Experience
30+ years of research-informed technology leadership — from embedded systems to AI at scale
Professional Experience
November 2025 – Present
AI Operating Partner
Supporting both the Private Equity arm and the Venture Capital arm, working across current and future portfolio companies to accelerate and scale cloud and AI initiatives.
- •Accelerate cloud and AI initiatives across PE and VC portfolio companies
- •Provide strategic guidance on product development, engineering architecture, and operations optimization
- •Support GTM acceleration through technology-enabled growth strategies
- •Help portfolio companies scale their technology infrastructure and AI capabilities
2024 – November 2025
Vice President & Chief Evangelist
Acted as the first customer and provided in-depth feedback to the R&D team. Created deep technical content including code demos, blog posts, and YouTube videos (566K subscribers). Recognized as an Arm Ambassador.
- •First customer, providing product feedback to enhance usability
- •Created deep technical content (code demos, blog posts, YouTube videos)
- •Spoke at World Bank, Bank of Italy, and international conferences
- •Benchmarked and deployed models across hardware platforms (CPU, GPU, AI accelerators)
- •Recognized as Arm Ambassador for inference optimization expertise
2021 – 2024
Chief Evangelist
Led technical evangelism and community building for the leading open-source AI platform, focusing on transformer models, optimization, and deployment strategies.
- •Field CTO working with Fortune 500 teams on private infrastructure deployment
- •Tech lead on projects with JPMorgan, engaging top-level stakeholders
- •Initiated strategic partnerships with AWS, Azure, Google, Intel, AMD
- •Led 250+ AWS customer meetings, generating $35M+ commercial pipeline
- •Spoke at UNESCO, NY Federal Reserve, and major industry events
2015 – 2021
Global Evangelist, Machine Learning and AI
Helped AWS customers worldwide understand and adopt the AWS AI/ML service portfolio. Authored the first book on Amazon SageMaker.
- •650+ talks in nearly 40 countries
- •Authored "Learn Amazon SageMaker" — first published book on AWS SageMaker
- •Promoted to Amazon Level 8 (Director-equivalent for ICs) — extremely rare
- •Named #1 AI Evangelist by AI Magazine in 2021
- •Second most senior technical evangelist at AWS after Jeff Barr
- •Wrote 70+ launch blog posts
October 2014 – October 2015
Chief Technology Officer
Viadeo
Led software, infrastructure, and big data (70 engineers in Paris and San Francisco) for viadeo.com, a professional social network with 10M members.
- •Initiated and completed all-in migration of 200-server physical platform to AWS
- •Managed 70 engineers across Paris and San Francisco
February 2014 – September 2014
Chief Technology Officer, Software
Managed 130 engineers responsible for software engineering (OS, apps & web) and infrastructure for all Aldebaran robots.
- •Launched the world-famous Pepper robot in Tokyo (CNN article)
- •Reorganized team and deployed Agile methods
October 2010 – February 2014
Vice President, Engineering
In charge of an online advertising SaaS platform used by 3000+ e-commerce companies in 30+ countries. 30B+ daily HTTP requests.
- •Publisher Platforms: Real-Time Bidding with Facebook, Google, Yahoo — 30B+ daily requests
- •Scalability: 6PB Hadoop cluster, real-time and analytics processing
- •Infrastructure: 7 datacenters (6000 devices), 30M€ budget, 60+ engineers
May 2009 – September 2010
Chief Technology Officer
Pixmania
In charge of an e-commerce platform generating 2B€ GMV. 150 engineers, 600+ servers, 2PB NetApp storage.
- •Lowered OPEX by 20% through better supplier management
- •Managed 600+ servers across 7 locations
March 2007 – April 2009
Vice President, Engineering
Digiplug
SaaS platform for digital supply chain services used by music majors (Universal, Sony, Warner). Scaled team from 12 to 50.
- •Designed and deployed infrastructure on 2 hosting locations (150 servers, 2M€+ CAPEX)
- •Implemented ISO 27001 security standards
February 2002 – September 2006
Director, R&D Mobile Communications
Led software development of all Telecom products (45 people in France, 25 in China and Philippines). Major customer wins (Vodafone Group, Cingular).
- •70 engineers across France, China, Philippines
- •Won Vodafone Group and Cingular contracts
- •Sustained 60% yearly increase in smartcard delivery volumes
- •Custom SIM apps for SFR, Orange, TIM, Telefonica, Vodafone UK
Education
Master's degree in Computer Systems
Sorbonne University, Paris
1995
Engineering degree
ISEP, Paris
1993
Frequently Asked Questions
- Where has Julien Simon worked?
- Julien Simon has held leadership roles at Fortino Capital (AI Operating Partner), Arcee AI (VP & Chief Evangelist), Hugging Face (Chief Evangelist), AWS (Global Evangelist for AI/ML), and executive positions at Viadeo, Aldebaran Robotics, Criteo, Pixmania, and more across 30+ years.
- What is Julien Simon's current role?
- Julien Simon is currently AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital, where he accelerates cloud and AI initiatives across both the Private Equity and Venture Capital portfolios, helping portfolio companies scale technology infrastructure and AI capabilities.