I’m Nilay Shah, an engineering leader working on Azure Storage Control Plane—the foundational platform behind the lifecycle of Azure Storage accounts, managed disks, and Elastic SAN. My focus includes massive-scale distributed systems, AI-native engineering, developer and agent experience, and improving engineering efficiency.

My work focuses on:

  • Massive-scale distributed cloud platforms
  • AI-native engineering and agentic systems
  • Developer and agent experience
  • Engineering efficiency and platform modernization
  • Reliability, responsible automation, and human judgment
  • Leadership across distributed engineering teams

I am especially interested in turning promising ideas into trusted production systems—and improving how teams build, operate, and learn along the way.

The AI-Native Engineer

I publish The AI-Native Engineer, where I share field notes, case studies, and lessons on how AI is changing the way engineers build, operate, and lead.

The goal is to move beyond demos and hype and focus on what works, what does not, and what teams learn while moving AI from proof of concept to production.

Read the publication →

Elsewhere

Views are my own.