# Joe Duffy

> Joe Duffy is the Seattle-based co-founder and CEO of Pulumi, founded with Eric Rudder in 2017 to make cloud infrastructure programmable using familiar languages. Previously a Microsoft engineering leader, he helped take .NET open source and cross-platform, led developer-experience work on the Midori research project, and wrote Concurrent Programming on Windows. His public writing connects language design, engineering culture, and cloud automation; his recent work focuses on AI agents operating infrastructure with governance.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Pulumi
- **Organizations:** Pulumi, Microsoft, EMC
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Pulumi., Helped initiate and execute the open-source and cross-platform transformation of .NET at Microsoft., Led developer-experience work on Midori, spanning languages, compilers, frameworks, concurrency models, and tools.

## Career timeline

- **High school** — Started a consulting business helping companies build websites and enter e-commerce.
- **Before Microsoft** — Worked at EMC.
- **Microsoft, before Pulumi** — Worked on .NET and developer tools; became Director of Engineering and Technical Strategy for developer tools, with responsibilities across C#, C++, Visual Basic, and F#.
- **2008** — Concurrent Programming on Windows published by Addison-Wesley Professional on October 28.
- **2009-2014** — Led Midori developer-experience groups from 2009 until teams transitioned to new homes during 2012-2014.
- **2015** — Began publishing retrospective essays about Midori.
- **2017** — Co-founded Pulumi with Eric Rudder; publicly described the company in June.
- **2018** — Pulumi publicly launched its open-source platform in June.
- **2019** — Pulumi 1.0 launched in September.
- **2023** — Pulumi raised a $41 million Series C, bringing reported total funding to $99 million.
- **2025** — Pulumi introduced the Neo AI platform-engineering agent on September 16.
- **2026** — Published The Agentic Infrastructure Era in May and announced the Neo Security research preview in August.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Pulumi.
- Helped initiate and execute the open-source and cross-platform transformation of .NET at Microsoft.
- Led developer-experience work on Midori, spanning languages, compilers, frameworks, concurrency models, and tools.
- Authored Concurrent Programming on Windows, published in 2008.

## Latest updates

- **2026-08** — Announced a research preview of Pulumi Neo Security, applying agents to threat modeling and attack-path analysis across cloud infrastructure.
- **2026-07** — Published How to Run AI Agents on Kubernetes with Pulumi.
- **2026-05** — Published The Agentic Infrastructure Era, outlining agent-oriented tooling, integrations, governance, and InfraBench.
- **2025-09** — Pulumi launched Neo; the company reported more than 3,700 customers at launch.

## Links

- Website: https://joeduffyblog.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joejduffy/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/funcOfJoe
- GitHub: https://github.com/joeduffy

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/joe-duffy
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-20