Ryan Michael is Kaskada community and strategy leader at DataStax. Kaskada is an open source project focused on a novel event processing engine that uses stream-native query abstractions to simplify time-based reasoning. As Kaskada's vice president of engineering and technology co-creator, Ryan was instrumental in the company's evolution from a SaaS startup to an open source project, following its acquisition by DataStax in 2023. Before Kaskada, Ryan served as a principal engineer at ReturnPath, leading the development of various systems such as distributed data acquisition services, streaming data infrastructure and production data science platforms. Before his tech career, he dedicated over a decade to architectural project management, earning features in prestigious publications like Dwell and The New York Times.