MLOps.community

Tool descriptions tell an agent what a tool does. They don't tell it how to use five tools together, in the right order, following your conventions. That gap is where this conversation lives.Filmed at AGNTCon + MCPCon in Tokyo with Ola Hungerford, Principal Engineer for AI Enablement at Nordstrom and a maintainer of the Model Context Protocol, who spent the last several months turning a pattern everyone was quietly reinventing into an actual MCP extension.Ola walks through what skills over MCP really means: the server stops being a pile of tools and becomes a distribution channel, handing the agent the instructions, workflows and knowledge it needs only at the moment it needs them. She explains why server instructions weren't enough, how progressive discovery keeps context from exploding, and why the same mechanism works for memory and preferences even when no tools are involved.Then it gets into the harder parts. What belongs in the MCP spec versus the agent skills spec. Why passing custom front matter through opens a rug pull and prompt injection surface nobody wanted. Where skills start to look like sub-agents, and why there's still no standard way to declare which servers a skill depends on. And the honest problem underneath all of it: how do you standardize something while everyone is still finding out what it's actually for, without breaking a hundred things the next time you change your mind?Timestamps:[0:00] Intro[0:21] AI enablement at Nordstrom[0:33] What skills over MCP actually is[1:29] The MCP server as a distribution channel[2:01] Server instructions versus skills[3:11] Distributing knowledge and memory[4:23] Progressive discovery explained[5:23] Where the idea came from[6:59] From draft to official extension[8:19] What early adopters changed[8:51] Front matter and custom metadata[9:57] Rug pulls and prompt injection risk[10:57] Will any of this get standardized[12:10] Marrying two very different specs[13:03] Skills as personas and sub-agents[13:53] The missing dependency standard[15:15] How the extension actually works[16:19] What harnesses still need to support[16:59] Consent and skill integrity[17:56] Where skills over MCP goes next[18:43] Why cramming 200 tools fails[19:41] Standardizing before you know the answer[22:18] Is git the wrong tool for agents[23:19] Picking tools for the actual persona[23:51] Trying to be less productive[25:48] The anxiety of idle agents[27:15] Why she keeps a robot on her desk[28:22] If the agent feels the friction, does it matter[29:41] Efficiency, waste, and caring enough[30:52] Letting an agent debug for you[32:03] Choosing your rabbit hole

A year ago, Palo Alto Networks built dashboards to track AI spend. Today those dashboards are useless, and the team that built them thinks that's the whole story.Recorded at FinOps X in San Diego, this conversation brings together Abhinav Lad, who leads cloud and AI finance at Palo Alto Networks, and Kuntal Patel, who runs the cloud engineering function behind it. They explain what happened when agents entered the picture, and AI stopped behaving like a service anyone could forecast.The short version: consumption went from linear to exponential almost overnight. Agents are goal-oriented rather than task-oriented, so they plan, call tools, verify, fail, retry, and keep looping until they hit the outcome, and every iteration is billable. So how do you run finance on top of that? Abhinav and Kuntal walk through the metrics that replaced their old forecasts: adoption rate, cost per user, AI as a percentage of revenue - and the budget limits that let engineering leaders choose between the newest model and a longer runway. They get into the open question of whether a cheaper model saves money or just burns more tokens thinking. They explain why an AI gateway became the control plane for cost and security at the same time, why retry caps belong in the design phase instead of the postmortem, and how FinOps starts to resemble product QA once the bill becomes the clearest signal that something is broken.They close on a warning worth sitting with: cost per million tokens is a number that means almost nothing on its own, and a value story built on it will point you somewhere you don't want to go.Palo Alto Networks: https://www.paloaltonetworks.comAbhinav Lad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinav-ladKuntal Patel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kuntalpatel35Alex Salkever: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsalkeverTimestamps:[0:00] Intro[1:00] Who runs FinOps for AI at Palo Alto Networks[2:10] Last year's AI dashboards are already useless[4:26] Agents turned linear forecasts exponential[7:27] Three traits that make agents expensive[8:34] The hidden bill: RAG, vectors and egress[9:16] Cost per user and adoption rate[11:21] Giving engineering leaders a budget[12:07] Using DORA metrics to prove value[13:53] Where DORA stops fitting AI[16:20] Does the cheaper model actually save money[17:57] Why you need an AI gateway[20:05] Inside Prisma AIRS[21:00] Three cost models for three use cases[22:52] Forecasting lessons from Electronic Arts[24:03] Runaway agents and endless loops[25:59] Capping retries before they burn cash[28:06] Writing cost policy at design time[29:01] When FinOps becomes product QA[32:17] Explaining AI spend to the C-suite[34:51] Valuing AI beyond engineering[37:04] Crawl, walk, run: where they are today[38:20] Why cost per million tokens is meaningless[39:26] Closing thoughts

In this episode of Agentic Conversations, we sit down with Ambud Sharma, Principal Engineer at Pinterest, responsible for general technology efficiency, fresh off delivering a controversial keynote on AI infrastructure optimization at scale.Ambud walks us through his Five Layer Cake framework - a structured approach to driving efficiency across every level of the AI stack, from silicon and hardware procurement to model selection, inference engine design, and governance. We explore how decisions compound across layers to unlock real business growth, and how the wrong choices can lock you into expensive commitments for years.We stress test the framework against two very different business models: what the stack looks like if you are building the next Cursor, and how it changes entirely if you are building the next YouTube. Along the way we cover hardware immutability, inference engine warm-up costs, GPU occupancy, context switching, quantization trade-offs, model routing, and why experimentation discipline is the only thing that keeps AI infrastructure costs from getting out of control.We also look at how this framework holds up in the emerging agent era, what changes when agent-to-agent communication becomes the norm, and why agent traffic just passed bot traffic on Cloudflare. The conversation closes on a deceptively simple takeaway: there is no silver bullet, and experimentation at every layer always comes first.Pinterest: https://about.pinterest.com/Alex Salkever: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsalkeverAmbud Sharma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ambudTimestamps:[0:00] Introduction and the controversial keynote[2:09] The five-layer cake explained[4:30] Why hardware decisions are irreversible[6:47] Two business models: building Cursor vs YouTube[10:42] Applying the five layers to a YouTube-style company[14:23] Experimentation as the core efficiency method[17:09] Inference stack: context switching and warm-up costs[20:07] Model layer: why changing models breaks everything[24:10] When you should not use an LLM at all[26:41] Governance and routing: right model for the right task[29:20] Horror stories of unchecked token spend[31:37] Experimentation discipline without stifling innovation[34:35] How the five layers change in the agent era[36:05] Agent-to-agent communication and governance complexity[38:27] Core takeaway: experimentation first at every layer

AI models are starting to act like appliances, locked into one narrow way of working, instead of the flexible infrastructure they used to be. Drew Breunig, an AI and data strategist working with the Overture Maps Foundation, joins us to explain why, and what it means for anyone building something that doesn't look like Claude Code.Drew walks through his "Winchester Mystery House" idea: what happens once code gets so cheap to write that the only real bottleneck left is feedback. From there we dig into DSPy: signatures, the GEPA optimizer, and the brand-new Flex optimizer, which rewrites your code instead of just your prompt, complete with a real before-and-after on cost and accuracy. We also get into why so many AI-built apps and websites end up looking identical, the actual difference between an agent and a workflow, what Drew learned a year after shipping a code library with no code in it, and why he thinks the most valuable thing you can do right now is close the laptop and go talk to people.CMPND: https://www.cmpnd.aiDrew Breunig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewbreunig/Demetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmTimestamps:[0:00] Cold open: when Claude Code tries to call itself[1:19] Biggest AI news: labs trading diversity for reliability[2:35] How harnesses get trained into models over time[5:41] The problem: your harness starts fighting the model[9:13] When do you need your own harness?[10:02] The Winchester Mystery House warning[16:13] The blank page problem: why everything looks the same[20:50] Infrastructure vs appliances: the thesis lands[22:40] Current tool loadout: GLM, Kimi, Claude Code, Pi[27:04] The Raspberry Pi personal agent running on Slack[31:00] Crystallizing tasks: when to replace AI with pure code[33:10] DSPy explained: separating what from how[35:23] How prompt optimizers actually work[39:31] DSPy pre-dates ChatGPT: model-agnostic programs[44:00] Why you still need to ship the code, not just the spec[50:00] Don't plan more than a month ahead anymore[54:00] Coaching agents all day feels productive — it isn't[57:58] The dopamine of building with agents vs. why you still need human feedback

Every engineer at Wayfair can now see, in real time, exactly what their code costs, and that's on purpose. Brent Eubanks, FinOps Architect at Wayfair, walks us through what happens when you stop treating AI spend as a finance problem and start treating it as an engineering one.The story that sticks with you: a team was burning $400k a month on an LLM-driven workflow, until they flipped the whole thing on its head - hard-coded logic doing the heavy lifting, AI called in only when it's actually needed. New spend: $80k. It's the kind of move that only makes sense once you realize more agentic autonomy isn't always the win it's sold as.From there we get into the machinery Wayfair has built to make cost ownership feel less like a punishment and more like a superpower: guardrails baked straight into coding copilots, predictive alerts that catch a team blowing its budget before the month even ends, a "spend captain" system that pushes budget decisions down to the people closest to the work, and a genuinely strange new question every tech leader is starting to ask: if you were staffing a company with a team of AI agents instead of people, what would that org chart even look like?Wayfair: https://www.wayfair.comBrent Eubanks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brenteubanksDemetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmTimestamps:[00:00] Intro & teaser [01:14] Meet Brent (FinOps Architect, Wayfair) [02:34] Making AI adoption easy for developers [03:30] Three-area cost governance framework [04:45] Automated FinOps guardrails in pull requests [07:29] Predictive analytics: 400% over budget warnings [08:26] The 400% spender: asset or liability? [10:06] The "spend captain" model [12:13] The goal: 1000x more token use in two years [13:05] The thought experiment [15:08] The $400k workflow rebuilt for $80k [16:42] Hardcoded first, LLM as fallback [19:49] Engineers now own their full cost stack [20:13] The FinOps companion that works overnight [24:10] Guardrails injected before the pull request [26:17] Recurring tasks become automated skills [27:46] Sankey diagram: cost per agent step in real time [28:40] "The bill didn't blow up - that doesn't happen by accident"

OpenAI's Codex developer experience lead sits down with a former comedian turned ML engineering lead for a conversation about what happens when computer use agents stop being a novelty and start actually running your day.The conversation moves through building an AI-powered morning brief that reads every email, Slack message, and tweet before you've even opened your laptop, letting pinned threads check in on themselves every 30 minutes, and a skills system built to mirror how a person actually writes and reviews code. There's a close look at the guardrails and permission layers that keep an autonomous agent from pushing to the wrong repo or replying to the wrong tweet, how a codebase merging thousands of pull requests a day survives thanks to self-healing review before anything hits CI, and the idea of AI deference - when an agent should push through a task alone versus stop and ask for help. The back half gets personal: why developing taste and vocabulary now matters more than working harder, what it actually takes to delegate to an agent the way you'd onboard a new employee, and why this might be the year voice-orchestrated computer use finally makes everyone feel like they're talking to Jarvis.OpenAI: https://openai.comMonaco: https://www.monaco.comJason Liu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jxnlcoMihail Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihailericDemetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmTimestamps:[00:00] Intro and guest backgrounds[01:36] Why computer use beats plain API calls [09:11] Building an AI-powered morning brief [10:17] Self-monitoring threads that check in on their own [18:26] How OpenAI reviews thousands of PRs a day [19:42] Self-healing pull requests before CI even runs [23:07] Building review skills from teammates' habits [30:52] Why hard work stops being the differentiator [35:03] Introducing the idea of AI deference [42:44] Learning to delegate like hiring your first assistant [46:22] Why voice beats typing for giving agents context [50:56] The Tony Stark Jarvis analogy for this year

In this episode, we're joined by Josh Collier, FinOps Lead at Superhuman (formerly Grammarly), to explore what it really costs to run AI at scale and why the rules of the game changed faster than anyone expected.We discuss how AI token costs dropped 80% in two years, why that trend has sharply reversed with frontier models doubling in price, and how Josh rebuilt a single LLM workflow that cost $400k a month down to $80k by rethinking the architecture. He also shares how a cost calculator built in 15 minutes transformed the way his team estimates spend before running experiments, and why research-led optimization is the only kind that works without degrading the product.Along the way, we cover hidden costs most teams miss, the trade-off between Azure reserved capacity and OpenAI Priority Processing, why fixed subscription pricing is broken in an AI-native world, vendor lock-in risk, and what OpenAI's Guaranteed Capacity announcement really signals about where vendor relationships are heading next.Superhuman: https://superhuman.comJosh Collier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-collier-945b7029/Demetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmTimestamps:[00:00] OpenAI Guaranteed Capacity: what's really going on[01:04] Josh's path into AI FinOps[02:48] Token costs: the 80% price drop[04:16] Why costs will only go up[05:06] External LLMs as financial risk[07:16] Why subscription pricing is dead[08:22] The data residency fee nobody notices[09:33] The cost calculator built in 15 minutes[10:24] How it changed dev team speed[13:00] Tracking costs by service and team[15:33] $400k workflow rebuilt for $80k[17:13] Why only research can optimize tokens[20:00] Speculative decoding win[23:11] One bad query, $40k gone[26:00] Why Azure PTU was exhausting[28:59] Shadow traffic load testing[29:07] Priority processing: no brainer[31:10] Guaranteed capacity: lock-in signal?[32:18] The danger of multi-year AI deals[33:28] Vendor-agnostic proxy as exit strategy

David Soria Parra is an Engineering Lead at Anthropic and one of the core maintainers of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). We explore the biggest evolution of the protocol since its launch, and why MCP is becoming the foundation for the next generation of AI agents.We discuss why MCP is moving toward stateless communication, what developers misunderstand about state, sessions, and transport layers, and how lessons from real-world deployments at massive scale have shaped the protocol's future. We also dive into MCP v2, SDK migrations, protocol design, extension architecture, governance, developer experience, and how Anthropic thinks about balancing simplicity with long-term flexibility.Along the way, we explore progressive disclosure, tool search, programmatic tool calling, context bloat, forward compatibility, long-running AI tasks, protocol evolution, open-source governance, observability, and why the future of AI infrastructure will depend on designing protocols that can evolve without breaking the ecosystem.Timestamps:[00:00] Introduction[01:59] Why MCP Had to Become Stateless[04:28] The Tradeoffs of Stateless Design[06:13] What We Learned About Agent State[08:04] Sessions, Models & Implicit State[09:33] Migrating to MCP v2[12:19] Lessons from HTTP & Open Source Standards[18:16] Shipping Fast Without Breaking Everything[20:35] The Future Complexity of MCP[22:44] Core Features vs Extensions[26:47] Progressive Disclosure Explained[28:16] Solving Context Bloat[30:50] Why Tool Search Beats Progressive Disclosure[32:10] The Biggest MCP Anti-Pattern[34:25] Designing for Forward Compatibility[38:41] Why "Tasks" Matter[40:53] JSON, Tokens & Better Tool Calling[44:44] Observability & Tracing AI Agents[47:34] Will MCP Ever Be Finished?[50:22] What's Next for MCP

Manish Dasaur is a Managing Director at PwC with over 20 years in data and AI, having helped 100+ clients navigate AI disruption and extract real business value from data, AI, and agentic AI initiatives. In this episode, he breaks down why most enterprise AI programs stall — and the playbook the winners are using instead.Huge thanks to PwC for supporting this episode!

In this episode, we're joined by Jeremiah Lowin, Founder & CEO at Prefect and the creator of FastMCP, to explore how one of the most influential projects in the MCP ecosystem came to be - and where the protocol is heading next.We discuss the accidental origin of FastMCP, why Anthropic adopted it into the official SDK, what developers are getting wrong about MCP, and why Chris believes the biggest opportunity for AI agents isn't customer-facing applications, but internal enterprise systems. We also dive into MCP Apps, developer experience, protocol design, AI tooling, Python, and why building great abstractions is often more valuable than exposing more configuration.Along the way, we explore the rapid growth of the MCP ecosystem, how FastMCP became the default way many developers build MCP servers, why "too much magic" can actually hurt developer experience, and what the next generation of AI-powered applications will look like as agents move beyond simple tool calling into rich, interactive experiences.Prefect: https://www.prefect.ioJeremiah Lowin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlowinDemetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmTimestamps:00:00 Lost My Entire Talk00:47 The Story Behind FastMCP02:08 Anthropic Adopted FastMCP02:34 When MCP Took Off04:10 FastMCP vs The Official SDK05:43 Is MCP Actually Dead?06:42 What Everyone Gets Wrong About MCP08:11 MCP's Biggest Use Case10:25 Building Internal AI Systems12:00 Why FastMCP Exploded13:29 Making Complex Software Simple15:10 Can Software Be Too Magical?20:11 MCP Apps Explained23:42 Why Python Needed MCP Apps27:54 The Future of AI Interfaces34:18 AI Should Generate UIs40:11 AI Deleted My Presentation43:30 The AI Assistant We Actually Need48:00 Personal AI vs SaaS52:28 The Future of AI Agents55:06 Final Thoughts

In this episode, we're joined by Stephen O'Grady, Co-Founder and Principal Analyst at RedMonk, to explore one of the biggest shifts happening in software engineering: AI is making code dramatically cheaper to produce, but everything downstream is becoming the new bottleneck.We discuss why SaaS isn't dead despite the hype, the explosive rise of MCP, why AI agents are overwhelming developer infrastructure, and what happens when every engineer suddenly has dozens of AI developers working alongside them. Stephen explains how package managers, code reviews, security, governance, and enterprise systems are all struggling to keep pace with AI-generated software.Along the way, we dive into AI coding tools, MCP adoption, developer productivity, infrastructure scaling, enterprise software, open source, package repositories, governance, and why the hardest problems in software may no longer be writing code—but managing everything that comes after.RedMonk: https://redmonk.comStephen O'Grady: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sogradyDemetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm

In this episode, we're joined by Matt DeBergalis, CTO and Co-Founder of Apollo GraphQL, to explore what happens when AI agents start interacting with enterprise systems that were never designed for them.We dive into the collision between APIs, MCP, GraphQL, and agentic AI, and why traditional assumptions about trust, permissions, and security are breaking down. Matt argues that AI agents should be treated as untrusted actors by default, and explains why giving agents access to enterprise data creates entirely new challenges around governance, access control, and risk management.Along the way, we discuss semantic APIs, enterprise data silos, citizen developers, agent permissions, security boundaries, and how GraphQL and MCP can work together to make enterprise systems more accessible to both humans and AI. The conversation also explores why companies are racing to deploy agents despite the risks, and what the future of enterprise software might look like when AI becomes the primary consumer of APIs.Apollo GraphQL: https://www.apollographql.comMatt DeBergalis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debergalisAlex Salkever: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsalkeverTimestamps:[00:00] AI, APIs, and Trust[01:16] MCP API Lessons[06:16] GraphQL and MCP Integration[12:55] API Security for MCP[16:10] Linux Kernel Security Concerns[19:09] API Design and Controls[21:52] Trust in Autonomous Systems[25:06] MCP GraphQL Wish List[27:13] API Access Patterns[28:44] GraphQL API Perspective

In this episode of Agentic Conversations, we're joined by Shaun Smith, software engineer, open source advocate, and contributor at Hugging Face, to explore how AI coding has changed almost overnight.We dive into reinforcement learning, MCP (Model Context Protocol), Fast Agent, Claude Code, open source AI, and why today's language models have become so capable that many traditional software libraries are becoming "liquefied." Shaun explains how reinforcement learning unlocked long-running autonomous agents, why ideas are becoming more valuable than code, and how developers should think about building software in an era where AI can generate entire applications.Along the way, we discuss Hugging Face's MCP server, Fast Agent, AI-powered developer tools, multimodal applications, MCP Apps, context windows, coding assistants, Rust, Python, TypeScript, open-weight models, software architecture, and what the future of programming looks like when humans increasingly focus on design instead of implementation.Shaun Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithshaunDemetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmHugging Face: https://huggingface.co⏱️ Timestamps[00:00] Introduction[01:56] The State of Open Source AI[05:18] Reinforcement Learning Changed Everything[07:50] Fast Agent Explained[10:18] Fast Agent as an MCP Reference Platform[12:20] Building Smarter AI Tools at Hugging Face[15:17] Natural Language Search Instead of APIs[17:46] Why MCP Apps Matter[20:06] The Evolution of MCP Apps[23:05] Building AI-Native User Interfaces[26:12] Context Is the New Programming Language[28:00] The End of Code Libraries[29:50] Why Developers Aren't Writing Code[31:25] AI Changes Software Engineering[33:05] The Future of Open Source AI[35:43] Claude Skills That Save Hours[38:02] Training Models with AI[39:05] Building Your Own AI Tools[40:50] MCP for Consumers, Enterprises, and Developers[43:42] Why Shell Access Makes Agents Smarter[45:18] Secure Agent Workflows[46:08] The Future of AI Interfaces[47:02] Outro#HuggingFace #MCP #OpenSourceAI

In this episode, we're joined by Ben Morss, Developer Advocate at DeepL, who spent months traveling across North America and Europe teaching developers about MCP, building MCP servers, and helping teams understand how AI agents actually use tools.We dive into the biggest misconceptions around MCP, why so many developers still misunderstand how it works, and what Ben learned after giving talks and workshops in 10 cities across four countries. Along the way, we explore MCP server design, tool calling, security concerns, translation workflows, developer education, and how DeepL is using MCP to bring high-quality language translation into AI-powered applications.DeepL: https://www.deepl.comBen Morss: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-morss-ph-d-15bab15/Alex Salkever: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsalkeverTimestamps:[00:00] AI and API Integration[00:41] DeepL at DevSummit[01:19] MCP Roadshow Origins[03:47] MCP Hackathon Insights[07:52] Security in Model Protocols[10:25] AI Expert vs Noob Queries[16:08] DeepL vs Frontier LLMs[18:16] MCP vs REST API[21:39] MCP Servers and DeepL

In this episode, we're joined by Cornelia Davis, Developer Advocate at Temporal and a longtime software architect who has spent decades helping shape modern cloud-native systems.We explore how programming has evolved from assembly language to cloud-native architectures, and why AI is forcing us to rethink software development once again. Cornelia argues that natural language is becoming a new programming abstraction, while durable execution may be the missing layer that makes AI agents reliable in production.The conversation dives into probabilistic software, long-running AI agents, MCP tasks, human-in-the-loop workflows, durable timers, distributed systems, and why developers may no longer need to think about infrastructure the way they once did.Cornelia Davis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corneliadavisDemetrios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkmTemporal: https://temporal.ioTimestamps[00:00] AI Programming Abstractions[00:52] Abstraction Evolution in Programming[04:05] Text to SQL Evolution[10:08] Compensations for Natural Language[12:13] Durable MCP in AI[18:34] Streaming Session Explanation[21:31] Batch Processes with Tasks[29:29] Complexity Relocation in Systems[33:10] Complexity Relocation in Dev[36:36] Programming Model Shifts

Denny Lee is PM Director, Startups & Ecosystem at Databricks, a longtime Apache Spark, MLflow, and Delta Lake contributor — and one of the people behind Omnigent, the open-source meta-harness Databricks just released under Apache 2.0. He joins Demetrios to explain why the industry is moving from models to harnesses to meta-harnesses, why token spend is replaying the CapEx-to-OpEx shift all over again, and why he's using debating AI agents to plan a matcha farm in Taiwan.In this episode:

Qdrant Roundtable episode: The Current State of Agentic RetrievalJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguideBig shout-out to Qdrant for the collaboration!// AbstractAI agents are only as good as the information they can find, retrieve, and remember. In this community roundtable with the Qdrant team, we explored the latest advances in agentic memory, vector search, retrieval systems, and production AI architectures.As AI agents move beyond simple chatbots into systems that can reason across large amounts of information, retrieval is becoming one of the most important layers in the AI stack. The discussion covered the real-world challenges of building agents that remember what matters, forget what doesn't, and consistently retrieve the right context at the right time.If you're building AI agents, RAG systems, or production AI applications, this conversation offers practical insights into where retrieval is headed and what it takes to build reliable, scalable agentic systems.// BioEwa SzyszkaEwa is a Developer Relations professional based in San Francisco with a background in Computer Science and Hardware Engineering, passionate about bridging the gap between technology and the developer community. She holds a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Electronics, bringing a strong blend of deep technical foundations and communication skills to her work.Dylan CouzonDylan is based in New York City, and he helps developers build better AI applications. He is passionate about AI, programming, open source, and robotics, and enjoys sharing what he's building and learning along the way.Neil KanungoNeil is an experienced professional with expertise in data science, developer relations, and product growth. Currently serving as the Head of Developer Relations at Qdrant, Neil previously held the position of VP of Product Led Growth & Developer Relations at KX, where significant increases in product registration and user activation were achieved. At TIBCO, Neil managed a team focused on enhancing the adoption of TIBCO Spotfire through various initiatives, including tutorial videos and live webinars. With a strong technical background, Neil has developed innovative solutions in analytics, machine learning, and data visualization across multiple roles, including Engineering Data Analyst and Asset Integrity Engineer at Enterprise Products. Neil holds a Bachelor of Science in Radiation Physics from The University of Texas at Austin, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech University, and is pursuing a Master in Applied Data Science from the University of Michigan.Evgeniya SukhodolskayaDeveloper Relations at Qdrant with 8 years of IT experience across software engineering, machine learning, and technical management, and 4 years in Developer Relations. Holds a Master's in Machine Learning, Data Analytics, and Data Engineering. Passionate about NLP, data-centric AI, and the role of vector search in advancing AI technologies.Andrei CristeaAndrei is a Berlin-based Developer Relations Engineer at Qdrant, a prominent open-source vector database. With a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence from TU Munich, his expertise bridges AI, data infrastructure, and knowledge engineering.Hosted by Demetrios// Related LinksWebsite: https://qdrant.tech/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]

Kingsley Madikaegbu is the founder of HealID, a startup building agentic AI on top of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for one of the most heavily regulated environments there is: healthcare.Recorded at MCP Dev Summit North America in New York, Kingsley sits down with Alex Salkever of the Agentic AI Foundation to break down how you give patients, doctors, caregivers, and family members each their own agent over the same medical record — without breaching HIPAA, leaking PHI, or letting an agent quietly go off the rails. In this conversation:

In this episode:

Sam Partee (CTO & co-founder of Arcade.dev) and Nate Barbettini (Founding Engineer at Arcade.dev) sit down at the MCP Dev Summit to unpack what nobody wants to admit about the Model Context Protocol: the security model is still full of sharp edges. From tool poisoning and prompt injection to why OAuth got bolted onto the spec, this is a builder 's-eye view of where MCP breaks — and how to ship agents safely anyway.What we get into:

Shahram Anver is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cleric, the autonomous AI SRE that investigates and root-causes production issues like an experienced teammate — often in under two minutes. Before Cleric, Shahram led MLOps, DevOps, and FinOps platform engineering at Gojek, Southeast Asia's super-app. In this conversation, he breaks down why production operations never kept pace with AI-accelerated development, and why the real unlock for an AI SRE isn't faster triage — it's an agent that *learns* and compounds operational memory across your whole org.In this episode:

Zipline Roundtable episode: Building Real-Time ML Systems with Zipline + ChrononJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguideBig shout-out to ZiplineAI for the collaboration!// AbstractReal-time ML use cases like personalization and risk decisioning come with a unique set of challenges: serving fresh feature values at low latency for inference, generating temporally consistent backfills for training, and building complex chains of on-demand, batch, and streaming transformations. In this roundtable, practitioners from Intuit, CreditKarma, Depop, and OpenAI share how they use Zipline and the OSS Chronon project to solve these challenges and deploy real-time ML use cases in production.// BioGerman KrikorianGerman is a Software Engineer on the Feature Platform team at Credit Karma. Since joining the company during the early development of its recommendation system, they have played a key role in building and scaling the platform over the years. Their work focuses on feature pipelines and the feature store, which serves as critical infrastructure supporting numerous teams and business verticals across the organization.Ben MagyarBen is an engineer at Depop working on ML and data systems. Before Depop, he worked on Search at Etsy. Most of his work is around the infrastructure and operational problems that come with running ML systems at scale.Raj KatakamRaj architects ML Infrastructure at Credit Karma (Intuit). He holds a Master's in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon and a B.Tech in EECE from IIT Kharagpur. His interests include ML Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, Real-Time Data Processing, and Generative AI. His current focus is on providing feature engineering platforms, production GenAI infrastructure, vector databases, ML model serving, and MLOps pipelines for fraud detection, personalized recommendations, financial insights, and model explainability.Mick JermsurawongLed Flyte ML training/experimentation at Stripe, and now led Chronon for ML features at OpenAIHosted by Demetrios// Related LinksWebsite: https://zipline.ai/https://chronon.ai/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with German on LinkedIn: /e2zdkwh8cxghydg/Connect with Raj on LinkedIn: /rajkiran2190Connect with Mick on LinkedIn:/mick-jermsurawong/

Naseem Al-Naji is the co-founder of MCPcat.io and the creator of Opal — a builder with deep roots in privacy-first developer tooling. In this conversation, he breaks down why MCP servers have become a black box in production, and how MCPcat gives teams X-ray vision into how agents and users actually behave.What we get into:

Stanislas Polu is Co-Founder & CTO of Dust — the enterprise AI agent platform used by 51,000 workers at 3,000+ companies. Before Dust, he spent three years on OpenAI's research team under Ilya Sutskever, working on mathematical reasoning in language models, and prior to that was an engineer at Stripe. He brings a rare combination of frontier AI research and product-building experience to the enterprise agent space.MCP, Agents & the $40M Bet on Multiplayer AI // MLOps Podcast #384 with Stanislas Polu, Co-Founder & CTO of Dust

James Everingham is the CEO and Co-founder of Guild.ai — the AI agent control plane for production teams. With roots at Netscape, Instagram (Head of Engineering), and Meta (Head of Dev Infra, leading a 1,000-person org), James brings rare, hard-won expertise to the challenge of operating AI agents at scale.From Single-Player to Multi-Player: Operating AI Agents at Scale // MLOps Podcast #383 with James Everingham, CEO and Co-founder of Guild.aiIn this episode, James unpacks what actually breaks when you move from a single AI agent to a fleet of them — and what engineering leaders need to build before it's too late.

Thiago Cardoso is the Director of Data & AI at iFood and the architect behind iFood Pago's AI agent platform. This fintech system serves millions of restaurants across Brazil through WhatsApp and the iFood app. In this episode, he breaks down what it actually takes to ship agentic AI in production at scale.The Control-vs-Magic Spectrum Building Agents // MLOps Podcast #382 with Thiago Cardoso, Director of Data & AI at iFood

Sherwood Callaway is the founder of Sazabi (YC P26), the AI-native observability platform built for engineering teams who ship fast. He previously founded and exited a YC company — now he's back, betting that logs are all you need to replace Datadog.Logs Are All You Need: Rethinking Observability with AI Agents // MLOps Podcast #381 with Sherwood Callaway, the Founder of Sazabi

Joe Maionchi (Co-founder & COO) and Rod Christensen (Co-founder & Chief Architect) of RocketRide join the MLOps Community to walk through AIDE — the AI Integrated Development Environment. RocketRide is an open-source AI pipeline platform that lets developers build, debug, and run production-grade agentic AI workflows directly from their IDE, with support for 13+ LLM providers, 8+ vector databases, and full multi-agent orchestration.AI Is Fast. AI Projects Are Slow. Let's Fix That. // MLOps Podcast #378 with JRocketRide's Joe Maionchi (Co-founder & COO) and Rod Christensen (Co-founder & Chief Architect)A huge shout-out to  ⁨RocketRide⁩  for this collaboration!

BuzzHPC Roundtable episode: Architecting Modern AI Systems: Platforms, Agents, and Integration Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguideBig shout-out to BuzzHPC for the collaboration!// AbstractAs AI systems evolve into more autonomous, agent-driven architectures, the way we design platforms, tools, and infrastructure is rapidly changing. In this session with BuzzHPC, we explore the shifting boundary between platforms and tools, what developers expect platform providers to handle versus what they want to control and build themselves. We unpack what modern agentic stacks look like today, how teams are structuring them in production, and where these architectures are heading as systems become more complex and distributed. A key focus will also be on agent interoperability, how different agents communicate, coordinate, and operate within shared environments.Finally, we share insights and lessons from a recent AI hackathon delivered in partnership with Bell, Buzz, Mila, and KHP, highlighting how these concepts are being tested and applied by builders in real-world scenarios.// BioAllen RoushAllen has held senior technical and AI leadership roles at companies like Oracle and Intel. He's very active in the AI research space and open source communities. He's passionate about improving the creativity and coherence of AI systems.Frédéric BénardFrédéric is Senior Director of AI Applications Development at Mila (Quebec AI Institute), where he leads a team focused on building the engineering foundations for applied AI systems. His work centers on translating cutting-edge research into scalable applications, including AI-driven platforms and agent-based systems used across research and industry collaborations.Shuo WangShuo leads the Responsible AI Office for Bell Canada, where all AI use cases are reviewed and assessed for potential harm and bias. Previously, he led a team of data scientists to expand a large-scale ML program to improve customer support effectiveness.// Related LinksWebsite: https://www.buzzhpc.ai/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Allen on LinkedIn: /allen-roush-27721011b/Connect with Frédéric on LinkedIn: /benard/Connect with Shuo on LinkedIn: /shuow/

Big news: the MLOps Community is joining the Linux Foundation to become the official user community of the new Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF). The AAIF is the neutral home for open source projects like the Model Context Protocol (MCP), goose, and AGENTS.md, co-founded by Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI. With that governance and scaffolding now in place, the open source agent ecosystem has room to scale, and the MLOps Community is right in the middle of it.Everything you love about the community from the past six years keeps going, and we are adding even more on top.What this means:- Official user community: MLOps Community becomes the user community of the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation.- The projects: MCP, goose, and AGENTS.md now live under one open, neutral governance structure built to scale.- Nothing goes away: The podcast, the global meetups, the weekly newsletter, the Slack workspace, and the virtual events all continue.- New: Ambassador Program: Just opened for applications, so you can get more involved in the community.- AgentCon EU: September 17 and 18 in Amsterdam.- AgentCon North America: October 22 and 23 in San Jose.- A possible new name: The podcast may become "Agentic Conversations," because honestly all we talk about is agents. Tell me what you think in the comments.If you build with AI agents or follow the open source agent ecosystem, this is the update to bookmark. This is MLOps Community 2.0.Links and Resources:- MLOps Community: https://mlops.community- MLOps Community 2.0: https://mlops.community/blog/mlops-community-2-0- Agentic AI Foundation: https://aaif.io- Ambassadors: https://aaif.io/ambassadors- Linux Foundation AAIF announcement: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-the-formation-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation- AgentCon and MCPCon events: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/aaif-events/- Model Context Protocol (MCP): https://modelcontextprotocol.io- goose: https://goose-docs.ai- AGENTS.md: https://agents.mdTimestamps (approximate, adjust before publishing):00:00 The big announcement00:12 Joining the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation00:30 Why it matters: MCP, goose, and AGENTS.md00:48 What is not changing: podcast, meetups, newsletter, Slack01:15 What is new: the Ambassador Program01:30 AgentCon EU in Amsterdam and North America in San Jose01:55 A new name for the podcast: Agentic Conversations?02:10 MLOps Community 2.0#AgenticAI #MCP #LinuxFoundation

Guthrie Cooper (Senior Group Product Manager, AI & Robotics) and Nidhi Sharma (Global Head of Engineering AI & Incubation) from Just Eat Takeaway.com join the MLOps.community to pull back the curtain on how one of Europe's largest food delivery platforms is running an internal innovation engine. From autonomous delivery robots to agentic AI voice assistants, they share what it actually takes to build like a startup inside a 40,000-person company.Inside Just Eat's AI Lab: Voice Agents & Agentic Commerce // MLOps Podcast #377 with Just Eat Takeaway.com's Guthrie Cooper (Senior Group Product Manager, AI & Robotics) and Nidhi Sharma (Global Head of Engineering AI & Incubation)

Pramod Krishnan is a Managing Director - AI Managed Services at PwC, specializing in enterprise AI transformation — helping large organizations move from AI experimentation to production operating models. In this episode with Demetrios, Pramod breaks down exactly what the OpenClaw wave means for enterprises, and the control frameworks PwC uses before a single agent touches production.Huge thanks to ⁠PwC⁠ for supporting this episode!Autonomous Agents at Work: From OpenClaw Hype to Enterprise Reality // MLOps Podcast #378 with Pramod Krishnan, Managing Director - AI Managed Services at PwC US.

Hamza Tahir, co-founder of ZenML, joins the show to cut through the hype around long-running agents — arguing that at the end of the day, an agent is just a while loop that talks to a model, calls a tool, and writes to a file system. He covers the architecture of agent harnesses (inner and outer), what durable execution actually guarantees (and what it doesn't), and why the ML pipeline paradigm is a cleaner mental model than transactions for most agent workloads.Hamza also announces Kitaru — ZenML's new open-source execution runtime for async Python agents — built on five years of running ML workloads in enterprise environments.What we get into:Agents are while loops: The surprising simplicity under all the tooling: a brain (LLM), hands (tool calls), and a file system, stacked recursivelyInner harness vs outer harness: Why Pydantic AI owns the inner loop while production deployment needs a separate runtime layerWhat "long-running" actually means: Why the infrastructure we need to build is about extrapolating the future, not defining a time window todayDurable execution demystified: What checkpointing actually guarantees (infra failures, pod death, network drops) vs. what it never will (external state, bad LLM outputs, Snowflake rollbacks)ML pipelines vs transactions: Why bursty containers in Kubernetes map more naturally to agent workloads than microsecond-latency queue workers — and why Hamza argues against the complexity taxAnthropic opening the harness: Why letting other models run Claude Cowork is a "boss move," and what it means for the one-harness vs one-model debateHuman-in-the-loop, done right: The pod-kill-and-resume pattern, and why warm pools matter less when your agent runs for daysKitaru: ZenML's new open source durable execution runtime: zero-config local, Kubernetes/SageMaker/Vertex in production, built on Pydantic AI integrationArguing with Claude about Temporal: Hamza's story of spending hours getting an LLM to admit ZenML and Temporal solves the same problemIf you're architecting agents for production, picking between Pydantic AI, LangGraph, and Temporal, or just want to understand what "durable execution" actually means — this is the episode.// LINKS & RESOURCESKitaru on GitHub: https://github.com/zenml-io/kitaruKitaru launch blog post: https://www.zenml.io/blog/kitaru-launchKitaru on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520115Hamza Tahir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamzatahirofficial/ZenML: https://www.zenml.io/ Timestamps[00:00] While Loop Checkpointing[00:24] Long-Running Agents Explained[01:28] Agent Harness Model Definitions[06:30] Durability and State Recovery[11:03] Agent Systems Layers[18:45] Durability in Agent Systems[22:07] ML Pipeline vs Transactions[29:23] Durability vs Guarantees[33:13] Durability vs Chaos Engineering[39:50] Kitaru Naming and Purpose[40:38] Wrap up#AIAgents #DurableExecution #OpenSource

Rafael (Head of Innovation, iFood) and Daniel (Data and AI Manager, iFood) pull back the curtain on ILO-Agent — iFood's conversational AI ordering system built for 200 million users across Latin America. Recorded live at AI House Amsterdam, this conversation goes deep into the engineering and product decisions behind building recommendation systems and agentic AI, and why the speed of your AI's response might actually be destroying user trust.The Latency Goldilocks Zone Explained // MLOps Podcast #376 with iFood's Rafael Borger (Head of Innovation) and Daniel Wolbert (Data and AI Manager)

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo is the AI PM at Despegar, the largest online travel agency in Latin America, and the engineer-product-hybrid behind Sofia, the GenAI travel concierge that beat most of the OTA world to a working multi-agent system. Before MCP was a standard and before LangChain was widely adopted, his team had already shipped their own orchestration layer and tool protocol in production. This conversation is a rare look at what it takes to build an agentic system that actually books trips, runs on WhatsApp, and keeps adding capabilities without falling over.What we cover:- Chappi, the brain of Sofia: how Despegar built an internal orchestration layer when there was nothing off the shelf- Building "MCP before MCP": the custom tool-calling protocol that predated the Anthropic standard- Multi-agent architecture by vertical: flights, hotels, activities, and cars each own their own flow- Decentralized agent ownership: how any squad in the company can build a flow with central supervision- Sofia on WhatsApp: making messaging the consumer control center, the way Slack became it for the enterprise- The five-phase travel arc Sofia covers: dreaming, planning, anticipation, in-trip, and post-trip- KPI evolution: why "in-scope conversation rate" topped out near 96 percent and what they measure now- The flight-delay-claim use case and why filing claims through a chatbot is a perfect agent task- Group trip planning in WhatsApp groups: the next frontier for travel agents- Sofia as channel of choice: the WeChat-style vision for an agent that handles your entire trip- Why Despegar held off on giving Sofia the ability to bargain with customers, for now. Whether you are building production agents, running an OTA, or just curious about how an AI travel concierge actually works under the hood, this episode is full of grounded, in-production lessons from a team that had to invent the patterns the rest of us are now adopting.Links and Resources:- Despegar: https://www.despegar.com- Sofia announcement: https://investor.despegar.com/news-presentations/news-releases/news-details/2024/Despegar-revolutionizes-the-tourism-industry-introducing-the-regions-first-Generative-AI-Travel-Assistant- Sofia coverage on PhocusWire: https://www.phocuswire.com/despegar-debuts-genai-travel-assistant-remembers-previous-interactions- MLOps Community: https://mlops.community- Subscribe for more agent and AI infra deep divesTimestamps 00:00 - Intro: Nicolas, Sofia, and Despegar in LatAm01:30 - Chappi as the brain of Sofia and the squad model04:00 - Anyone in the company can build a flow07:00 - Why airline check-in still exists and what agents could replace09:30 - The flight-delay refund story and the chatbot gap13:00 - File-the-claim-for-me as a perfect agent use case16:00 - The dreaming phase: helping users who do not know where to go yet19:00 - In-scope conversation KPI hitting 96 percent and what comes next22:00 - Beating the traditional flight search UI with conversation25:00 - WhatsApp group trip planning and the ski trip example28:00 - Personalization at scale and the new gateway to the internet31:00 - WhatsApp as the consumer control center, like WeChat in China34:00 - Sofia as gateway: complaints, customer service, and verticalized agents37:00 - Building MCP before MCP and the custom orchestration layer40:00 - Why Sofia does not negotiate prices, yet#AIAgents #MCP #AgenticAI

This episode is brought to you by the MLflow team. Check out more information at MLflow.org.What does it actually take to build voice AI at a billion-interaction scale? This episode features an ex-Amazon voice AI engineer who built customer support systems handling 2 billion+ interactions — now working on next-gen voice agent platforms. Anurag digs deep into the real engineering tradeoffs, design patterns, and use cases that separate production-grade voice agents from demos.Voice Agent Use Cases // MLOps Podcast #372 with Anurag Beniwal, Member of the Technical Staff at ElevenLabs

Jesse Vincent is the Founder & CEO of Prime Radiant and creator of Superpowers — the most-used Claude Code plugin in the world. He built the first agentic software development methodology from scratch while managing MIT interns in the early 2000s, and hasn't written a line of code manually since October.The Creator of Superpowers: Why Real Agentic Engineering Beats Vibe Coding // MLOps Podcast #373 with Jesse Vincent, Founder & CEO of Prime RadiantIn this conversation, Jesse walks Demetrios through the full Superpowers system: why he thinks most developers are still approaching agentic coding wrong, how he designs skills that force LLMs to stop rationalizing and actually follow rules, and what he's building next at Prime Radiant — including Green Field, an unreleased tool for reverse-engineering legacy codebases into specs. This one is for developers who want to go beyond "vibe coding" and build AI-assisted workflows that actually scale.

Maggie Konstanty is an AI Product Manager at Prosus, one of the world's largest consumer internet companies, where she builds and evaluates AI agents for food ordering and ecommerce at scale. She's been inside the messy reality of LLM evaluation longer than most — and her take is unfiltered.It's 2026, and We're Still Talking Evals // MLOps Podcast #372 with Maggie Konstanty, AI Product Manager at Prosus

This episode is brought to you by Hyperbolic and the MLflow team. Check out more information at hyperbolic.ai and MLflow.org.Why AI Coding Agents Are Moving to the Cloud — With Zach Lloyd, CEO of WarpZach Lloyd is the founder and CEO of Warp, the AI-native terminal and agentic development platform trusted by over a million developers. Before Warp, Zach was a product lead at Google on Google Docs — giving him a uniquely deep intuition for what it means to build truly collaborative developer tools at scale.Why Agents are Driving Software Development to the Cloud // MLOps Podcast #371 with Zach Lloyd, CEO of WarpWhat we cover:

This episode is brought to you by the MLflow team. Check out more information at MLflow.org.Mihail Eric is Head of AI at Monaco and Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University, where he teaches CS146S: "The Modern Software Developer" — the first course in the world dedicated to how AI is transforming every stage of the software development lifecycle. With 12+ years building production AI systems at Amazon Alexa, Storia AI (YC S24), and early-stage startups, Mihail has one of the most grounded, practitioner-level takes on what it actually means to be a software engineer in 2026.The Modern Software Engineer // MLOps Podcast #370 with Mihail Eric, Head of AI at Monaco

Maher Hanafi is an engineering leader who went from zero AI experience to self-hosting LLMs at enterprise scale — managing GPU costs, optimizing inference with TensorRT LLM, and building an AI platform for HR tech. In this conversation, he breaks down exactly how his team cut latency by 70%, reduced GPU spend through counterintuitive scaling strategies, and navigated the messy reality of taking AI from proof-of-concept to production.How We Cut LLM Latency 70% With TensorRT in Production // MLOps Podcast #369 with Maher Hanafi, SVP of Engineering at Betterworks Key topics covered:The AI Iceberg — Why the invisible work behind AI (performance, latency, throughput, cost, accuracy) is harder than building the features themselvesGPU Cost Optimization — How upgrading to more expensive GPUs actually saved money by reducing total runtime hoursTensorRT LLM Deep Dive — Rewiring neural networks to match GPU architecture for 50-70% latency reductionCold Start Solutions — Using AWS FSx, baking models into container images, and cutting minutes off spin-up timesKV Cache & In-Flight Batching — Why using one model per GPU with maximum KV cache beats cramming multiple models togetherScheduled & Dynamic Scaling — Pattern-based scaling for HR tech workloads (nights, weekends, end-of-quarter spikes)Verticalized AI Platform — Building horizontal AI infrastructure that serves multiple HR product verticalsAI Engineering Lab — How junior vs. senior engineers adopted AI coding tools differently, and the cultural shift that followedAgentic Coding in Practice — Navigating AI coding agent costs, quality control, and redefining the SDLCChinese Models & Compliance — Why enterprise customers block DeepSeek/Qwen and the geopolitics of model training dataThis episode is for engineering leaders building AI in production, MLOps engineers optimizing GPU infrastructure, and anyone navigating the gap between AI demos and enterprise-scale deployment.Links & Resources:TensorRT LLM: https://github.com/NVIDIA/TensorRT-LLMNVIDIA Run: ai Model Streamer (cold start optimization): https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/reducing-cold-start-latency-for-llm-inference-with-nvidia-runai-model-streamer/vLLM vs TensorRT-LLM comparison: https://northflank.com/blog/vllm-vs-tensorrt-llm-and-how-to-run-themTimestamps: [00:00] Optimizing GPU Usage and Latency[00:21] Learning AI as Leadership[04:34] AI Cost Centers[13:56] Throughput and Infrastructure Efficiency[18:10] Scaling and Unit Economics[24:14] Championing AI ROI[36:11] Queue to Value Engine[41:30] Failed Product Features[46:12] Agentic Engineering Costs[58:49] AI Self-Hosting in Engineering[1:04:40] Wrap up

Rob Ennals is a Staff Software Engineer at Uber, working on large-scale distributed systems and core backend infrastructure.Getting Humans Out of the Way: How to Work with Teams of Agents // MLOps Podcast #368 with Rob Ennals, the Creator of Broomy Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractMost people cripple coding agents by micromanaging them—reviewing every step and becoming the bottleneck.The shift isn't to better supervise agents, but to design systems where they work well on their own: parallelized, self-validating, and guided by strong processes.Done right, you don't lose control—you gain leverage. Like paving roads for cars, the real unlock is reshaping the environment so AI can move fast.// BioRob Ennals is the creator of Broomy, an open-source IDE designed for working effectively with many agents in parallel. He previously worked at Meta, Quora, Google Search, and Intel Research. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.// Related LinksWebsite: https://robennals.org/https://broomy.org/https://learnai.robennals.org/ (not yet announced, but should be by the time of the podcast)~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Rob on LinkedIn: /robennals/Timestamps:[00:00] Agent Optimization Strategies[00:21] Visual Regression Explanation[05:35] Automated QA for Videos[13:05] Verification System Design[19:48] Agent Selection Strategies[30:48] Parallel Agent Management[35:30] Containerization and Cost Estimation[42:48] Shifting to Agent Orchestration[50:10] Wrap up

Kashish Mittal is a Staff Software Engineer at Uber, working on large-scale distributed systems and core backend infrastructure.Fixing GPU Starvation in Large-Scale Distributed Training // MLOps Podcast #367 with Kashish Mittal, Staff Software Engineer at Uber Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// Abstract Kashish zooms out to discuss a universal industry pattern: how infrastructure—specifically data loading—is almost always the hidden constraint for ML scaling.The conversation dives deep into a recent architectural war story. Kashish walks through the full-stack profiling and detective work required to solve a massive GPU starvation bottleneck. By redesigning the Petastorm caching layer to bypass CPU transformation walls and uncovering hidden distributed race conditions, his team boosted GPU utilization to 60%+ and cut training time by 80%. Kashish also shares his philosophy on the fundamental trade-offs between latency and efficiency in GPU serving.// BioKashish Mittal is a Staff Software Engineer at Uber, where he architects the hyperscale machine learning infrastructure that powers Uber's core mobility and delivery marketplaces. Prior to Uber, Kashish spent nearly a decade at Google building highly scalable, low-latency distributed ML systems for flagship products, including YouTube Ads and Core Search Ranking. His engineering expertise lies at the intersection of distributed systems and AI—specifically focusing on large-scale data processing, eliminating critical I/O bottlenecks, and maximizing GPU efficiency for petabyte-scale training pipelines. When he isn't hunting down distributed race conditions, he is a passionate advocate for open-source architecture and building reproducible, high-throughput ML systems.// Related LinksWebsite: https://www.uber.com/Getting Humans Out of the Way: How to Work with Teams of Agents // MLOps Podcast #368 with Rob Ennals, the Creator of Broomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie1M8p-SVfM~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Kashish on LinkedIn: /kashishmittal/Timestamps:[00:00] Local dataset caching[00:30] Engineers Evolving Roles[04:44] GPU Resource Management[10:21] GPU Utilization Issues[21:49] More GPU War Stories[32:12] Model Serving Issues[39:58] Reflective Learning in Coding[43:23] Workflow and Reflective Skills[52:30] Wrap up

Jens Bodal is a Senior Software Engineer II working independently, focusing on backend systems, software architecture, and building scalable solutions across client projects.This One Shift Makes Developers Obsolete // MLOps Podcast #366 with Jens Bodal, Senior Software Engineer II, Independent Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// Abstract AI agents are shifting the role of developers from writing code to defining intent. This conversation explores why specs are becoming more important than implementation, what breaks in real-world systems, and how engineering teams need to rethink workflows in an agent-driven world.// BioJens Bodal is a senior software engineer based in Edmonds, Washington, with nine years of experience building developer tooling, internal platforms, and web infrastructure. He spent seven years as an SDE II at Amazon, working on teams including Amazon Games Studio and the AWS Events Management Platform. His work has focused on developer tooling, CI/CD systems, testing infrastructure, and improving the developer experience for teams operating production services. He is particularly interested in developer experience and the growing ecosystem of local tools that help engineers build and run AI systems on infrastructure they control.// Related LinksWebsite: https://bodal.devhttps://github.com/jensbodalhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp7LYdbOuwE~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Jens on LinkedIn: /jensbodalTimestamps:[00:00] Specification vs Code[00:25] Conference Realizations and Insights[09:01] Agents and Orchestration Insights[10:39] Coding Agents and Talent[18:10] Sub-agent Design Concepts[25:18] Evaling on Vibes[33:23] Walled Garden and Proxies [41:48] Spec-Driven Development Limitations[46:56] Code Ownership vs Authorship[50:49] Engineering Ownership and PMs[53:47] Skill Creation and Iteration[58:40] Wrap up

Databricks Roundtable episode: Operationalizing AI Agents: From Experimentation to Production. Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguideBig shout-out to Databricks for the collaboration!// AbstractThis panel discusses the real-world challenges of deploying AI agents at scale. The conversation explores technical and operational barriers that slow production adoption, including reliability, cost, governance, and security.The panelists also examine how LLMOps, AIOps, and AgentOps differ from traditional MLOps, and why new approaches are required for generative and agent-based systems. Finally, experts define success criteria for GenAI frameworks, with a focus on robust evaluation, observability, and continuous monitoring across development and staging environments.// BioSamraj MoorjaniSamraj is a software engineer working on the Agent Quality team. Previously, Samraj worked at Meta on ads/product classification research and AppLovin on MLOps. Samraj graduated with a BS+MS in Computer Science from UIUC, advised by Professor Hari Sundaram, where he worked on controllable natural language generation to produce appealing, interpretable science to combat the spread of misinformation. He also worked with Professor Wen-mei Hwu on accelerating LLM inference through extreme sparsification.Apurva MisraApurva is an AI Consultant at Sentick, focusing on assisting startups with their AI strategy and building solutions. She leverages her extensive experience in machine learning and a Master's degree from the University of Waterloo, where her research bridged driving and machine learning, to offer valuable insights. Apurva's keen interest in the startup world fuels her passion for helping emerging companies incorporate AI effectively. In her free time, she is learning Spanish, and she also enjoys exploring hidden gem eateries, always eager to hear about new favourite spots!Ben EpsteinBen was the machine learning lead for Splice Machine, leading the development of their MLOps platform and Feature Store. He is now the Co-founder and CTO at GrottoAI, focused on supercharging multifamily teams and reducing vacancy loss with AI-powered guidance for leasing and renewals. Ben also works as an adjunct professor at Washington University in St. Louis, teaching concepts in cloud computing and big data analytics.Hosted by Adam Becker// Related LinksWebsite: https://www.databricks.com/https://mlflow.org/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Samraj on LinkedIn: /samrajmoorjani/Connect with Apurva on LinkedIn: /apurva-misra/Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: /ben-epstein/Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: /adamissimo/Timestamps:[00:00] Introduction[02:30] AI Agents in Operations[04:36] AI Strategy Consulting[05:30] Agent Quality Focus[06:17] AI Agent Expectations[11:44] AI Use Cases Evolution[15:25] Agent Expectations Adjustment[17:41] Agent Quality Monitoring[23:22] Trust in GenAI Systems[33:33] Data Prep vs Product Thinking[40:27] Quality Systems Distinction[44:54] Q & A[1:00:57] Wrap up

Lorenzo Moriondo is a Technical Lead for AI at tuned.org.uk, working on AI agent protocols, graph-based search, and production-grade LLM systems.arrowspace: Vector Spaces and Graph Wiring // MLOps Podcast #365 with Lorenzo Moriondo, AI Research and Product EngineerJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// Abstract Meet arrowspace — an open-source library for curating and understanding LLM datasets across the entire lifecycle, from pre-training to inference.Instead of treating embeddings as static vectors, arrowspace turns them into graphs (“graph wiring”) so you can explore structure, not just similarity. That unlocks smarter RAG search (beyond basic semantic matching), dataset fingerprinting, and deeper insights into how different datasets behave.You can compare datasets, predict how changes will affect performance, detect drift early, and even safely mix data sources while measuring outcomes.In short: arrowspace helps you see your data — and make better decisions because of it.// BioWith over a decade of experience in software and data engineering across startups and early-stage projects, Lorenzo has recently turned his focus to the AI-assisted movement to automate software and data operations. He has contributed to and founded projects within various open-source communities, including work with Summer of Code, where he focused on the Semantic Web and REST APIs.A strong enthusiast of Python and Rust, he develops tools centered around LLMs and agentic systems. He is a maintainer of the SmartCore ML library, as well as the creator of Arrowspace and the Topological Transformer.// Related LinksWebsite: https://www.tuned.org.uk~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Chris on LinkedIn: /lorenzomoriondo

Donné Stevenson is a Machine Learning Engineer at Prosus, working on scalable ML infrastructure and productionizing GenAI systems across portfolio companies.Pedro Chaves is a Data Science Manager at OLX Group, working on GenAI-powered search, personalization, and large-scale marketplace recommendations.Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractMarketplaces are about to get weird.With Pedro Chaves and Donné Stevenson: agents picking your house, negotiating deals, even talking to other agents for you.Less browsing. Less choice. More automation.Convenience… or giving up control?// BioDonné StevensonFocused on building AI-powered products that give companies the tools and expertise needed to harness the power of AI in their respective fields.Pedro ChavesPedro is a Data Science Manager at OLX Group, where he leads teams building machine learning solutions to improve marketplace performance, pricing, and user experience at scale.// Related LinksWebsite: https://www.prosus.com/Website: https://www.olxgroup.com/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]MLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguideTimestamps:[00:00] OLX: Disrupting Buyer-Seller Experiences[03:33] Redefining the Home-Buying Experience[07:40] User Feedback and Iterative Rollouts[11:25] Beyond Chat: Redefining Agent Use[14:03] User Trust and Education Challenges[16:47] Learning Curve for Automoto[20:05] Interactive Decision-Making with AI[24:47] Agents Simplify Buyer-Seller Search[28:14] Garage Sale Treasure Hunting[33:43] Agent Discovery Layer Needed[34:53] Agents Relying on Agents[39:48] Reducing Friction in Selling Stuff[41:39] Extracting Buyer Intent Systematically[44:49] Optimizing Delivery with Lockers[50:10] Generative AI Commerce Strategies[51:03] Improving Chat Interaction Layer

Johann Schleier-Smith is the Technical Lead for AI at Temporal Technologies, working on reliable infrastructure for production AI systems and long-running agent workflows. Durable Execution and Modern Distributed Systems, Johann Schleier-Smith // MLOps Podcast #364Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps Merch: https://shop.mlops.community/Big shoutout to ⁨ @Temporalio  for the support, and to  @trychroma  for hosting us in their recording studio// AbstractA new paradigm is emerging for building applications that process large volumes of data, run for long periods of time, and interact with their environment. It's called Durable Execution and is replacing traditional data pipelines with a more flexible approach. Durable Execution makes regular code reliable and scalable.In the past, reliability and scalability have come from restricted programming models, like SQL or MapReduce, but with Durable Execution, this is no longer the case. We can now see data pipelines that include document processing workflows, deep research with LLMs, and other complex and LLM-driven agentic patterns expressed at scale with regular Python programs.In this session, we describe Durable Execution and explain how it fits in with agents and LLMs to enable a new class of machine learning applications.// Related Linkshttps://t.mp/hello?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=podcast-2026-03-13-mlops&utm_content=mlops-johannhttps://t.mp/vibe?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=podcast-2026-03-13-mlops&utm_content=mlops-johannhttps://t.mp/career?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=podcast-2026-03-13-mlops&utm_content=mlops-johann ~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Johann on LinkedIn: /jssmith/

March 3rd, Computer History Museum CODING AGENTS CONFERENCE, come join us while there are still tickets left.https://luma.com/codingagentsChris Fregly is currently focused on building and scaling high-performance AI systems, writing and teaching about AI infrastructure, helping organizations adopt generative AI and performance engineering principles on AWS, and fostering large developer communities around these topics.Performance Optimization and Software/Hardware Co-design across PyTorch, CUDA, and NVIDIA GPUs // MLOps Podcast #363 with Chris Fregly, Founder, AI Performance Engineer, and InvestorJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractIn today's era of massive generative models, it's important to understand the full scope of AI systems' performance engineering. This talk discusses the new O'Reilly book, AI Systems Performance Engineering, and the accompanying GitHub repo (https://github.com/cfregly/ai-performance-engineering). This talk provides engineers, researchers, and developers with a set of actionable optimization strategies. You'll learn techniques to co-design and co-optimize hardware, software, and algorithms to build resilient, scalable, and cost-effective AI systems for both training and inference. // BioChris Fregly is an AI performance engineer and startup founder with experience at AWS, Databricks, and Netflix. He's the author of three (3) O'Reilly books, including Data Science on AWS (2021), Generative AI on AWS (2023), and AI Systems Performance Engineering (2025). He also runs the global AI Performance Engineering meetup and speaks at many AI-related conferences, including Nvidia GTC, ODSC, Big Data London, and more.// Related LinksAI Systems Performance Engineering: Optimizing Model Training and Inference Workloads with GPUs, CUDA, and PyTorch 1st Edition by Chris Fregly: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Engineering-Optimizing-Algorithms/dp/B0F47689K8/Coding Agents Conference: https://luma.com/codingagents~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Chris on LinkedIn: /cfreglyTimestamps:[00:00] SageMaker HyperPod Resilience[00:27] Book Creation and Software Engineering[04:57] Software Engineers and Maintenance[11:49] AI Systems Performance Engineering[22:03] Cognitive Biases and Optimization / "Mechanical Sympathy"[29:36] GPU Rack-Scale Architecture[33:58] Data Center Reliability Issues[43:52] AI Compute Platforms[49:05] Hardware vs Ecosystem Choice[1:00:05] Claude vs Codex vs Gemini[1:14:53] Kernel Budget Allocation[1:18:49] Steerable Reasoning Challenges[1:24:18] Data Chain Value Awareness

Roundtable CAST AI episode: Serving LLMs in Production: Performance, Cost & Scale. Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractExperimenting with LLMs is easy. Running them reliably and cost-effectively in production is where things break. Most AI teams never make it past demos and proofs of concept. A smaller group is pushing real workloads to production—and running into very real challenges around infrastructure efficiency, runaway cloud costs, and reliability at scale.This session is for engineers and platform teams moving beyond experimentation and building AI systems that actually hold up in production.// BioIoana ApetreiIoana is a Senior Product Manager at CAST AI, leading the AI Enabler product, an AI Gateway platform for cost-effective LLM infrastructure deployment. She brings 12 years of experience building B2C and B2B products reaching over 10 million users. Outside of work, she enjoys assembling puzzles and LEGOs and watching motorsports.Igor ŠušićIgor is a founding Machine Learning Engineer at CAST AI's AI Enabler, where he focuses on optimizing inference and training at scale. With a strong background in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Recommender Systems, Igor has been tackling the challenges of large-scale model optimization long before transformers became mainstream. Prior to CAST AI, he worked at industry leaders like Bloomreach and Infobip, where he contributed to the development and deployment of large-scale AI and personalization systems from the early days of the field.// Related LinksWebsite: https://cast.ai/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Ioana on LinkedIn: /ioanaapetrei/Connect with Igor on LinkedIn: /igor-%C5%A1u%C5%A1i%C4%87/

Rahul Raja is a Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn, working on large-scale search infrastructure, information retrieval systems, and integrating AI/ML to improve ranking and semantic search experiences.The Future of Information Retrieval: From Dense Vectors to Cognitive Search // MLOps Podcast #362 with Rahul Raja, Staff Software Engineer at LinkedInJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterMLOps GPU Guide: https://go.mlops.community/gpuguide// AbstractInformation Retrieval is evolving from keyword matching to intelligent, vector-based understanding. In this talk, Rahul Raja explores how dense retrieval, vector databases, and hybrid search systems are redefining how modern AI retrieves, ranks, and reasons over information. He discusses how retrieval now powers large language models through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and the new MLOps challenges that arise, embedding drift, continuous evaluation, and large-scale vector maintenance.Looking ahead, the session envisions a future of Cognitive Search, where retrieval systems move beyond recall to genuine reasoning, contextual understanding, and multimodal awareness. Listeners will gain insight into how the next generation of retrieval will bridge semantics, scalability, and intelligence, powering everything from search and recommendations to generative AI.// BioRahul is a Staff Engineer at LinkedIn, where he focuses on search and deployment systems at scale. Rahul is a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University and has a strong background in building reliable, high-performance infrastructure. He has led many initiatives to improve search relevance and streamline ML deployment workflows.// Related LinksWebsite: https://www.linkedin.com/Coding Agents Conference: https://luma.com/codingagents~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Rahul on LinkedIn: /rahulraja963/Timestamps:[00:00] Vector Search for Media[00:33] RAG and Search Evolution[04:45] Cognitive vs Semantic Search[08:26] High Value Search Signals[16:43] Scaling with Embeddings[22:37] BM25 Benchmark Bias[29:00] Video Search Use Cases[31:21] Context and Search Tradeoff[35:04] Personal Memory Augmentation[39:03] Future of Cognitive Search[44:51] Access Control in Vectors[49:14] Search Ranking Challenge[54:43] Hard Search Problems Solved[58:29] Freshness vs Cost[1:02:12] Wrap up