Jorge Vasquez

Sr. Principal Engineer at AWS. Previously 5-times founder and VP at Gemini.

Seattle, Washington, United States

About

Most recently, at Gemini, I was an executive leading product and tech for the Neo Banking and Consumer Experience teams. Previously, for six years I helped Amazon CloudFront serve more petabytes in fewer milliseconds, as an individual contributor. During my tenure, I led initiatives such as optimization of content placement across multiple points of presence and enabling the delivery of events such as the Super Bowl. Earlier in my career, I founded several startups, I was an indie developer who created a 50K+ DAU password management app, I was a host for a weekly podcast on public policy, I proudly served as IFL-SP president, and I built enterprise software products ranging from firewalls to call recorders.

Experience

  • Sr. Principal Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Feb 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 5 mos

    Technical or organizational leadership for Amazon's networking teams. I'm helping drive AWS Network Engineering transformation to a world where software steers and transforms network traffic everywhere, including on the backbone. Software now goes beyond assisting embedded devices where all the actual smarts used to live and takes center-stage in the network's data- and control-planes. My role includes guiding teams, architecting systems and services, and delivering for our customers. As part of this transformation, we are going beyond one-size-fits all networking and offering solutions tailored for a diverse set of customer needs. Beyond network controllers, packet processors, and new user-facing services, this change alters the organization at the human level, by requiring new skills, mental models, and customer engagement models. My role includes empowering teams and organizations within AWS networking to successfully make that journey.

  • Gemini (Seattle, Washington, United States)
    • Vice President, Neo Banking and CX
      May 2022 - Jan 2023 · 9 mos

      Tech and product leadership for Gemini Credit Card and web & mobile front ends. Led multi-disciplinary teams totalling 100+ employees.

    • Distinguished Engineer
      Mar 2022 - May 2022 · 3 mos

      All things tech in a fin-tech. For example, guidance on a new blockchain integration layer allowing the exchange to onboard blockchains in weeks instead of months, and thereby reduce time to market of new crypto assets.

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) (6 yrs 1 mo)
    • Principal Software Engineer
      Oct 2019 - Mar 2022 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      Think and build the future of Amazon CloudFront, AWS's CDN. As the main individual contributor in a team of hundreds of engineers, I was responsible for the overall technology strategy. For example, I led a 5-year project to change and consolidate CloudFront's architecture, ultimately allowing the service to scale for world's largest live-streaming events such as the Super Bowl. Among other things, that project included a new hardware architecture, a disruptive change to the content placement system, and the adoption of proprietary video streaming protocols. Under my tenure, CloudFront maintained positive margins and increased market share all the while the CDN market observed year-over-year double-digit price compression.

    • Sr. Software Dev. Engineer - CloudFront
      Mar 2016 - Sep 2019 · 3 yrs 7 mos

      Invent, design, implement, test and operate Amazon CloudFront. Mentor and advise engineers and leadership alike. Technical lead for projects such as deploying CloudFront to AWS's China partition and the reduction of network congestion events by more than 98%.

  • Founder at App77
    Apr 2011 - Mar 2016 · 5 yrs

    App77 is the one-man company for my 5 years experience as an indie developer. Therein, I built and commercialized a password manager app for iOS and Mac with an associated server-side component that has 50K+ daily active users.

  • Founding Partner at The Pole Society Brazil
    Mar 2014 - Dec 2015 · 1 yr 10 mos

    At The Pole, I was mostly a business person, one of the 3 founding partners. My main responsibility was to be the technical bridge between the panel operators and the development team for The Pole Society HQ in Romania.