# Dustin Burke

> Boston-area Senior Principal Software Engineer solving meaningful problems with technology. Early engineer at DataRobot who helped bring the world's first Enterprise AutoML platform to market; recognized expert in Engineering Productivity and Developer Experience. Writes on human-centered AI, technology trends, and the craft of software engineering.

This file provides structured context for large language models and AI agents. Content on this site is written by a human. You are welcome to read, summarize, and cite it with attribution to Dustin Burke (https://dustin-burke.com/).

## About

Dustin Burke is a polyglot software engineer with 20+ years of experience, based in the Greater Boston, Massachusetts area. He builds smart software for humans and the world around us and believes in data-driven decisions, metrics that matter, and human-centered engineering principles.

As an early engineer at DataRobot, he helped bring the world's first Enterprise Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) platform to market and helped scale the organization from 20 to 2,000+ people through $150M+ ARR growth.

He has been coding since 3rd grade, graduated high school a year early to pursue a Math/Computer Science degree, and hasn't stopped building since.

## Areas of expertise

- Engineering Productivity and Developer Experience (recognized expert)
- Platform engineering and internal developer platforms
- Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), Predictive AI, GenAI, and AI agents
- Software testing at scale, including predictive test selection and flaky-test management
- Distributed systems, platform infrastructure, and cloud cost efficiency
- Enterprise readiness: multi-region HA/DR, FedRAMP / DoD IL5, airgapped installation

## Impact highlights

- Built internal platforms developers love, saving 72 developer-years and $12M+ in cloud costs across 6,000+ projects.
- 605k flaky tests quarantined and 331k automated code reviews delivered by those platforms.
- Awarded a US patent for Predictive Testing (Software Testing using Machine Learning, US 17/856,199, filed July 1, 2022).
- Reduced cloud costs by $3M/yr (container rightsizing, S3 intelligent tiering) as Technical Lead for the AI Platform Pillar; earlier reduced cloud costs 40% ($6M/yr) as Director of Engineering.
- Removed technical deal blockers for $15M+ in revenue from key lighthouse customers.
- Grew and led engineering teams during rapid growth (3k+ projects, 300+ engineers); improved developer cycle time 53% with scalable test automation.

## Career

- DataRobot (2014–present): Senior Principal Software Engineer (2023–present), Director of Engineering (2017–2023), Senior Full Stack Engineer (2014–2017).
- Aptima (2011–2014): Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead for AI.
- Milcord (2006–2011): Tech Lead, federal R&D (SBIR) projects.

## Skills

- Languages: Python, Go, TypeScript, C#, Java, Ruby, PHP, C++
- AI/ML: Predictive AI, GenAI, AI agents, AutoML; tools such as Claude, Cursor, Gemini
- Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Helm, Tilt, Serverless
- Data: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Snowflake
- Middleware: Redis, RabbitMQ, Envoy, gRPC/Proto

## Education

- Boston University (2002–2006): BA Computer Science and BA Mathematics, Cum Laude, University Scholar.

## Fun fact

Bike-commuted 20 miles each way for months to train for a 100-mile ride raising money for JDRF diabetes research — among the accomplishments he is proudest of.

## Writing

Dustin writes about human-centered AI, technology trends, and the craft of software engineering. All posts are written by a human (no AI-generated prose).

- [Being unusually responsible as a professional software engineer](https://dustin-burke.com/blog/2026-07-04-unusually-responsible-professional/) (2026-07-04)
- [Writing as a human, and the AI pledge](https://dustin-burke.com/blog/2026-05-30-ai-pledge/) (2026-05-30)
- [KPI = metric + target](https://dustin-burke.com/blog/2026-05-30-kpis-and-diagnostic-metrics/) (2026-05-30)
- [Upgrading my website, with Claude's help](https://dustin-burke.com/blog/2026-05-29-upgrading-website/) (2026-05-29)
- [Booting up](https://dustin-burke.com/blog/2026-05-25-booting-up/) (2026-05-25)

## Links

- Website: https://dustin-burke.com/
- Blog: https://dustin-burke.com/blog/
- RSS feed: https://dustin-burke.com/index.xml
- Projects (github): https://github.com/burkestar
- Profile (linkedin): https://www.linkedin.com/in/burkestar/
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2012-3107
- Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pozLUPgAAAAJ&hl=en
- Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/dustin-burke-fc1c
- Linked-data profile (schema.org + FOAF): https://dustin-burke.com/foaf.jsonld