About Me

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft | Azure Reliability | International Speaker

I’m Chris Ayers - a father, nerd, gamer, and international speaker. I work in Azure focusing on reliability, helping ensure cloud services are resilient and dependable at scale.

I’m passionate about technology and love giving back to the community. Whether it’s speaking at conferences around the world, writing blog posts, or contributing to open-source projects, I enjoy helping others learn and grow.

Connect With Me
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What I Do
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At Microsoft, I work on Azure reliability - tackling the challenges of building and operating distributed systems that serve millions of users. My day-to-day involves cloud architecture, resiliency patterns, and helping teams build services that stay up when things go wrong.

Cloud Architecture
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Azure, Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and Bicep, and cloud-native design patterns.

Reliability
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Resiliency patterns, chaos engineering, Well-Architected Framework, and building distributed systems that are resilient and dependable at scale.

DevOps and CI/CD
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GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, platform engineering, and automation practices.

Security
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Shifting security left with DevSecOps, MITRE ATT&CK, container security, and secure infrastructure deployment.

Software Development
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Building modern distributed applications with .NET, Aspire, Kubernetes, containers, and microservices architectures.

AI and Intelligent Apps
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Azure OpenAI, GitHub Copilot, prompt engineering, MCP, and building AI-powered applications with .NET Aspire.

Speaking
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I regularly speak at conferences and meetups around the world, including NDC, Techorama, DevSum, KCDC, Stir Trek, and many more. My talks cover topics from Azure resiliency and Kubernetes to .NET Aspire, DevSecOps, and career development.

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Community
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I’m an organizer of DevOps Days Tampa Bay and enjoy contributing to the tech community through mentoring, open-source contributions, and knowledge sharing.