OpenSearch Ambassadors

Achanandhi is an open source advocate who enjoys exploring new technologies and loves building communities. He actively contributes to open source projects and frequently speaks at community events, sharing knowledge about cloud-native technologies and open source. He is passionate about helping others get started with open source and fostering collaborative developer communities.

Aditya Soni is a DevOps/SRE tech professional. He worked with Product and service-based companies, including Red Hat, Forrester Research, Searce, and is currently positioned at SailPoint as a Senior DevOps Engineer. He holds AWS, GCP, Azure, RedHat, and Kubernetes Certifications. He is a CNCF Ambassador and AWS Community Builder for 5 years. He leads AWS, CNCF, and OpenSearch user groups for Rajasthan State in India. He has spoken at many conferences worldwide, both in-person and virtually.

Amanda Katona is focused on growing the OpenSearch Foundation and expanding adoption of OpenSearch worldwide. A community builder at heart, she designs programs that empower users and organizations to get the most out of search and AI. She’s also an adventure-seeker who finds inspiration in everything from Copenhagen dining to Utah mountain trails.

Aswath is a Senior Search Engine Architect at Amazon Web Services currently based in Munich, Germany. With close to two decades of experiences in various search technologies, Aswath currently focuses on OpenSearch. He is a search and open-source enthusiast and helps customers and the search community with their search problems.

Brian is Senior Developer Advocate at NetApp Instaclustr. His work with OpenSearch spans across many areas with the latest focus on new feature releases, vector and hybrid search, and RAG. He shares that work through conference talks, YouTube walkthroughs, blog posts, and community discussions.

Brian is a 4x Microsoft MVP and 7x VMware vExpert.  Brian has delivered more than 130 conference and user group talks, podcasts, and webinars throughout his time at AWS and VMware. He lives in Utah with his wife and seven kids, who get all of his time when he is not working.

Carlos Rolo, Principal Open Source Engineer, is a family man who loves doing random activities with his wife and kids, playing water polo, and exploring AI innovations alongside tinkering with home tech setups. With expertise in Rust, Python, and a strong foundation in Go, Carlos has released a groundbreaking time series compressor (instaclustr/atsc) with 7 patents pending. Actively engaged in the OpenSearch community, he enjoys sharing technical insights and fostering collaboration.

Charlie Hull is a search consultant with deep experience in open source platforms, including OpenSearch. He helps organizations build effective search systems and increasingly uses AI to improve search outcomes. Known for his honest and pragmatic perspective, Charlie is also a regular conference speaker, writer, and trainer.

David Tippett is the founder and CEO of Relevan, an agent-first search platform built on OpenSearch that learns from how AI agents search and improves relevance over time. Before founding Relevan, David worked on search at GitHub, helping evolve search systems spanning billions of documents and advance the company’s semantic and vector search capabilities. He previously served as a Senior Developer Advocate for OpenSearch at AWS, helping developers and organizations build scalable search applications. David is passionate about search relevance, open source, and making sophisticated search infrastructure accessible to teams without dedicated search engineers.

Dotan Horovits is a senior open source advocate at AWS, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Ambassador, and long-time champion of the OpenSearch project. He has been involved since the project’s inception, pushing for a foundation-led model and helping shape its observability capabilities. When he’s not leading OpenSearch’s Observability Technical Advisory Group, you’ll probably find him recording his OpenObservability Talks podcast.

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Eric Pugh is the co-founder of OpenSource Connections and a contributor to OpenSearch documentation and relevance features. He works with organizations to improve their search maturity and build effective OpenSearch teams. When he’s not knee-deep in search, Eric builds furniture by hand, with his current project being a reproduction Danish modern couch.

Himanshu Ramchandani is a Senior Data Engineer and Tech Lead at Sonos, where he has built scalable data platforms and driven log analytics and observability solutions using OpenSearch. With hands-on experience architecting open data platforms spanning data lakehouses, telemetry pipelines, and search and analytics infrastructure, Himanshu is passionate about helping teams build reliable, modern data foundations. He is a strong advocate for knowledge sharing, and actively mentors engineers and contributes to cross-functional data strategy. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, running 10Ks, and unwinding with audiobooks.

Itamar Syn-Hershko is the founder of BigData Boutique, where he helps organizations run mission-critical OpenSearch clusters. With over a decade of experience in search technologies, he is a trusted advisor on scaling large search and analytics systems. When not consulting or speaking at conferences, he’s contributing directly to the OpenSearch community.

Jeevitha G is a Staff Software Engineer at Juniper Networks (HPE) and an active OpenSearch contributor focused on AI-powered monitoring and cloud-native observability. She specializes in building intelligent, search-driven architectures that transform high-volume logs into actionable insights at scale. With a strong background in modern data pipelines, She  is passionate about reducing incident response times and improving production visibility in distributed environments. A frequent speaker at meetups and conferences, she shares real-world implementation stories with the OpenSearch community. Outside of engineering, she is an avid trekker and traveler, always seeking new experiences that inspire her professional growth.

Jeff Zemerick is an independent search and cloud consultant and a maintainer on multiple OpenSearch repositories, where he helps teams measure search relevance and get the most out of OpenSearch. He is PMC Chair of Apache OpenNLP, an Apache Software Foundation member, and the owner of a stylish AWS Gold Jacket. Outside of technology, he is a wilderness guide and a Wilderness First Responder.

Jon Handler is a Senior Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, based in Palo Alto, CA. Jon works with OpenSearch and Amazon OpenSearch Service, helping customers who have vector, search, and log analytics workloads that they want to move to the AWS Cloud. Prior to joining AWS, Jon spent four years coding a large-scale, eCommerce search engine. Jon holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MS and a Ph. D. in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Northwestern University.

Kassian Rosner Wren is an open source evangelist focused on OpenSearch, AI, and developer education. They create content, workshops, and talks that make search and machine learning easier to understand. With more than a decade in developer relations, they bring humor, hands-on demos, and a love for robotics to the OpenSearch community.

Khushi Chhillar is the co-lead of the OpenSearch Delhi User Group. By day, she works as a systems engineer focusing on eBPF, kernel-level observability, and 5G core networking. Beyond her primary role, Khushi organizes CNCF meetups, writes technical blogs, and actively supports the open-source community in India. She specializes in transforming complex infrastructure signals into clear, actionable insights and is passionate about search, telemetry, and community building.

Kris Freedain is the Senior Community Manager for the OpenSearch Project and its Technical Steering Committee. He builds global user groups and creates opportunities for people to connect with the project. Outside of OpenSearch, he helps run the Fosstodon Fediverse community, proving his passion for building digital spaces where people belong.

Laysa is a Senior Platform Engineer at enmacc, OpenSearch Ambassador, and PyLadies Munich leader. I spent years as a backend developer, and now I build platforms so other developers do not have to suffer like I did. Multi-cloud by trade, search nerd by choice, continuous learner by habit.

Maria Pina is a Community Strategist and Event Manager at SEACOM and an OpenSearch Ambassador based in Italy. She coordinates the OpenSearch communities in Milan and Rome, bringing together users, contributors and technology professionals to share knowledge, build relationships and grow the local OpenSearch ecosystem.

She has been building technology communities for more than 15 years, including XStreamDataLab, which she has coordinated since 2014. She is also a co-organizer of Cloud Native Days Italy and previously co-organized Kubernetes Community Days Italy, contributing to the growth of Italy’s cloud native and open source ecosystem.

Her approach to community building is strongly people-centered: she believes technology communities grow when people feel welcome, able to contribute and connected to one another. She also supports initiatives addressing the gender gap in technology and is part of the collective behind the Manifesto for the Equality of Girls and Women in Technology.

Nate Boot is a developer advocate for OpenSearch with a background in DevOps and Linux. At AWS for nearly a decade, he helps users understand and adopt OpenSearch through user groups, conferences, and community support. He’s also a fan of retro tech, so ask him about old video games if you catch him with a margarita in hand.

Neel Shah is a Developer Advocate at StackGen and an OpenSearch Ambassador based in Ahmedabad, India. A Sessionize Most Active Speaker for 2024 and 2025, he has spoken at over 40 events worldwide, including OpenSearchCon Korea, KubeCon India, PlatformCon, and HashiTalks, helping platform engineers and DevOps teams understand observability, search-powered pipelines, and cloud-native infrastructure. He organises the OpenSearch Meetup Group Ahmedabad, CNCF Gandhinagar, and Google Cloud Gandhinagar communities and has mentored 15+ hackathons and open-source programmes across the country. When he’s not on stage or running a meetup, you’ll find him deep in Kubernetes configs or chasing the next CFP deadline.

Nils Bandener is a freelance software architect and co-maintainer of the OpenSearch security plugin. He contributes to strengthening the project’s security layer while keeping usability in mind. Known for his pragmatic approach, his favorite line in community discussions is, “Let’s take one step back.”

Pietro Mele is a software engineer and search consultant at Adelean, with deep expertise in machine learning and hybrid search. Focused on building effective search solutions, he is a lifelong learner and active contributor to the search community. Guided by his motto, “Per aspera, ad astra”, he brings the same dedication to work, life, and sport.

Praveen is a Data & AI Specialist at Amazon with a focus on Information Retrieval (IR) and search systems. He works closely with organisations to design and optimise search relevance at scale using OpenSearch and modern IR techniques. An active contributor to the OpenSearch community, Praveen regularly speaks at conferences and meetups on topics spanning AI powered search and Agentic-AI systems. He is passionate about bridging cutting-edge IR research with real-world, developer-ready implementations, enabling teams to build high-performance search and retrieval platforms.

Ramya Ravi, Developer Advocate – AI and Open Source at NetApp Instaclustr, is a passionate content creator and AI enthusiast who thrives on exploring emerging trends, building communities, and attending tech conferences. With expertise in Python, TypeScript, C/C++, and AI/ML libraries like scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Hugging Face, Ramya brings a wealth of technical knowledge to her role. Previously, as a Developer Relations Engineer at Intel, she focused on AI/ML solutions, creating impactful technical content including blogs, demos, and videos. Ramya also spearheaded the growth of Intel’s developer community on Reddit and Discord, building it from the ground up. Read writing from Ramya on Medium, where she turns complex AI and data concepts into content that empowers developers and drives innovation. 

Sagar Utekar is a Site Reliability Engineer at CrowdStrike, specializing in cloud-native infrastructure, platform engineering, and observability. A CNCF Ambassador, Docker Captain, and Kubestronaut, Sagar is passionate about building resilient systems and sharing cloud-native knowledge at scale. He runs a popular DevOps and SRE newsletter on LinkedIn and hosts technical certification prep series to help engineers level up their skills. Sagar actively leads local tech meetups, mentors emerging talent through community hackathons, and speaks at global open-source conferences. Outside of work and community building, he enjoys weightlifting and exploring historic forts.

Sakshi Nasha is a software engineer at Cohesity and contributor to OpenSearch. She shares her experiences at international conferences, helping developers learn how to get more from search technologies. Outside of work, she balances her love of tech with trekking and cycling adventures.

Seema Saharan is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Autodesk and a CNCF Ambassador. She’s a regular speaker at KubeCon and OpenSearchCon, and co-organizes CNCF Jaipur. She’s excited to bring that same community energy to the OpenSearch Ambassador program

Stefano Pampaloni is an open-source entrepreneur and community advocate based in Italy. As CEO of Seacom, he works on observability, data platforms, and AI architectures built with open technologies, including OpenSearch. Seacom is a member of the OpenSearch Foundation, and Stefano actively contributes to the growth of its ecosystem. He is also Vice President of RIOS (Italian Open Source Network) and supports initiatives that connect open-source adoption, digital sovereignty, and sustainable ecosystem development across Europe. Stefano focuses on bridging technology, community, and real-world adoption to help organizations unlock the value of OpenSearch.

Trey Grainger is the founder of Searchkernel, where he helps companies push the frontier of AI Search, building on open source technologies like OpenSearch. He is the author of the books AI-Powered Search and Solr in Action, maintains the AI-Powered Search Community, and is a top instructor on Maven.com, where his live trainings reach thousands of search and AI engineers each year. He previously served as CTO of Presearch, Chief Algorithms Officer and SVP of Engineering at Lucidworks, and Director of Engineering at CareerBuilder. Trey has worked in information retrieval since 2008, contributing research, open source code, and hundreds of public talks at the intersection of search and AI.

West Kim is an AI Specialist SA at Amazon Web Services, helping build systems that leverage AI to find and utilize data more effectively. Drawing on his previous experience developing search services in e-commerce, he has expanded into the information retrieval domain, supporting the design of higher-accuracy search systems. He also provides specialized support for OpenSearch and Amazon OpenSearch Service, and contributes to community development.