Dr. Lonneishea Meeks

The technology industry is undergoing a quiet but profound shift. While most professionals focus on learning new tools, frameworks, and cloud certifications, the fastest-growing investment in the industry is happening somewhere else: physical infrastructure. Hyperscale cloud providers and AI companies are investing billions into new data centers, GPU clusters, networking infrastructure, and global regions to support the next generation of AI workloads. As a result, many of the fastest-growing roles in technology are becoming data-center-centric, spanning infrastructure engineering, networking, distributed systems, AI infrastructure, and cloud architecture. At the same time, many experienced professionals are struggling to navigate the job market because they were never taught how modern infrastructure actually works. In this technical session, Dr. Lonneishea Meeks (Data & AI Architect and former NASA infrastructure architect) breaks down the infrastructure layer beneath modern computing and explains why understanding it is becoming essential for today’s tech workforce. Attendees will explore: • How hyperscale data centers power cloud platforms and AI systems • Why GPU clusters and high-performance networking are driving infrastructure investment • How cloud regions and availability zones map to real physical infrastructure • How AI workloads, applications, and data platforms run inside hyperscale environments • Why infrastructure literacy is becoming one of the most valuable skills in the current tech job market This session helps engineers, architects, and aspiring technologists build the systems-level understanding needed to navigate the evolving technology landscape and align their skills with where the industry is actually investing.