Matteo Merli – CTO, StreamNative
[LinkedIn Profile](http://www.linkedin.com/in/matteomerli)
Executive Summary
Matteo Merli serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at StreamNative, a rapidly growing cloud-native, real-time messaging and streaming platform provider. Since joining StreamNative in May 2021, he has played a key leadership role, leveraging his extensive technical background in distributed systems, messaging, and cloud-native architectures. Merli is internationally recognized as a co-creator of Apache Pulsar, the prominent distributed pub-sub messaging system, and currently acts as its PMC Chair (Project Management Committee). His technical leadership and vision are central to StreamNative’s direction in transforming enterprise data streaming and messaging for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments.
Contact & Location
- Name: Matteo Merli
- Role: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
- Company: StreamNative
- Location: Menlo Park, California, United States
- GitHub: [merlimat](https://github.com/merlimat)
- Twitter/X: [@merlimat](https://twitter.com/merlimat)
Professional Background
StreamNative
- Role: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
- Tenure: May 2021 – present
- Key Responsibilities:
- Leads technology strategy, product development, and innovation at StreamNative.
- Instrumental in shaping the company’s vision to deliver next-generation solutions in real-time messaging and data streaming.
- Drives cloud-native, SaaS, and professional service offerings, including StreamNative Cloud and the soon-to-be-released StreamNative Platform.
- Leads and mentors technical teams, including multiple former Apache Pulsar committers and prominent contributors.
- Oversees enterprise solutions for clients seeking unified messaging and streaming capabilities, supporting both multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployment strategies.
Apache Pulsar & Open Source Leadership
- Role: Project PMC Chair, Apache Pulsar; Former VP, Apache Pulsar, Apache Software Foundation (since June 2015)
- Key Achievements:
- Co-created Apache Pulsar at Yahoo!, establishing a platform now utilized by leading enterprises for mission-critical workloads.
- Guides the community and technical roadmap, supporting rapid adoption and evolving features such as tiered storage, functions, connectors, and transactions.
- Maintains a robust engagement with the global open source community, organizing and leading technical summits and initiatives that have seen Pulsar’s contributor community grow beyond 400 members.
Previous Experience
- Streamlio:
- Role: Co-Founder
- Led technology efforts until acquisition by Splunk.
- Splunk:
- Role: Senior Principal Software Engineer
- Integrated expertise in distributed systems and data infrastructure.
- Technical Skills:
- Expert in distributed messaging platforms (Pulsar, BookKeeper), C++, GNU Toolchain, Python, networking protocols, and scalable system architecture.
- Proven capacity for learning and implementing new technologies at scale.
Technical Contributions
- Apache Pulsar:
- Co-creator and architect; steered it from initial development at Yahoo! to a globally adopted, enterprise-grade messaging and streaming system.
- Actively contributes code and shapes technical direction (Pulsar repository: 14.7k stars, 3.6k forks on GitHub).
- Apache BookKeeper:
- Significant contributions to development and community; low latency storage system for distributed environments (2k stars, 960 forks).
- Oxia:
- Developed Oxia, a coordination and metadata store for distributed systems (258 stars on GitHub).
- Other Projects:
- Led/mentored the development of C++ and Go client libraries for Apache Pulsar; contributes to emerging codebases.
Thought Leadership & Community Engagement
- Conferences & Events:
- Organizes and presents at international summits including Pulsar Summit North America, Europe, and Asia.
- Hosts and participates in technical podcasts and webinars focused on real-time data architectures, such as ‘Unapologetically Technical’.
- Drives community outreach through regular events (5-10 monthly Pulsar events) and strategic open source sponsorships.
- Key Industry Statements:
- Advocates for unified messaging and streaming solutions as foundational to modern enterprise operations: “The line between messaging and streaming use cases is blurring and Pulsar is uniquely positioned to serve both use cases.”
- Global Adoption Insights:
- Under his leadership, Pulsar has achieved global enterprise adoption, including daily processing of over 1 trillion messages by clients such as Tencent, Splunk, Kingsoft Cloud, and others.
Company Overview: StreamNative
- Sector: Cloud, Data Streaming
- Founded: By former Apache Pulsar and BookKeeper PMC members
- Headquarters: San Francisco, United States
- Size: 51-200 employees
- Core Offerings:
- StreamNative Cloud (fully managed SaaS for Pulsar)
- StreamNative Platform (self-managed software, forthcoming)
- Professional Services and Training
- Market Position:
- Recognized for deep Pulsar expertise, including facilitation of some of the largest and most diverse deployments in production environments worldwide.
- Active in global markets, supporting enterprises with complex, mission-critical real-time data needs.
Professional Network & Team
- Direct Reports/Team:
- Leads a technical organization that includes staff engineers, platform engineers, developer advocates, directors of platform and streaming, as well as customer-facing reliability engineers.
- Active Collaboration:
- Maintains relationships and collaborations across open source and commercial partners in distributed systems, data infrastructure, and cloud domains.
Notable Achievements & Recognition
- GitHub Community:
- 233 followers, highlights strong peer recognition and active technical community interaction.
- Media & Recognition:
- Regularly featured in technical media, industry podcasts, and webinars as an expert in streaming architecture, open source leadership, and large-scale distributed systems.
Actionable Insights: Matteo Merli is a highly influential, deeply technical decision-maker within the event streaming ecosystem, holding core technical and strategic authority within StreamNative. His longstanding leadership in the Apache Pulsar community and track record in leading product innovation position him as a key contact for initiatives involving scalable messaging infrastructure, cloud-native transformation, or open source strategic engagement.
