Hello, I'm

Ian Cottingham

Engineering Leader & Academic Innovator

Engineering Organization and Product Leader at AWS EC2 | Former Researcher, Professor, and Academic Administrator at the University of Nebraska

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Ian Cottingham
Cloud Infrastructure

Leading engineering for AWS EC2 hybrid compute products including Outposts and Local Zones. Managing a 200-person organization delivering technology platforms for enterprise customers across gaming, healthcare, telco, and finance sectors.

Education & Mentorship

Former Director of Design Studio and Assistant Professor at UNL's Raikes School. Led 130 faculty, staff, and students building software for industry partners. Passionate about developing the next generation of engineers through hands-on learning.

Innovation & Research

Principal Investigator for over $10M in federal research funding. Developed decision support systems, semantic cyberinfrastructure, and GIS applications for USDA, NSF, and NIH. Founded two software startups with successful exits.

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About Me

I'm an engineering leader with over 25 years of experience spanning cloud infrastructure, academia, and entrepreneurship.

Currently, I lead engineering for EC2 hybrid compute products at Amazon Web Services, including AWS Outposts and Local Zones. Previously, I served as Director of Design Studio and Assistant Professor of Practice at the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

My career has taken me from IBM Global Services to founding startups, leading university research programs, and building cloud infrastructure at scale. I'm passionate about software architecture, innovation, and developing the next generation of engineers.

200+ Engineers Led
$10M+ Research Funding
15+ Publications

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
(Incomplete)
M.S. in Computer Science
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
B.S. in Computer Science & German
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Experience

Senior Software Development Manager

Amazon Web Services, EC2 Edge 2021 - Present

Head of Frontliner Engineering, a 200-person organization delivering the technology platform for EC2 hybrid compute products including AWS Outposts and Local Zones.

  • Lead engineering, strategic planning, and product lifecycle for hybrid compute
  • Technical sponsor for gaming, healthcare, telco, and finance customer segments

Presentations & Media

Senior Software Development Manager

Amazon Web Services, EC2 Nitro 2019 - 2021

Responsible for EC2 Server Platform organization (45-person, 5 teams) that built and supported the EC2 Nitro provisioning system.

  • Drive fleet health, financial goals, and capacity utilization programs

Software Development Manager

Amazon Web Services, EC2 Capacity Lifecycle 2017 - 2019

Managed EC2 Host Lifecycle Management team, building services to increase fleet homogeneity and manage capacity utilization.

  • Launched control-plane services improving EC2 server fleet stability
  • Responsible for provisioning process for new EC2 instance types

Director of Design Studio & Assistant Professor

Jeffrey S. Raikes School, UNL 2012 - 2017

Led the Design Studio organization of 130 faculty, staff, and students building software for ~25 industry partners annually.

  • Grew Design Studio revenue from $400K to $900K annually
  • Managed partnerships with Microsoft, IBM, Mutual of Omaha, Cerner, HDR
  • Served as Associate Director of the Raikes School (2015)
  • Program director teaching Software Engineering, Architecture, Design Thinking
  • Stanford Pathways to Innovation program co-team lead

Presentations & Media

Software Architect & Managing Director

Department of CSE, UNL 2003 - 2012

Led software development supporting grant-funded research, helping secure over $10 million in funding.

  • Architect for GIS-based decision support application framework
  • Led federated data discovery system for taxonomic and genomic datasets
  • Supervised graduate research and taught Software Engineering

Presentations & Media

Founder & President

Red Brain Inc. & OrangePeel Inc. 2003 - 2015

Founded and led two software companies developing enterprise and law enforcement applications.

  • Red Brain: Law enforcement software for field identification (acquired)
  • OrangePeel: Knowledge management and workflow automation for insurance

Presentations & Media

Preprofessional Engineer

IBM Global Services 1998 - 2002

Started career at IBM working on web portals, content management systems, and enterprise applications.

Research & Funding

Principal Investigator and Project Director for research programs totaling over $10 million in funding from federal agencies and institutions.

$5,000,000

Drought Risk, Impact and Mitigation System

USDA Risk Management Agency

2005 - 2010

Project Director
$2,500,000

Climate and Soil Risk Information System

USDA Risk Management Agency

2005 - 2008

Project Director
$1,370,000

Semantic Cyberinfrastructure for Information and Discovery

National Science Foundation

2009 - 2011

Project Director
$200,000

World of Viruses (ARRA)

US Dept. of Health and Human Services

2009 - 2011

Project Director
$188,204

Life on Earth

Harvard University

2010 - 2013

Advisor
$100,000

Railroads and the Making of Modern America

National Endowment for the Humanities

2009 - 2010

Co-PI

Selected Publications

Reconstructing African American Mobility after Emancipation, 1865-67

William G. Thomas III, Richard G. Healey, Ian Cottingham

Social Science History, Volume 41, Number 4 - Winter 2017

Using Innovation as a Catalyst for Integrating Business and Engineering Education

D.W. Keck, I.J. Cottingham

IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference - 2016

A Randomized-Trial Evaluation of a Law Enforcement Application for Smartphones and Laptops

T. Casady, I. Cottingham, J.P. Ramirez, A. Samal, A. Tomkins, et al.

National Institute of Justice, NCJRS - January 2015

A Service Oriented Architecture for Data-Driven Decision Support Systems

I.J. Cottingham

Masters Thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln - 2009

Using Web 2.0 and ESRI for Rich Climate Analysis

X. Wu, I.J. Cottingham

ESRI Users Conference - August 2008

Digital Government: New Tools to Define Terroirs and Viticultural Areas

W.J. Waltman, S. Goddard, P.E. Read, S.E. Reichenbach, I.J. Cottingham, J.S. Peake

dg.o '04: National Conference on Digital Government Research - May 2004

Open Source Projects

Research software and tools developed for federal and institutional projects, released as open source.

Phocalstream

Cloud-based photography platform for water research and monitoring

Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute

The Aurora Project

Historical GIS application for 19th century railroad expansion research

National Endowment for the Humanities

The Biofinity Project

Federated data discovery system integrating taxonomic and genomic datasets

National Science Foundation

The GreenLeaf Project

Java EE framework for GIS-based decision support applications

USDA Risk Management Agency

Areas of Expertise

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS EC2 & Hybrid Cloud
  • Distributed Systems
  • Service-Oriented Architecture
  • Fleet Management at Scale

Software Engineering

  • Software Architecture & Design
  • Java EE / .NET Platforms
  • Mobile & Web Development
  • GIS & Data Systems

Innovation & Education

  • Design Thinking
  • Lean Startup Methodology
  • Agile Development
  • Curriculum Development

Leadership

  • Engineering Team Building
  • Strategic Planning
  • Research Program Management
  • Industry Partnerships

Get in Touch

Interested in discussing cloud infrastructure, software architecture, innovation in education, or potential collaborations?

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