Akiva Chesley Coughlin

About Akiva Chesley Coughlin

I lead large-scale, cross-organizational transformations across hyperscale AI and cloud infrastructure—architecting the strategy, governance models, and leadership frameworks that scale the world’s most advanced AI/Cloud fleets.My leadership spans both technical platforms and organizational systems, aligning 10+ engineering organizations and executive stakeholders to deliver durable, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure outcomes at global scale.Core leadership includes:* Hyperscale Optimization: Governing millions of TPU/GPUs, 100s of millions of CPUs, and Exabytes of storage to maximize availability and capital efficiency.* Fleet Governance: Replacing disjointed allocation with agentic, risk-based multi-resource models that automate health and planning at scale.* Cross-Functional Orchestration: Driving strategic alignment across highly matrixed environments to solve high-ambiguity problems where no single team owns the solution.* Institutional Capability: Designing and leading organizational leadership programs that scale technical craftsmanship and operational rigor across thousands of engineers.I am known for driving high-ambiguity, cross-organizational transformations at the intersection of systems, scale, efficiency, and ML infrastructure—especially in environments where no single team “owns the problem,” yet the business depends on a solution.Recent Wins:* ML Fleet Transformation: Led the shift toward Agentic infrastructure via the ML Aux Risk Model; improved availability from 85% → 96% and enabled the divestment of 7M GCU.* Strategic Platform Adoption: Championed and landed Virtual Cell (VC) adoption across 30% of the dynamic training fleet in 2025; aligned global technical teams on foundational architecture (SAME_CAMPUS scheduling) to enable 100% dynamic adoption by 2026.* Capital Efficiency: Architected GCU/RAM overcommit programs delivering hundreds of millions in annualized savings.* Organizational Engineering: Designed and led a leadership development program for 700+ engineers and TPMs, directly increasing organizational velocity and promoting dozens of mentees into Senior/Staff roles.I thrive at the frontier where distributed systems, AI infrastructure, and organizational strategy converge—building technical and human systems that deliver durable value at global scale.

Experience

1. Senior Software Engineering Manager - Gcp Efficiency Sre

   Google

   Sep 2021 — Present

   Senior technical lead manager and founding team member for the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Efficiency SRE team. The team\'s mission is to drive long-term cost efficiencies across Cloud to their theoretical maximum at the desired reliability level. KEY RESULTS * Facilitated creation and review of PaaS GCP product teams\' efficiency roadmaps, 2022 in-year savings of $179.8M, and funding of 17 incremental heads.* Defined and executed on centralized GCP efficiency operational plans for 2022/2023 and 3-year north star strategy resulting in 2022 annualized savings of $23M and on track to exceed 2023 annualized savings targets of $63.4M.* Drove SRE Best Practices across Cloud SRE: Borg Efficiency Summit speaker, piloted expanding SRE Productional Excellence reviews to non-SRE teams, created engagement models and launch plans for Looker and Data Studio.* Created the SRE Impact and Promotion Training program for level 3 to 5 engineers to empower employee career development. Over 200 engineers have attended the training with favorable ratings of 4.8 out of 5. The exit survey data shows dramatic improvement on the targeted annual, Googlegeist survey question on promo; moving from 45% positive to over 95% positive.

Education

• UC San Diego

  Certificate, Leadership and Management Program (LAMP)

• University of San Diego

  BA, Computer Science