Engineering Manager
AI Innovation
Leading an incubation team exploring innovative product areas at the intersection of edge computing and artificial intelligence.
- Edge Computing
- AI
- IoT
- Real-time
Hi, I'm Ori 👋
Ori Ziv — Engineering Manager
& AI Product Builder
15+ years building high-performance AI products. Co-founded Azure Video Indexer. Currently leading AI innovation and multi-agent systems at Microsoft.
About — AI Innovation Leader at Microsoft
I'm a multi-disciplinary Engineering Manager with over 15 years in tech, passionate about building innovative AI products and bridging the gap between technology and humans.
I co-founded Microsoft Azure Video Indexer — taking it from an internal startup to Microsoft's primary Video AI cloud service. Today, I lead an AI Innovation team within Microsoft Specialized Clouds, incubating new product areas in Sovereign AI and driving AI Native strategy across the org.
I'm passionate about entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship — building ideas from scratch and scaling them into impactful solutions. I co-founded the Microsoft IL Frontend Guild, and currently build multi-agent AI systems using tools like Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, Autogen, and Semantic Kernel.
I hold 5 patents in video AI technology, and have won the Microsoft Global Hackathon Grand Prize (2023) among other recognitions.
BSc, Ben-Gurion UniversityMA in HCI, Reichman University
Impact — Ori Ziv's Selected AI Projects and Products
Co-Founder
Azure Video Indexer
Co-founded and scaled Microsoft's AI-powered video analysis platform from internal incubation to a globally deployed enterprise product.
- Azure
- AI/ML
- Video Analysis
- Enterprise
Engineering Lead
Edge RAG
Led end-to-end development of an evaluation framework and deployment of small language models to production in a retrieval augmented generation platform across hybrid and edge infrastructures via Azure Arc.
- RAG
- Azure Arc
- Hybrid Cloud
- AI/ML
Co-Founder
Microsoft IL Frontend Guild
Co-founded a cross-org community driving frontend engineering excellence and knowledge sharing across Microsoft Israel.
- React
- TypeScript
- Design Systems
- Community
Personal R&D
Smart Home Lab
Designing and building an intelligent home ecosystem exploring home automation and ambient computing.
- Home Assistant
- IoT
- Automation
- Sovereign AI
Experience — Ori Ziv's 15+ Years in Tech Leadership
2024–Present
Head of AI Innovation, Microsoft Specialized Clouds
Microsoft (opens in a new tab)Leading the Incubation Group driving Sovereign AI innovation. Currently building AI Native organization tooling, guidance, and infrastructure using multi-agent systems with Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, Autogen, and Semantic Kernel. Previously led the public preview launch of Azure Edge RAG — a platform bringing generative AI to edge and disconnected environments via Azure Arc, overseeing a cross-functional, multi-timezone team delivering end-to-end evaluation capabilities including data science research for human and auto RAG evals.
2021–2024
Head of AI & Experiences, Principal Engineering Group Manager
Microsoft (opens in a new tab)Led the Experience and Data Science teams (M2, managing 2 EMs) at Azure Video Indexer, driving AI-powered video analysis solutions. Spearheaded integration of LLMs and SLMs into the product, ensuring security, quality, and product excellence. Led a comprehensive 3-month research initiative on securing LLMs, presented to Microsoft CTO and widely cited across the company.
2017–2021
Senior Software Engineering Manager
Microsoft (opens in a new tab)Led a cross-org diverse Full Stack Engineering team at Azure Storage Media & Edge. Head of Front End Engineering for Azure Video Indexer. Tech stack: Node.js, AKS, Angular. Co-founded the Microsoft Israel Front End community & meetups guild.
2015–2017
Lead Front End Engineer & Azure Video Indexer Co-founder
Microsoft (opens in a new tab)As part of the Microsoft Incubation Group, single-handedly built Azure Video Indexer's front end from idea to internal exit into a production GA Microsoft product — including compliance certifications, accessibility, localization, UX and UI design. Video Indexer quickly became a leading Azure Media Service serving top M&E sector customers.
2014–2015
Web Team Lead
PowToon (opens in a new tab)Led the web engineering team at PowToon, a presentation platform enabling animated, drag-and-drop presentations that can be shared as videos across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
2013–2015
Full Stack Engineer
PowToon (opens in a new tab)Angular JS development and Python Django backend work in Tel Aviv.
2013
Front End Developer & UX Designer
Phytech (opens in a new tab)Led front end development efforts, planned and developed the main HTML5 web application including UX design. Worked with Angular, SASS, jQuery2, and Ember.
2012–2013
Teaching Assistant — Web Development
Ben-Gurion University (opens in a new tab)Teaching assistant in the Web Development course. Responsible for building and testing the main course project, and supporting students.
2012–2013
Front End Developer
Syncode Software
Web application front end development, delivering high-quality solutions using modern technologies.
Awards — Microsoft Hackathon Grand Prize Winner and Industry Recognition
Microsoft · 2025
Microsoft Global Hackathon 2025 Honorable Mention
Recognized by an Executive Challenge judge panel for a project with great potential and impact at the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2025.
Microsoft · 2024
Microsoft Global Hackathon 2024 Award Winner
Recognized by a regional Hackathon venue or Topic Challenge group in the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2024.
Microsoft · 2024
Leaders Lab Graduate
Graduated Microsoft Israel R&D's Intrapreneurship Program for Leaders.
Microsoft · 2023
Microsoft Global Hackathon Executive Challenge 2023 Winner
Won the Executive Challenge track at the 2023 Microsoft Global Hackathon.
Microsoft · 2023
Microsoft Global Hackathon 2023 Grand Prize Winner
Recognized as the Grand Prize-winning project team in the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2023. We presented the project to Kevin Scott, Microsoft CTO, after winning 1st place globally.
Microsoft · 2023
Microsoft Global Hackathon 2023 Award Winner
Recognized by a regional Hackathon venue or Topic Challenge group in the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2023.
Microsoft · 2022
Microsoft Global Hackathon 2022 Award Winner
Recognized by a Special Topic Challenge group or regional Hackathon venue in the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2022.
Microsoft · 2023
E+P Impact Award
Recognized for high-impact engineering contributions within the Experiences + Platforms organization.
IABM · 2019
Product of the Year
Won for delivering a new disruptive AI editor as part of the Video Indexer product.
IABM · 2018
Peter Wayne Golden BaM Award for Design and Innovation
1st place among the top 20 winners of NAB Show and IBC awards for the GA of Azure Video Indexer.
Patents — 5 Patents in Video AI Technology
Microsoft · Jun 2022
On-Device Artificial Intelligence Processing In-Browser
(opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Mar 2021
User Interface with Metadata Content Elements for Video Navigation (US Patent)
(opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Mar 2021
User Interface with Metadata Content Elements for Video Navigation (World Patent)
(opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Jan 2018
Media Management System for Video Data Processing and Adaptation Data Generation
(opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Aug 2016
Video Management System for Generating Video Segment Playlist Using Enhanced Segmented Videos
(opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Aug 2016
Video Segmentation and Searching by Segmentation Dimensions
(opens in a new tab)Open Source
Creator
n8n-azure
A comprehensive toolkit and guide for deploying n8n on Azure Container Apps using Azure Linux, designed for production-grade security and cost-efficiency.
- Azure
- n8n
- Container Apps
- Automation
- Terraform
Creator
CSSGen (Figma Plugin)
A popular Figma Community plugin with 34.5k+ users that extracts styles into production-ready Sass/Less variables, bridging the gap between design and code.
- Figma
- Sass
- Less
- Design-to-Code
Contact
Interested in collaboration, speaking, or just want to say hi? Reach out — I'd love to hear from you.