Alexander Stojanovic

I am thrilled to be working with a talented cadre of professionals on a range of GenAI-based security products. I lead MSECAI’s NEXT AI Lab, delivering new products like Security Copilot, RL-tuned Security AI Models, AI Foundry Observability Platform, Security Copilot Autotuning for AI Agents, Microsoft Sentinel Platform MCP Services with AI Search and many others under active development within the Microsoft Security business unit. The organization consists of over 50 top notch AI researchers, engineers, and security experts. We are actively hiring talented individuals looking to help bring GenAI into the core of our security products portfolio.

I am the founder and managing director of a boutique AI advisory firm. My client portfolio has included noted consultancies (Bain, McKinsey, BCG) and AI-centric startups on whose advisory boards I have served: Anaconda, Informed.IQ, Decklar (formerly Roambee), DigniFi, IntentHQ, DataRPM (sold to Progress Software), MAANA (sold to Spark Cognition), Together Science, Wave Computing, Kosmos.ai, Ubix.ai (sold to PE firm and now operating as ubixlabs.com), and Oxide.ai. I maintain equity positions in several of them and acted as a C-suite and board advisor. This advisory has been active for over a decade (2013+).

I drove all platform machine learning, artificial intelligence, and applied research teams at Splunk. I led engineering, architecture, and strategic roadmap definition for our new machine learning and Generative AI as a Service platform (Project Sparta), managing a team of over 50 talented professionals. I conceived and founded the new Generative AI/LLM-based Splunk AI Assistant (NLQ to SPL and Contextual Semantic Recommendations), KPI Optimization and Monitoring Assistant for Observability (ITSI), and Log Anomaly AI Assistant products for Splunk’s flagship cloud and enterprise offerings. Overall, my teams have delivered market-leading services for security, IT, and APM for the Splunk Cloud, AI Assistants, and ML Toolkit (MLTK). These products drive the core AI/ML features of Splunk’s largest businesses: Enterprise ($2.6B+/yr) and Enterprise Security ($650M+/yr). I also managed strategic incubations within the Office of the CTO, driving the IOT-centric Edge Hub and Augmented Reality products powered by Edge AI capabilities. I held the rank of Senior Director and Distinguished Engineer. Splunk was acquired by Cisco in late 2023.

I led all seller-focused machine learning and applied research services and teams, including co-founding machine learning as a platform (Akira/Krylov). This spanned 250+ people globally. These services covered AI/ML-driven pricing recommendation, fraud detection, knowledge federation (on buyers, sellers, products), delivery logistics, programmatic advertising, and computational product catalog creation and item serving in eBay’s $100B/yr marketplace.

I conceived and led incubation of a new AIOps SaaS suite (Naoshima) to provide AI-driven cloud services for Cisco’s data center equipment (UCS) management: cloud-based telemetry analytics, declarative auto-tuning of data center clusters, and conversational AI agents for configuration and deployment. Naoshima offered AI as a Service powered by deep reinforcement learning, mathematical programming, and combinatorial optimization. Aspects of Naoshima were incorporated into Cisco's Hybrid Cloud Management portfolio.

I performed the role of VP of Engineering for the Oracle Public Cloud and Fusion Middleware Division, conceiving and delivering the first natively built, self-service AI/ML- and NLP-driven cloud services for data and application integration. These included Big Data Preparation, DataflowML (Preview), and Data Catalog Cloud Services. These AI/ML-driven SaaS products drove the core of Oracle’s $1.5B ARR business unit transformation into a SaaS business model.

I was co-founder, board member, and acting chief scientist for Maana, a leading AI and knowledge graph vendor. I helped define the core architecture and business plan along with securing seed and Series A funding with Intel Ventures, GE Ventures, and others. I helped source and recruit the CEO and CTO roles for the company. I maintained an equity position in Maana until its acquisition by SparkCognition in 2021.

I acted as an advisor to the company’s CEO, SLT, and Board for over 3.5 years (2020-2023). I acted as interim CTO for Anaconda for approximately a year, helping to build the next generation marketplace business model (Nucleus), overall Generative AI strategy, and helping in successful Series B funding. I did this in parallel to my Splunk and Adaptive Insight roles.

I conceived, incubated, and built several major product lines and cloud services for Microsoft from scratch during my 17+ year tenure, serving eventually as GM of Strategic Incubations. These products included: Azure HDInsight, SQL Server 2012 Semantic Engine, Biztalk Business Rules Engine, Microsoft Solver Foundation, and Remote Data Services for Internet Explorer. Several of these products have produced billions of dollars in lifetime revenue for Microsoft while driving pivots to company-wide roadmaps and go to market strategies. All of these products have become the market leaders in their respective segments and enabled Microsoft to compete in new and adjacent market segments.