TAG Infrastructure Chair Nomination

[riaankleinhans]

TAG Leadership Nominations 2026

The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) leadership elections are designed with a two-year cycle to provide a structured transition period. This ensures that leadership cycles overlap, maintaining continuity while allowing dedicated leaders to step away if their priorities have shifted.

Election Guidelines

• Incumbents: Current Chairs and Tech Leads are welcome to stand for re-election.
• Nominations: There are no restrictions against self-nomination or nominating others for another term.
• Support: For questions, please reach out via the #toc Slack channel or email cncf-toc@lists.cncf.io.

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2026 Election Timeline

The TAG leadership elections follow the seating of the new Technical Oversight Committee (TOC).

Date	Event
May 11	New TOC seated; Nominations open for TAG Chairs
May 26	Nominations close; TOC Vote opens for TAG Chairs
June 8	TOC Vote closes; New TAG Chairs announced
June 8	Nominations open for TAG Technical Leads
June 22	Nominations close; Vote opens for TAG Technical Leads*
July 6	Voting closes; New Technical Leads announced

Note: TAG Chairs only vote for the Technical Leads within their specific TAG.

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Open Positions (June 2026)

The following leadership roles are up for election :

TAG Infrastructure

• Chairs: Xing Yang (@xing-yang)
• Tech Leads:
  • Bruno Schaatsbergen (@bschaatsbergen)
  • Nicholas Jackson (@nicholasjackson)

[xing-yang]

I want to formally submit my self-nomination to continue serving as a Chair of TAG Infrastructure for the 2026 term.

Since being elected as a Chair in 2025 during the TAG’s inaugural "reboot" year, I have focused on stabilizing the new structure and driving cross-domain collaboration between storage, compute, and networking. My goal for 2026 is to build on this momentum, further maturing our infrastructure patterns and ensuring the CNCF ecosystem remains the gold standard for scalable, resilient cloud native platforms.

Key Achievements & Contributions (2025–2026):

• TAG Leadership & Cross-Domain Initiatives: As Chair, I have prioritized filling the gaps identified by the TOC in the infrastructure space. I led two major initiatives that are currently shaping the TAG’s roadmap:
  • Data Storage in Cloud Native AI: I spearheaded the effort to define how storage architectures must evolve to support Large Language Models (LLMs) and high-performance AI workloads, transitioning this critical whitepaper from TAG Storage into the broader TAG Infrastructure scope to involve networking and compute stakeholders.
  • CNCF Storage Landscape Whitepaper V3: I led the effort to update the CNCF Storage Landscape Whitepaper and successfully transitioned the project to TAG Infrastructure following the TAG reboot. This initiative has been accepted, with the goal being the successful publication of the V3 whitepaper.
• Kubernetes Storage Milestones: I continue to serve as a co-chair for Kubernetes SIG Storage and Data Protection WG. Two important initiatives reached new milestones in Kubernetes v1.36. Consistent Group Snapshot moved to GA and Changed Block Tracking moved to Beta.
• Cluster Resilience: One important project is to enhance Volume Health to move beyond "metrics" to "action," with the goal of enabling the system to self-heal when a volume reports a degraded state.

Vision for 2026: The "TAG Reboot" has successfully broken down silos. In the coming year, I intend to:

• Finalize and publish the AI Storage and Landscape V3 deliverables to provide clear architectural guidance.
• Deepen our focus on Infrastructure for AI/ML, specifically how specialized hardware (GPUs, DPUs, and high-speed interconnects) integrates with the Kubernetes control plane.
• Collaborate with TAG Environmental Sustainability to define green infrastructure patterns for large-scale data centers.

It has been an honor to serve as Chair during this transition year. I am eager to continue this work and help steer the CNCF infrastructure ecosystem toward even greater stability and innovation.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yangxing/
• GitHub: https://github.com/xing-yang