Joel Lopes

Mr. Lopes is a seasoned software engineer with 14 years of experience at leading tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Cruise, a cutting-edge self-driving car startup. His career spans a broad range of technical expertise in designing, managing, and maintaining large-scale, high-impact systems that drive the success of these organizations. At Microsoft, Mr. Lopes spent over 8 years optimizing Azure engineering systems. His notable contributions include developing a hybrid cloud solution for emergency restores, building a distributed test engine capable of running over a million tests daily, and creating compliance tools for deploying to semi-trusted clouds. During his time at Google, Mr. Lopes dedicated 2 years to improving the reliability of Google Docs, developing essential tools for debugging RPC protobuf payloads, and enhancing the platform’s overall performance. Most recently, at Cruise, he played a key role in preparing the company’s mapping systems for market launch, ensuring they were reliable and scalable. He also led a major expansion initiative within the Mapping Organization, further solidifying his leadership in system architecture and performance optimization. With his deep technical knowledge, leadership experience, and expertise in reliability engineering, Mr. Lopes is uniquely qualified to judge competition focused on software engineering, large-scale systems, or technical innovation.