Condorcet Internet Voting Service

Operator Framework Chair Election 2025

Welcome to the official voting page for the Operator Framework CNCF Chair Election. In this election, we will select seven (7) individuals to serve as project chairs who will help guide and represent the Operator Framework community.

The election uses the Condorcet voting method, where voters rank candidates by preference. The winners will be those who would win against every other candidate in head-to-head comparisons.

Voting Period:

• Opens: Monday, July 21, 2025
• Closes: Friday, August 8, 2025 at 11:59:59 PM GMT

Voting Eligibility: You must have been a member of the Operator Framework Google Group as of Friday, June 20, 2025 to participate in this election.

How to Vote:

• Rank candidates from most preferred (1) to least preferred.
• You may assign the same rank to multiple candidates or leave any unranked.
• The top 7 candidates will be elected as chairs.

Meet the Candidates:

• Attila Mészáros
  I'm the maintainer of the Java Operator SDK, JOSDK Spring Boot starter, and JOSDK Webhooks framework (for dynamic admission controllers and conversion hooks in Java).
  
  I'm also part of Apple, where I contribute to the development of Apache Spark and Apache Flink operators, as well as internal platforms.
• Camila Macedo
  I’m a maintainer of OLM, Operator-SDK, and Kubebuilder, with 20+ years in software development. I’ve been contributing to the Kubernetes community and Operator Framework since 2019. Also, I have served as a Kubebuilder admin since 2021. OpenUK recognised me as one of the UK’s Top 100 Influencers in Open Source (2024 Honours List), and I am a Fellow Member of the British Computer Society. I’m passionate about open source, collaboration, and delivering value to developers.
• Christophe LAPRUN
  Christophe LAPRUN has been co-leading the Java Operator SDK project along with its Quarkus extension. He has experience working with the Golang SDK as well.
• Joe Lanford
  I've been a maintainer and contributor to just about all of the projects in the Operator Framework for almost 6 years.
  
  I joined the Operator SDK team as the team lead in 2018. In that role, I helped the project join forces with Kubebuilder to align both communities, I authored the Helm operator (and much of the library code in the revamped Helm Operator Plugins project), and I led the SDK v1.0 release milestone. I also developed and currently maintain the kubectl operator plugin.
  
  After that, I spent a year with the Operator Lifecycle Manager team building out the design and implementation of what is now known as file-based catalogs, which is a major improvement for users involved in building and maintaining catalogs of operators.
  
  Now, I'm a Staff Engineer in Red Hat's OpenShift organization serving as the technical lead for all things Operator Framework.
  
  Most recently, I've been leading the design and architecture for OLMv1, while also serving as one of the existing Operator Framework Steering Committee members.
  
  In addition to my roles within the Operator Framework, I am a maintainer of the kubernetes-sigs/controller-runtime project and a reviewer for kubebuilder. I also maintain go-apidiff, which is used by a variety of projects in the Kubernetes ecosystem (and possibly elsewhere) to help Go library authors detect breaking changes in their Go APIs.
  
  If elected, I would encourage our maintainers to have an upstream-first mindset, especially when it comes to communication and openness related to plans, designs, and progress of new features.
  
  Technically, my focus is on simplicity, usability, and predictability. If we make Operator Framework projects easier to install, run, and interact with, we'll be able to grow our community of users and contributors another order of magnitude.
  
  Let's make Operator Framework a name everyone in the Kubernetes community knows!
• Jordan Keister
  Jordan is an Open Source enthusiast, a maintainer for the Operator Framework since 2022, and has contributed to OSS projects for over ten years. He is a Principal Software Engineer with Red Hat, where he focuses on package management on Kubernetes.
• Kevin Rizza
  I'm a long time contributor to the Operator Framework and one of the original contributors to some of the Operator Framework's projects (OLM v0, operator registry, incepted some of the APIs, etc). Though I have stepped back from contributing full time at Red Hat, I have continued to follow along with the project's work and changes since then. I am nominating myself as a chair of the Operator Framework because I think my knowledge and history to the project over my years of involvement will be beneficial to help steer the organization successfully.
• Per Goncalves da Silva
  I've been working with OLM since 2021 and with OLMv1 since inception.
• Tayler Geiger
  In my current role at Red Hat I have been making direct contributions to the operator-controller, including work on the RBAC preflight check, the CRD upgrade safety preflight check, and adding SSH to the catalogd web server. On my previous team I gained valuable insight into the challenges of developing operators by working with Red Hat partners. Outside of my programming experience, I also have skills which I think will lend themselves well to the role of Operator Framework chair. I have an extensive history with writing and editing from my undergraduate degree in English Lit and Philosophy, as well as direct experience with organizing a leadership committee from my involvement in the leadership of different community organizations in my local area.