# Mark Porter ![Mark Porter](/resources/cognition/portraits/mark-porter.webp) Field CTO at Cognition (Devin); ex-CTO of dbt Labs and MongoDB, ex-GM Amazon RDS/Aurora Cognition United States ## At Cognition - Role: Field CTO (Sales/GTM) - Joined: Aug 2026 - How they joined: Directly - Before Cognition: Boards, advising, and lots of coding, MarkLovesTech - Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Amazon; MongoDB (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together) ## Identity - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech - X: @MarkLovesTech - GitHub: https://github.com/markporter - Website: https://marklovestech.com - Domain: cognition.ai ## Notes - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "An amazing partnership between Wells Fargo and Cognition. Let's build!" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_wells-fargo-technology-engineers-spent-four-activity-7521777015658823680-EzLW?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "At Cognition, we're doubling (tripling?) down on security. Defenders absolutely can beat the attackers, but it's going to take all of us working together - and putting our money where our mouth is. Today, we are announcing that we're committing hundreds of millions of dollars in Devin credits to help enterprises weather this crazy storm the world is going through." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_introducing-devin-security-activity-7520519910565801984-QOp6?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "UpLeft continues to the the place to be (highest performance, lowest cost). And that's where Devin is. While we love all our model providers a lot, they are even better when we mix them together. Cognition and Devin continue to float above the froth of model evolution. By combining just the right amount of high-judgement reasoning model use with the right amount of task execution with simpler" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_wow-devin-fusion-just-got-the-top-score-activity-7518116144126291968-IEsr?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "MongoDB and Cognition - better together for customers. Code migration is hard. Data migration between data systems is just as hard. What stifles org modernization is having to untangle and execute on both things at the same time. Working together, Cognition and MongoDB make it possible for you to bring the backstop of your tech and platform debt forward. By hiring Devin for the coding work and AM" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_devin-for-mongodb-modernizations-is-here-activity-7510953558633205760-Dnh1?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "Cognition has crossed $1B in ARR, WOW! But... ARR is an output metric, a measure of other things. It's not a thing on it's own that you can work to attain. The input metrics ar" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_cognition-has-crossed-1b-in-annualized-revenue-activity-7509321108710674432-LyVf?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "Now with our addition of Microsoft Teams and 365 support (today!), even more engineering and product teams can use Devin to help them get more done, faster and more predictably. Devin is your teammate from the beginning of the day to the end, and keeps working overnight to delight you in the morning. Hire Devin-get more done. Check it out." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_devin-now-works-across-microsoft-teams-and-activity-7508594534713589760-u4dF?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "We are building a world-class marketing team - for all the amazing marketing peeps in my network, reach out to me or Brandon and get on the Cognition 🚀!" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_ive-joined-cognition-to-lead-marketing-activity-7508093656638189568-Bcyh?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "AWS and Cognition are both completely focused on the developer experience. Let's go delight customers together..." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_cognition-and-amazon-web-services-aws-team-activity-7505653893419429889-bj-6?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: ""UpLeft" is the place to be. Congrats to the Cognition research and engineering teams for making magic happen." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_introducing-swe-2-our-closest-model-yet-activity-7503895412920012801-bWdn?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - Posted on LinkedIn about Cognition: "At the core of it, what's thi$ about? Sure, it's about big $. But it's really about big value. It's simple. Cognition has built Devin. Devin is the AI software engineer that hundreds of companies are hiring. Devin is thoughtful, humble, retrospective, always has a growth mindset, and fits into your team like a senior new hire. Devin learns your systems, self-improves, runs their own computers us" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marklovestech_cognition-has-raised-over-2b-at-a-48b-valuation-activity-7503141708726194176-V4NB?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHCaZfEB_lCxIMoVqo6xCELZv5Owiyv90hE) - He joined Cognition in Aug 2026, about 13 months after Cognition signed its agreement to acquire Windsurf (announced 2025-07-14). (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - The Jan-Sep 2026 'Boards, advising, and lots of coding' gap year (he says he was 'writing more code than I have for 25 years') lines up with new 2026 GitHub repos such as opencode_tutorial and rolecall. (https://github.com/markporter) - As CTO of dbt Labs, Mark Porter will lead the engineering organization including the development, research and infrastructure teams, and drive the company's future technical direction. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - GitHub account markporter hosts Myna JS, described as 'a JavaScript web application server implemented in Java', plus Myna Watchdog (process monitor); in 2026 he pushed new repos including opencode_tutorial, open_scad_tutorial, ha_temp_sensor and rolecall (TypeScript, last pushed 2026-10-31). (https://github.com/markporter) - Mark Porter is described as a data industry veteran with more than three decades of experience and in-depth knowledge of open source. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - I have dedicated my career to the product development, strategic direction, and oversight of companies that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I have led tech teams and worked with customers and organizations across the database, cloud, education, mobility, analytics, and AI domains. I have focused on driving innovation, growth, and customer delight in my roles as CTO at dbt Labs, MongoDB, Grab, and Amplify, as well as GM at Amazon Web Services. I've been privileged to help ope; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech) - Previous roles include Boards, advising, and lots of coding at MarkLovesTech; CTO : Leader of Engineering, Product, Design, Security, Support, and all things Tech... at dbt Labs; Member, Board of Directors, Audit Committee at GitLab; CNBC Technology Executive Council Member at CNBC Technology Executive Council; CTO at MongoDB; Member, Board of Directors at MongoDB; Member, Board Of Directors at Splyt; Board Advisor at MariaDB Corporation. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech) - Mark Porter held executive positions leading database teams at Amazon Web Services and Oracle Corporation. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - Mark Porter previously held CTO positions at Grab and at Amplify, a division of News Corp. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - In the immediate term, the Windsurf team will continue to operate as they have been. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Over the coming months, Cognition will invest heavily in integrating Windsurf's capabilities and unique IP into Cognition's products. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - With this deal, Cognition is doubling down on its mission of building the future of software engineering. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - The information was highly confidential until 11am PT, after Windsurf's all-hands. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Mark Porter said that while he had used MongoDB in multiple jobs, he was still a relational snob before coming to understand the power of the document model, built-in scalability, and fully architected high availability. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Mark Porter described MongoDB as a natively highly available distributed system that handles transactions, while relational databases are single-primary transactional systems that struggle with distribution and availability. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Location is United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech) - Mark Porter currently serves on the board of directors at GitLab. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - Prior to Amazon, Mark Porter held various roles including CTO of the Amplify division of NewsCorp and Vice President of Engineering at Oracle Corporation. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) - Mark Porter worked at NASA/JPL and was an early member of the Oracle Database Kernel group. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) - The acquisition includes Windsurf's IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - The acquisition includes Windsurf's world-class people, described as some of the best talent in the industry. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - The note to the Cognition team was signed by Scott. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - TechCrunch reported in April that Windsurf's ARR had reached $100 million at one point. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Mark Porter said in his blog when he joined MongoDB that no developer actually wants to learn SQL and they just want to code. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter said MongoDB built 12 different native-language drivers to focus on native integration into developers' languages. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter said 7-Eleven uses MongoDB as an end-to-end retail solution across over 8,500 stores. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter said MongoDB is not schema-less and offers JSON schema enforcement for production apps. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter said MongoDB's Wired Tiger storage engine showed no significant overhead difference versus relational storage in comparisons. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter said MongoDB offers a perpetual free tier and prices on a combination of compute, storage, and network bandwidth. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter said MongoDB partners with and competes with cloud vendors and described MongoDB as a general purpose data platform for modern applications. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter joined MongoDB at the beginning of 2020. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Prior to MongoDB, Mark Porter was CTO of Core Technology and Transport at Grab, Southeast Asia's super app, from October 2018 to July 2020. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) - Mark Porter was a General Manager at Amazon Web Services from May 2013 to October 2018. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) - Mark Porter was previously the Chief Technology Officer at MongoDB, where he scaled its engineering organization and spearheaded the long-term technology roadmap and vision. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - Prior to dbt Labs, Mark Porter was the CTO of MongoDB, where he was responsible for crafting the long-term technology roadmap and vision for the company. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) - At AWS, Mark Porter led the Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Aurora and RDS for PostgreSQL, the AWS Database Migration Service, and the AWS Schema Conversion Tool. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) - Before MongoDB, Mark Porter served as CTO at Grab, a ride-sharing, delivery, and mobile payments "superapp" company based in Singapore. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Mark Porter spent nine years building Amazon RDS managed database services at AWS. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Earlier in his career, Mark Porter spent 12 years at Oracle, where he worked on the Oracle RDBMS and managed the Oracle RDBMS server development team. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - At Oracle, Mark Porter eventually rose up the ranks to report directly to CEO Larry Ellison. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Mark Porter was CTO at dbt Labs as of November 2025, appearing on Modern CTO in a video titled 'Our Best Advice on Communication and Hiring Strategies with Mark Porter, CTO at dbt Labs'. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the agentic IDE. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition, the startup behind the AI coding agent Devin, announced in a blog post on Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AI coding startup Windsurf. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - The Windsurf acquisition announcement came just days after Google hired away Windsurf's CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and research leaders in a $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire that left much of the startup's 250-person team behind. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Google's deal occurred just hours after OpenAI's $3 billion offer to acquire Windsurf expired, clearing the way for the AI coding startup to explore other options. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition says it's acquiring Windsurf's IP and product, which include its AI-powered IDE, alongside all of the employees who were not hired by Google. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition did not announce the price it acquired Windsurf for, but said Windsurf reached $82 million in ARR, with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition says Windsurf's user base reached at least 350 enterprise customers and "hundreds of thousands" of daily active users. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - In the near term, Windsurf's team will continue working on its AI-powered IDE while Cognition works on its AI coding agent Devin, and eventually Cognition says it will integrate Windsurf's IP and capabilities into its own products. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Mark Porter published 'What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety' on Mark Loves Tech on 11 Apr 2025, drawing key points from an HBR piece by Amy Edmondson about psychological safety. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - Mark Porter published 'How to Work with Mark — Maybe This Helps?' on Mark Loves Tech in June 2024. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - dbt Labs announced the appointment of Mark Porter as Chief Technology Officer on February 1, 2024. (https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-labs-names-data-industry-veteran-mark-porter-as-chief-technology-officer) - Mark Porter published 'Data Data Everywhere — And Some Life Lessons' on LinkedIn in February 2024. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - Mark Porter published 'Celebrating MongoDB, My Journey There, and Looking Towards the Future' on LinkedIn in July 2023. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - Mark Porter is CTO at MongoDB. (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html) - Mark Porter was MongoDB's CTO, as shown by a May 2022 Future article titled 'MongoDB CTO: Why On-Prem Software Is Still Big Business'. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - Mark Porter was MongoDB's CTO, as shown by a May 2022 InfoWorld article titled 'MongoDB CTO: What Today's Developers Need to Succeed'. (https://marklovestech.com/posts/) - Mark Porter was the CTO of MongoDB as of the June 21, 2021 VentureBeat interview. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave) - Mark Porter most recently served as CTO of dbt Labs. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Before dbt Labs, Mark Porter served as CTO of MongoDB, where he set the long-term technical vision for the database. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter was CTO of Core Technology and Transport at Grab, Southeast Asia's super app. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter spent five-plus years as a General Manager at AWS leading Amazon RDS, Aurora, and the Database Migration Service. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter held engineering leadership roles at Oracle, where he was an early member of the Database Kernel group. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter held engineering leadership roles at NewsCorp. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter held engineering leadership roles at NASA/JPL. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter currently serves on the Board of Directors of Super Technologies. (https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/) - Mark Porter currently serves as Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of dbt Labs, helping lead companies to understand and process their data better. (https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/) ## Experience - Field CTO at Cognition - United States (Aug 2026 - Present): Helping customers 10x their development speed, predictability, reliability, and security with Devin, your AI team member. - Technical Advisor, >commit at commit (May 2026 - Present): >commit backs commercial open-source founders at the earliest stage, fueled by a 100+ strong community of open-source founders (e.g. Supabase, Hugging Face, Nginx), bottom-up GTM experts, and enterprise CTOs. We also have a an agentic stack that spots promising open-source projects before the market does. - Board Member at Super (Jun 2022 - Present): At Super, we're building the future playstack: the technology powering the next generation of sports, gaming, and fan experiences. We partner with iconic brands and excite vibrant communities of sports fans all over the world. We build world-class tech to keep the systems running, secure, responsive, and correct. We personalize and localize our experiences so you can enjoy your own version of the fan experiences. As a board member, I'm delighted to be part of supporting and growing the European tech ecosystem, with offices in Zagreb, Bucharest, Cluj, Madrid, London, and others. - Member at New York CTO Club (May 2021 - Present) - Boards, advising, and lots of coding at MarkLovesTech (Jan 2026 - Sep 2026): The adoption of AI is one of the most important changes in our lifetimes, and I'm embracing it at the board level, the advisory and coaching level, and personally, writing more code than I have for 25 years and enjoying every commit... - CTO : Leader of Engineering, Product, Design, Security, Support, and all things Tech... at dbt Labs (Jan 2024 - Feb 2026): I am privileged to be the leader of Engineering, Product, Design, Docs, Security, Operations, Community, Customer Support, Forward Deployed Engineering, Partner Engineering, and Developer Experience at dbt Labs. I work closely with my peer and colleague Ryan Segar (who leads Product and Product Marketing) and together we comprised the EPD (Engineering, Product, and Design) team. This great team ideates, plans, designs, develops, documents, delivers, and operates all the products which make modern data teams more and more productive for their companies. We help mission-critical customers around the world make better decisions, and do it more reliably and predictably. Since 2016, dbt Labs has been on a mission to help analysts create and disseminate organizational knowledge. dbt Labs pioneered the practice of analytics engineering, built the primary tool in the analytics engineering toolbox, and has been fortunate enough to see a fantastic community coalesce to help push the boundaries of the analytics engineering workflow. Today there are 60,000 teams using dbt every week, 100,000 dbt Community members, and over 5,000 dbt Cloud customers. - Member, Board of Directors, Audit Committee at GitLab - Fully Remote (Dec 2022 - Jun 2024): When I joined GitLab, we didn't have a CISO or a CTO. I have helped GitLab hire two excellent people into those roles, and also helped GitLab's Audit Committee significantly burn down our MWs and ITGCs over the time I've been here. In addition, GitLab has a truly massive security surface area, and as part of watching over Cyber (as part of the AC), I've worked to bring a culture of security and operational excellence to the teams. All of this wouldn't be possible without a great team of board members and a set of executives at GitLab which gets better every quarter. GitLab's mission is to make it so that everyone can contribute. When everyone can contribute, users become contributors and we greatly increase the rate of innovation. What started in 2011 as an open source project to help one team of programmers collaborate is now the platform millions of people use to deliver software faster, more efficiently, while strengthening security and compliance. Since the beginning, we've been firm believers in remote work, open source, DevOps, and iteration. We get up and log on in the morning (or whenever we choose to start our days) to work alongside the GitLab community to deliver new innovations every month that help teams focus on shipping great code faster, not their toolchain. - CNBC Technology Executive Council Member at CNBC Technology Executive Council - Seattle, Washington, United States (Mar 2019 - Aug 2023): Member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council, the premiere council of technology executives (CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, CISOs, etc.) assembled exclusively by CNBC. Members hail from top-tier companies and organizations across sectors and industries. The council, in conjunction with CNBC, leads ongoing high-priority discussions about employing breakthrough technologies to solve problems and power growth while addressing the challenges presented by these innovations. - CTO at MongoDB (Jun 2020 - Jul 2023): MongoDB's mission is to unleash the power of software and data for innovators everywhere. The most sophisticated organizations, from the largest global companies to cutting-edge startups, use MongoDB to drive their business. The company is recognized as the world's most popular next-generation database, with massive user adoption, thousands of customers and a large ecosystem of partners all over the world. MongoDB is the first database company to go public in 25+ years. - Member, Board of Directors at MongoDB (Feb 2020 - Jul 2020): Customers and developers love the promises that databases make to them - databases keep your data secure, durable, consistent, and accessible. In my BOD role at MongoDB, I am passionate about helping Dev and the whole MongoDB team delight even more customers by helping them leverage the developer-friendly, ACID-compliant, scale-out, and flexible engine and tool-set that the team has built. Became so entranced with the company's mission, leadership, technology, and culture that I asked to step off the board and become CTO. - Member, Board Of Directors at Splyt - Singapore, UK (Apr 2019 - Jul 2020): Serve as a member of the Board of Directors to help advance Splyt's vision of making worldwide mobility easier - anybody should be able to book rides anywhere in the world, using their preferred mobile app, in their language, using their currency, with their preferences and loyalty points. Splyt brings that vision to life. Helped secure Series B funding to take the company to the next level. - Board Advisor at MariaDB Corporation (Feb 2019 - Feb 2020): Advise the Board and key executives on how to make MariaDB, the enterprise-grade version of MySQL, more successful both in the cloud and on-premises. - CTO, Mobility and Core Technology at Grab - Singapore, Beijing, Seattle, Ho Chi Min, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Romania, Taipei (Jan 2018 - Jan 2020): Grab is Southeast Asia’s leading on-demand transportation and mobile payments company, using data and technology to improve transportation, payments, food delivery and logistics across a region of more than 640M people. Working with governments, driver partners, passengers, merchants, agents, and NGOs, we aim to unlock the potential of the region by solving real people problems. As CTO, I am both humbled by our mission and proud of our teams who build GrabCar, GrabTaxi, GrabShare, GrabBike, GrabCycles, GrabBus, and Grab For Business, helping passengers take billions of rides in 8 countries and 300+ cities from our drivers since 2012. GrabPlatform lets partners use our platform and APIs safely and quickly to start their own businesses. To give our passengers, drivers, and merchants a secure, stable, and economical experience, we have Security, Stability, Trust, Identify, Safety, Ads, and Customer Service teams, and we provide infrastructure services for all of Grab. With Analytics, Machine Learning, and AI, we understand our customers and optimise our operations to build hyperlocal systems that impact lives every minute of the day in one of the fastest developing regions of the world. Our tech teams are spread across Singapore, Seattle, Beijing, Bangalore, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Romania, Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta. WE ARE HIRING remarkable engineers, product/project managers, and designers in all of them. Tech works with Grab’s product, business, design, and in-country operations teams to pull it all together; our goal is to delight every passenger with a safe and perfect journey. Run a $1B budget. Reduced fraud by 3x and physical crime in the fleet by 6x. Drove acquisition of TeleNav Map team in Romania to to enhance Grab's geo expertise - and then helped Grab build it's own independent maps, leading to partnership agreements with both AWS and Azure. Expanded engineering to Romania, Malaysia, and Thailand. Left because MongoDB and I wanted to work together! - General Manager, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL at Amazon Web Services - Greater Seattle Area (Jan 2015 - Sep 2018): With a team of deep technologists and passionate operators, built and operated Amazon’s newest database - Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL - a fully compatible native PostgreSQL implementation that gives all the durability, availability and storage benefits of the Amazon Aurora storage engine. Aurora PostgreSQL offers full PostgreSQL compatibility, up to twice the performance of standard PostgreSQL on some workloads and 2-4x performance on others, survivable caches, up to 15 read replicas with millisecond lag times, and the kind of durability you can only get from an Amazon database backed by Amazon S3. But the key is more than all those features; it’s all about giving customers database freedom along with enterprise durability, availability, and performance. I was also the General Manager of the Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL business - our managed service supporting the Community Edition of the PostgreSQL database. There are so many things to like about PostgreSQL that offering it in both the community flavor and our own cloud native flavor is a privilege. We manage each of our customer instances with the same care we would give our own systems - and I helped do that for the largest PostgreSQL fleet in the world. Left because I was recruited away to be CTO at Grab. - General Manager & Director, Amazon RDS, AWS Database Migration Service and Schema Conversion Tool at Amazon Web Services - Greater Seattle Area (May 2013 - Jul 2016): I helped a highly motivated and brilliant team of engineers design, build and operate the largest database fleet in the world. In RDS, we support MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Aurora, SQL Server and Oracle. Our goal was (and still is) to make it so compelling to move your on-premise databases to the cloud that the only question you'll be asking yourself is "Why didn't I do it sooner?" In order to accomplish this goal, we built deep technologies around automation, fail-over, provisioning, event management, fault detection and mirroring, just to name a few. I focused on building the RDS open source businesses through forthright relationships with customers and partners and heading up engineering to make the RDS open source engines the best they can be for our customers through innovation at both the automation and engine level. I also help my team define and develop the very best platform for all RDS engines as well as managing the infrastructure, QA, deployment, performance and systems engineering teams for all of RDS. Finally, I was privileged to lead one of the best operational teams ever. I also led the business to help customers easily migrate their databases to the cloud - the AWS Database Migration Service and AWS Schema Conversion Tool. Innovation is fast and furious in this business as we look to create data fluidity between on-premises and cloud databases of the same database type as well as help people with the hard challenge of moving between database engines if they choose. We went GA in March of 2015 went on a path of consistent innovation that continues today. Focus on delivering software predictably against an Agile project while maintaining business fundamentals. On the people side, I accomplish this through a combination of leadership, mentoring of the leaders who report to me and teamwork with other business leaders. On the technical side, I have put in place an approach based on realism and exposing decisions and challenges to both internal and external stakeholders which allows us to go deep on the truly important technical decisions. It all adds up to execution being the focus, at every level of the org, from daily technical decisions to strategic business decisions. Left because I was recruited away to lead Amazon RDS. - Software Architect at AirSet, Inc - Berkeley, California / Tuscany, Italy (Feb 2009 - Nov 2011): While enjoying the good life in Italy, I couldn't stop myself from working, so I connected with a small team of brilliant software and design engineers to produce a top-notch cloud-based productivity application for companies, groups and families. - Founder, Owner at CastleAV Consulting - Steamboat Springs, CO (Jun 2001 - Jul 2009): Castle AV designs, installs and services high-end home automation systems in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. As the owner, Mark built the business from nothing to a $1M/year going concern in 7 years. Mark is involved in all areas of the business including sales, design, project managements and installation. - Vice President, Interactive Television at Oracle Corporation (Sep 1996 - Feb 2000): Ran Interactive Television Division, reporting directly to CEO. Division included up to 100 employees distributed across development, QA, release, support, marketing, business development and sales. Managed a $10M+ budget, coming in under budget every year. Negotiated contracts with customers, vendors and partners. - Senior Director, Video Server Division at Oracle Corporation (Mar 1996 - Sep 1996): Manage the Video Server development team as we delivered working video-on-demand systems to customers such as British Telecom, Bell Atlantic, New Brunswick Telecom, Singapore Telecom. - Director, Video Server Development at Oracle Corporation (Sep 1994 - Mar 1996): Managed the design and development of Oracle's Video Server product, a team of up to 45 employees. Coordinated the development of software milestones within the team to previously-committed release milestones outside of the team. Supervised development and QA functions. Pushed patent development and applications. Key technical contact to CEO. - Group Manager, Video & Network Services at Oracle Corporation (Sep 1993 - Sep 1994): Ran the Oracle Video Server Product Group responsible for the realtime delivery of MPEG 1 and 2 video over phone lines. Key customers were Bell Atlantic, British Telecom, New Brunswick Telecom, Singapore Telecom. - Principal Technical Staff, Video & Network Services at Oracle Corporation (May 1993 - Sep 1993): As 1 of 4 founders of the Media Server Group, helped architect, design and implement the first version of the Oracle Media Server. Responsible for many patents around the scalable delivery of MPEG video on an interactive broadband network. - Development Manager, RDBMS Server Development at Oracle Corporation (Oct 1992 - May 1993): Managed the team of people responsible for Oracle's portable operating system layer. Chair of the RDBMS Porting Council. Negotiated with hardware and software vendors to implement key hardware and operating system features to support enhanced performance and robustness of the Oracle RDBMS. - Senior Technical Staff, RDBMS Kernel Group at Oracle Corporation (Nov 1990 - Oct 1992): Responsible for the ongoing design and implementation of the Oracle RDBMS portable operating system layer. Focused on debugging and performance tools to help analyze upper layers of the RDBMS code, including portable interprocess debugging as well as modifying the GNU C compiler to support basic-block profiling on the VAX/VMS platform. - Technical Staff, RDBMS Kernel Group at Oracle Corporation (Jul 1988 - Nov 1990): Primary developer responsible for the Oracle RDBMS portable operating system layer, approx 100K lines of portable C code. Also responsible for the VAX/VMS port of that portable operating system, including VAX/VMS internals and data structures and kernel mode device driver programming. - System Manager, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at California Institute of Technology (Sep 1987 - Jun 1988): Responsible for configuration, procurement and maintenance of 9 VAX systems and approx 50 users. Extensive DECNET experience & systems programming, including DECNET task-to-task. - System Programmer, Manager, Advanced Semiconductor Technology Group at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Jun 1986 - Jun 1988): Extensive VAX/VMS systems programming including locks, shared memory, mailboxes, hardware control (serial, parallel, relay) and real-time graphics display. Hardware programming involved monitoring and controlling experiments on high-vacuum chip creation and analysis facilities. ## Education - Caltech - BS, Engineering and Applied Science (Computer Science): Concentrations in Systems Programming, Computer Graphics, Electronic Project Design. Worked full-time all years I attended. First, for the US Dept of Education building financial instructional programs in Pascal, then for for NASA/JPL managing the computer infrastructure for a semiconductor research lab (Section 346). Formal degree is Engineering and Applied Science as Caltech didn't yet offer an accredited CS degree (!). - Harvard Business School - Executive Leadership Program - (Jan 2019 - Jan 2019): Participated in (and passed...) 12-week customized leadership program for executives. The course was based on Clay Christensen's Disruptive Innovation approach as well as lectures and readings assigned by Harvard professors. - Colorado School of Mines - Computer Science: During this year, took senior- and graduate-level courses in robotics, math, electronics, logic design and computer programming language design and implementation. Wrote a 75k loc world simulation program for one course in Turbo Pascal and 8086 assembly. ## Sources - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech - https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaderstrom?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAng9moBHDvLOB1JbhXwdhuXspSykbdiuUs - https://www.linkedin.com/company/dbtlabs/posts - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-mysak-00883445?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAmOPggBvQQot1yc_iT6GUo1-WPsbw8Pyzc - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-klonick-23248b285?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAEVN04YBIHlsHJQQsvmk7FWCn5VRXuA5Bx4 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasnonaz?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAsXIuQBnEhxWRKDm-7LF53YC9qS0DnMFI4 - https://www.linkedin.com/company/meneghetti-wine-hotel-and-winery/posts - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosmincondurache?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAGGKwABg-oSZDAsqL5eLJtQDUVojwCZKXY - https://venturebeat.com/ai/mongodb-cto-on-cloud-database-inroads-and-riding-the-developer-wave - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sijbrandij?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAACkyP8BLVUlzE9RYfHrqn9nD0UaXoKGgl0 - https://techsylvania.com/speakers/mark-porter/ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlywtan?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAApeQkoBOQXh_66zDGc_mYkJrjk8lg6Eg5s - https://www.linkedin.com/company/igamingnewstoday/posts - https://moderncto.io/mark-porter-best-advice/ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABRcyU0B3eVfSh_wWQgM7w3CZRywJOf28G8 - https://marklovestech.com/posts/ - https://x.com/MarkLovesTech - https://www.infoworld.com/article/2335244/mongodb-cto-what-todays-developers-need-to-succeed.html - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAHTvZYBuMfdNNvJqh9QD8OiU2ccjFJPLLM - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/aws-startups/posts - https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliasdefaria?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAACCXd5gBFeWpAFlwWhDCmAT92pLyjpCWwYQ - 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Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/mark-porter · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people