG experience should allow me to help bridge the previous structure with the new, and I am excited about continuing to contribute and serve the community.
Thank you for your consideration!
Hi,
I'm interested in running for TAG Workloads Chair.
I'm Paco Xu (GitHub), currently serving as a Kubernetes Steering Committee member and a maintainer of kubeadm. I’m also active in SIG Node, contribute to SIG Release and contributor experience efforts, and help drive discussions across Kubernetes contributor subprojects. I am LFAPAC Evangelist.
I am now worked in DaoCloud as the lead of open source team. We have incubated 7 CNCF sandbox projects. DaoCloud has also made significant investments in the vLLM ecosystem and AI inference platforms. This includes contributions to vLLM and sglang, active involvement in AIBrix, and initiating the llmaz project.
Beyond technical contributions, I’m deeply involved in community building and governance. I’ve served as a KubeCon program committee member and track chair(of Operations and Performance for previous EU and NA Kubecon), and currently help organize CNCF events across China and the Asia-Pacific region — including co-chairing KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China 2024. My participations in CNCF are listed in Community Activities.
My interests lie in ensuring the sustainability of our cloud-native ecosystem by supporting new contributors, improving project onboarding, and aligning workloads-centric efforts across projects. I’m especially interested in collaborating across TAGs to make TAG Workloads a vibrant foundation-level group that reflects the needs of the entire ecosystem.
Thank you for your consideration!
Paco Xu, Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pacoxu2020/
Hello everyone,
I’d like to express my interest in serving as a Tech Lead or Co-Chair for the TAG Workload Foundation.
About Me
I’m currently a Staff Software Engineer at Broadcom, where I focus on the low level runtime functions of Kubernetes on Virtual Machines and enabling AI workloads on Kubernetes. I’ve previously been a maintainer for the Kubernetes subproject Kube-Proxy. Since KubeCon Paris 2024, I’ve been co-chairing Cloud Native AI Day, a co-located event at KubeCon, and have continued this role through the most recent edition in London. I’ve also served on the KubeCon Program Committee since 2023 and acted as a track chair during this time. Until the recent TAG reboot, I served as a Tech Lead for TAG Runtime. In that role, I worked closely with co-chairs and TOC members to evaluate new projects, offer technical guidance and contribute to the TAG’s strategic direction. Some of the initiatives I’ve led or contributed to include:
- Driving community outreach and awareness for TAG Runtime
- Shepherding the formation of the Special Purpose OS Working Group
- Leading the sandbox project review process
- Providing thought leadership within CNCF’s Working Group on AI
- Co-authoring the Cloud Native AI White Paper
- Participating in Domain Technical Review Process
- Hosting and contributing to TAG Runtime meetings and maintainer track sessions at KubeCon
- Offering hands-on technical feedback to project maintainers to help them navigate the CNCF landscape
- Mentoring community members to grow through the co-chair ladder of TAG Runtime
Why Me?
Having previously served as a TAG Tech Lead, I am deeply familiar with the structure, responsibilities and processes across TAGs and the TOC. This gives me a strong foundation and a unique advantage in adapting quickly to the novel, rebooted TAG model. My prior experience, combined with an ongoing commitment to community collaboration, positions me well to contribute meaningfully from day one. I remain deeply invested in the growth and evolution of the cloud native ecosystem and would be honored to continue that journey in this new leadership role. If given the opportunity to serve in this leadership capacity within TAG Workload Foundation, I aim to:
- Collaborate with the End User TAB to drive more engagement with end user entities
- Strengthen collaboration between the TAG, TOC, and other TAGs
- Identify and address technical gaps across projects under the TAG’s purview
- Establish relevant subprojects and initiatives aligned with TOC priorities
Hello everyone,
I would like to nominate myself for the position of TAG Workloads Foundation Co-Chair.
I am a maintainer of Flatcar and led the project’s acceptance directly into the incubation stage. My professional background spans a range of customer and user-facing roles, from support engineer at Check Point in my early career, to leading EMEA support at Docker, to my position as Product Manager at Microsoft working on Flatcar.
I previously co-chaired TAG Runtime and WG-SP-OS, where I facilitated and engaged with the community in bi-weekly meetings for both groups. I have participated in talks and panels at KubeCon and other major events representing TAG Runtime and WG-SP-OS. I also worked closely with the TOC during the recent TAG reshuffle and spoke at the Maintainer Summit about the new process for project reviews.
I am passionate about open source and committed to welcoming new community members and projects. I take pride in not just my enthusiasm for OSS, but in ensuring that anyone who joins feels included and part of something bigger. I am always happy to help newcomers navigate their way in the CNCF.
My vision is to make TAG Workloads Foundation a welcoming, inclusive space for both new and experienced contributors. I want to lower barriers to participation, ensure that all voices are heard, and help diverse projects thrive under our umbrella. I see TAG Workloads Foundation as a place where new ideas can flourish. My goal is to facilitate collaboration between projects, foster healthy experimentation, and help identify emerging trends, so the CNCF ecosystem stays at the forefront of cloud-native development
Thank you for your consideration.
Thanks everyone for putting your nomination forward :) With the nomination period now closed, we're going to temporarily lock the issues just so it's clear that the nomination period is over. We'll reopen soon with updates. 👍
The chairs to help bootstrap Workloads Foundation are:
- @miao0miao
- @terrytangyuan
- @pacoxu
Thanks everyone for volunteering 🙏 Please still participate, theres a lot to do, and a lot of future opportunities as things evolve :)
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'll update this issue with the terms once its been sorted out 👍