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# Duan Lightfoot
AI engineer at Akamai focusing on production agents and dedicated inference infrastructure.

## About

Du’An Lightfoot builds and scales AI systems at Akamai. After spending a decade designing enterprise infrastructure at companies like AWS and Cisco, he now focuses strictly on agentic workflows and custom inference architecture.

He wants developers to stop renting intelligence and start owning it. His workshops break down how to run production AI agents on dedicated GPUs, optimizing deployment tools like vLLM for high concurrency and managing batching tradeoffs. He also explores how teams can build custom generative models to quickly parse internal documentation.

Before moving into tech, Du’An served in the US Air Force.


## Upcoming Sessions

### World Congress 2026 North America · September 23, 2026
San José, CA
- [Agents That Own Their Inference: Building Production AI Agents on Dedicated GPUs](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1717-agents-that-own)


## Past Sessions

### World Congress 2026 Europe · July 8, 2026
Berlin, Germany
- [The Agent Interface Layer: Protocols, Tools and Trust Boundaries](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100132-the-agent-interface-layer-protocols-tools-and-trust-boundaries) · 30 min · 🎥 Watch recording
- [Agents That Own Their Inference: Building Production AI Agents on Dedicated GPUs](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1350-agents-that-own) · 120 min

### World Congress 2024 · July 17, 2024
Berlin, Germany
- [Make it simple, using generative AI to accelerate learning](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/969-make-it-simple-using-generative-ai-to-accelerate-learning) · 30 min · 🎥 Watch recording



## Videos

- [The Agent Interface Layer: Protocols, Tools and Trust Boundaries](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100132-the-agent-interface-layer-protocols-tools-and-trust-boundaries) · David Soria Parra, Duan Lightfoot, Malte Ubl, Taroon Mandhana
- [Make it simple, using generative AI to accelerate learning](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/969-make-it-simple-using-generative-ai-to-accelerate-learning) · Duan Lightfoot
- [Demystifying application networking in the cloud](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/675-demystifying-application-networking-in-the-cloud) · Duan Lightfoot


## Links

- [X](https://twitter.com/labeveryday)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanlightfoot/)