Roberto Jacob da Silva

About Roberto Jacob da Silva

Principal Engineer, inventor, and storyteller — voice behind Engineering with a Heart and author of Impossible Crossing, a memoir about resilience and the human journey behind technology.My work focuses on distributed systems architecture, observability platforms, and reliability engineering for large-scale cloud infrastructure and VM orchestration environments.For more than two decades, I have designed and built large-scale distributed systems across networking, virtualization, and cloud infrastructure. My work spans Ethernet switching, hybrid cloud platforms, distributed observability systems, and diagnostics frameworks used to understand and stabilize complex production environments.At Microsoft, I lead the design of observability and diagnostics infrastructure for a distributed VM orchestration platform used by large-scale CI/CD systems. This work combines distributed tracing, telemetry systems, and automated diagnostics to help engineers understand system behavior, detect failures, and resolve incidents faster across thousands of distributed components. This includes designing diagnostics platforms, OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing pipelines, and telemetry systems capable of analyzing complex CI/CD infrastructure at scale.My technical focus includes:• Distributed Systems Architecture • Observability & Diagnostics Platforms • Virtualization & VM Orchestration • Distributed Tracing (OpenTelemetry) • Scalable Infrastructure & Reliability Engineering I have been granted 29 U.S. patents across networking, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure, and was recognized as a Lenovo Master Inventor.Beyond engineering, I write about the human side of technology. I am the author of Impossible Crossing and the creator of Engineering with a Heart — a project exploring the intersection of engineering, society, and the human journey behind innovation.Website: https://rjsilva.orgI believe great systems — and great engineering — begin with empathy.

Experience

1. Principal Software Engineer

   Microsoft

   Jan 2022 — Present · Redmond, WA, US

   Lead architect and primary developer of observability and diagnostics infrastructure for a distributed VM orchestration system used in large-scale CI/CD platforms.Designed and implemented end-to-end distributed tracing across multiple services using OpenTelemetry, capturing gRPC communication, asynchronous coroutine execution, and scheduler operations — reducing incident investigation time from hours to minutes.Built a custom distributed trace analysis platform including ingestion pipelines, a high-performance trace database, and developer tools for timeline visualization and diagnostics-driven debugging of complex distributed workflows.Developed automated diagnostics capable of analyzing millions of telemetry events per run to detect failures, instrumentation gaps, and performance regressions in CI workloads.Strengthened platform reliability by diagnosing systemic issues across distributed infrastructure and implementing Linux cgroups-based resource isolation, reducing pipeline failure rates from ~20% to <5% and eliminating VM-related OOM incidents.This work combines distributed systems architecture, telemetry pipelines, virtualization infrastructure, and large-scale diagnostics to improve reliability, transparency, and operational understanding of complex cloud systems.Technologies and focus areas: Distributed Systems, Observability, VM Orchestration, Diagnostics Systems, Reliability Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, OpenTelemetry.

Education

• ETFPE

  Technician, Telecommunications Technician

• Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica - ITA

  Bachelor's of Sciences, Electronics Engineering

Skills

• Embedded Linux
• Data Center
• Snmp
• Ethernet
• Gnu Debugger
• Layer 3/Routing
• Firmware
• Shell Scripting
• Clearcase/Perforce
• Linux Kernel
• Remote Access
• Dhcp Relay
• Ethernet Switches
• Routing
• Embedded Software
• Asic
• Gcc
• Virtual-Chassis Technology
• Linux/Vxworks Rtos
• Internet Protocol Suite (Tcp/Ip)
• Patents
• Debugging
• System Architecture
• Testing
• Ethernet Oam
• Vxworks
• Routing Protocols
• Rtos
• Virtualization
• Software Design
• Switches
• Metro Ethernet
• Embedded Systems
• Device Drivers
• Tcp/Ip
• Internet Protocol (Ip)
• Distributed Systems
• Ppp/L2tp/Radius Client
• Hardware
• Ip