# Nikhil Mungel
> Head of AI R&D at Cribl

## Bio
Nikhil is based in San Francisco, building distributed systems and AI teams at SaaS companies for over 20 years. His background spans AI, observability platforms, developer ecosystems, and high-scale consumer social products, with leadership roles at Substack, Splunk, ThoughtWorks, and most recently, Cribl where he currently serves as the Head of AI R&D. At Cribl, he works on setting technical direction and leading teams researching and building LLM-powered systems for IT and security data transformation and analysis. Earlier in his career, he helped grow Splunk’s platform adoption as Head of the Developer Ecosystem, spanning developer experience, APIs, integrations, and partner-facing tooling. He later led engineering at Substack across distributed systems, mobile apps, and mission-critical email deliverability. His current focus is making complex systems more intuitive with AI, while building the platform foundations that make AI in SaaS dependable and repeatable.

## Short Bio
Nikhil is based in San Francisco, building distributed systems and AI teams at SaaS companies for over 20 years. His background spans AI, observability platforms, developer ecosystems, and high-scale consumer social products, with leadership roles at Substack, Splunk, ThoughtWorks, and most recently, Cribl where he currently serves as the Head of AI R&D.

## Socials
- [@nikhilmungel](https://linkedin.com/in/nikhilmungel)
- [@nmungel](https://x.com/nmungel)
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/hyfather)
- [Substack](https://engmanager.substack.com)
- [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/?prompt=who%20is%20nikhil%20mungel)
- [Planes](/planes)
- [Media Kit](/media)

## Selected Bylines
- **Where the True Value of SaaS Lies in the Agentic Coding Era**
  Guest Author | How buying software transfers risk and preserves focus
  Link: https://techstrong.it/contributed-content/from-vibes-to-verification-where-the-true-value-of-saas-lies-in-the-agentic-coding-era/

- **Why the CIO is uniquely positioned to lead the digital workforce**
  Guest Author | Now that frontier AI has reached a reliability threshold for high-value, here is how CIOs can expand their role
  Link: https://www.cio.com/article/4160987/why-the-cio-is-uniquely-positioned-to-lead-the-digital-workforce.html

- **OCSF explained: The shared data language security teams have been missing**
  Guest Author |  The Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework is an open standard for security data that helps normalize logs and telemetry so security teams can move fast and keep up with agentic threats.
  Link: https://venturebeat.com/security/ocsf-explained-the-shared-data-language-security-teams-have-been-missing

- **The Davos reality check on AI ROI: Why tools don’t pay off until work changes**
  Guest Author |  CIOs and CISOs can raise the odds of payoff by treating AI as an operating-model change with hard metrics, stage gates and security controls.
  Link: https://www.cio.com/article/4145044/the-davos-reality-check-on-ai-roi-why-tools-dont-pay-off-until-work-changes.html

- **Why 90% AI reliability isn’t even close to good enough**
  Opinion | Breaking down Andrej Karpathy's March of Nines
  Link: https://venturebeat.com/technology/karpathys-march-of-nines-shows-why-90-ai-reliability-isnt-even-close-to

- **FinOps for AI Agents**
  Guest Author | Loop limits, tool-call caps and the new unit economics of agentic SaaS
  Link: https://www.infoworld.com/article/4138748/finops-for-agents-loop-limits-tool-call-caps-and-the-new-unit-economics-of-agentic-saas.html

- **Why Should IT Leaders Be Thinking About Model Context Protocol?**
  Bylined article in Unite.AI on the significance of MCP for enterprise IT.
  Link: https://www.unite.ai/why-should-it-leaders-be-thinking-about-model-context-protocol/

## Expert Commentary
- **The New Reality of Tech Careers: High Mobility, Low Confidence**
  Expert commentary on how AI is affecting the tech hiring market
  Link: https://www.dice.com/career-advice/the-new-reality-of-tech-careers-high-mobility-low-confidence

- **10 essential release criteria for launching AI agents** (2026)
  Expert commentary on how to secure and harden agentic software
  Link: https://www.infoworld.com/article/4105884/10-essential-release-criteria-for-launching-ai-agents.html

- **4 New Year’s resolutions for devops success** (2025)
  Featured commentary in InfoWorld on AI skills for DevOps success in 2026.
  Link: https://www.infoworld.com/article/4108953/4-new-years-resolutions-for-devops-success.html

- **50+ Expert Predictions: Agentic AI, Data Governance, & Security** (2025)
  Featured in StarCIO's 2026 predictions roundup alongside industry leaders.
  Link: https://drive.starcio.com/2025/12/predictions-agentic-ai-data-governance-security-2026/

- **Is AI the end of IT as we know it?** (2025)
  Quoted expert commentary in CIO.com on the shift to managing virtual agents.
  Link: https://www.cio.com/article/4033097/is-ai-the-end-of-it-as-we-know-it.html

- **Generative AI in IT: Transforming Roles, Not Replacing Them**
  Featured commentary in Centizen blog.
  Link: https://www.centizen.com/generative-ai-in-it-transforming-roles-not-replacing-them/

- **Exploring Cribl Copilot!** (2024)
  Guest appearance on 'Cribl: The Stream Life' Podcast (Episode 105) hosted by Bradley Chambers
  Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exploring-cribl-copilot/id1536018735?i=1000658685210

- **Cribl Amazing Data Stories: Your Guide to the Data Engine of Tomorrow** (2024)
  Contributor to Chapter 10: 'Cribl, AI, and You' in this published book.
  Link: https://assets.ctfassets.net/xnqwd8kotbaj/i327ZKu2iLeP0X4lzx3s7/2df2dbad5f2ce1966326adc27842d893/Cribl_Book_IT_VDigital.pdf

- **The One Where Meet Cribl Copilot** (2025)
  An introduction to Cribl Copilot hosted by Ed Bailey
  Link: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/19128/658073?q=ai-copilot

## Speaking
- **Using Ruby to Craft and Test Beautiful Command Line Applications** (2012)
  Invited speaker at RubyConf 2012.
  Link: https://2012.rubyconfindia.org/talks.html

- **Splunk Cloud: Under The Hood** (2016)
  Invited speaker at Splunk’s user conference, presenting how a commercial observability cloud platform is operated at scale
  Link: https://conf.splunk.com/files/2016/slides/splunk-cloud-a-peek-under-the-hood.pdf

- **Splunk Project Nova** (2017)
  Invited speaker for Splunk's user conference, discussing how to analyze logs from microservices
  Link: https://conf.splunk.com/files/2017/slides/analyzing-logs-from-microservices.pdf

- **Career Progression for New Grads with Zero Experience** (2021)
  Workshop at CodeDay Labs mentoring early-career engineers.
  Link: https://www.codeday.org/e/labs/7bvbui160qihvd0bft67fk4uk5

- **Transforming Data Management with AI and Cribl Copilot** (2025)
  Featured speaker at CriblCon 2025, discussing schema transformations and human-in-the-loop AI.
  Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZrGyB5ObGs

- **How to Incorporate AI and Cribl Copilot Into Your Workflows** (2025)
  BrightTALK Webinar co-presentation on onboarding data and generating queries with Copilot.
  Link: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/19128/659168?q=ai-powered-governance

- **How to Disrupt SaaS with AI** (2026)
  Invited speaker at AI Camp 2026 in San Francisco, discussing how to use AI to disrupt SaaS.
  Link: https://www.aicamp.ai/event/eventdetails/W2026011417

## Research & Inventions
- **Distributed Systems, Obervability, and AI**
  My work in the field of Distributed Systems, Observability, and AI has been cited in 855 publications by researchers and practitioners across the industry, including Palantir, Intel, Raytheon, SAP, IBM, Salesforce, Uber, Thoughtspot, Microsoft, Elasticsearch, Dell, Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Verizon, Snowflake, Oracle, Twitter, Amazon, and Cloudflare.
  Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ

- **Proxying HTTP requests for microservices** (2020)
  A gateway service for Distributed Systems that routes incoming HTTP requests to the right microservice based on the request method and headers, then creates and sends the corresponding outgoing request so the microservice can perform the requested action without being directly exposed. Developed before microservices were widely adopted, it helped shape how the industry routes and secures requests at scale in a microservices-based architecture.
  Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=4NmYEi4AAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

- **Recommending query templates during query formation** (2021)
  A system that suggests structured data-retrieval queries (like SQL) as you type by recognizing key fields in your query, matching them to saved query patterns, using AI to recommend missing values, and showing the completed query for you to use.
  Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=4NmYEi4AAAAJ:u-x6o8ySG0sC

- **Recommending query parameters based on results of automatically generated queries** (2022)
  A system that analyzes a partial structured data query (like SQL) as you type, runs related helper queries to learn about the available data, and then uses AI to recommend specific parameters you can add to complete and refine your query.
  Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=4NmYEi4AAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C

- **Recommending query parameters based on tenant information** (2022)
  A system that suggests structured query parameters as you type by recognizing your partial query and using your organization’s past query usage to recommend relevant commands, functions, or field values to add.
  Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=4NmYEi4AAAAJ:2osOgNQ5qMEC

- **Executing one query based on results of another query** (2025)
  A browser-based interface that uses AI to recommend and run multiple structured data queries side by side, showing each query and its results in separate areas and enabling you to execute one query based on the results of another.
  Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=4NmYEi4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=4NmYEi4AAAAJ:zYLM7Y9cAGgC

## Blog Posts
- **What is Engagement** (Aug 14, 2021)
  Dives into what is team engagement and explores ways to track it.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/what-is-engagement

- **Engagement Across Multiple Teams** (Aug 22, 2021)
  Exploring how to assess engagement across teams of teams.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/engagement-across-multiple-teams

- **What Affects Engagement (1/2)** (Aug 28, 2021)
  A look at the factors that impact team engagement.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/what-affects-engagement

- **What Affects Engagement (2/2)** (Sep 4, 2021)
  Deeper dive into the factors that impact team engagement.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/what-affects-engagement-22

- **Purposeful One-on-ones (Part I)** (Sep 26, 2021)
  Guidance on conducting intentional one-on-one meetings.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/purposeful-one-on-ones-part-i

- **Purposeful One-on-ones for Engineering Managers (Part II)** (Oct 28, 2021)
  The importance of lateral one-on-one meetings with peers and adjacent organizations.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/purposeful-one-on-ones-for-engineering

- **What Makes Engineering Organizations Successful** (Nov 10, 2021)
  In this post I share a practical way to judge whether an engineering org is successful by looking at the balance between outcomes and engagement, then unpack how vision, value-creating results, and engagement signals fit together.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/what-makes-engineering-organizations

- **Attention Is All You Have** (Sep 16, 2023)
  Explore the central role of attention in our conscious thought and its impact on mental processes.
  Link: https://engmanager.substack.com/p/attention-is-all-you-have

- **The Cribl Copilot Difference: Explainable and Steerable AI** (Jun 5, 2025)
  I conceived Cribl Copilot and guided my team to build it, and in this post I share how we made it explainable and steerable so humans stay in control.
  Link: https://cribl.io/blog/the-cribl-copilot-difference-explainabl-and-steerabl-ai-built-for-humans/

- **Enterprise AI Is Not a Magic Trick, It’s a System Design Problem** (Jul 10, 2025)
  In this post I argue that getting enterprise AI into production is an architecture problem, then share a practical decision guide for when prompting is enough, when fine-tuning earns its keep, and when training from scratch is worth the overhead.
  Link: https://cribl.io/blog/enterprise-ai-is-not-a-magic-trick-its-a-system-design-problem/

- **MCP and the New Power Struggle in the SaaS Stack** (Aug 7, 2025)
  Co-authored with Nick Heudecker. Analyzes the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an existential threat and opportunity for SaaS vendors.
  Link: https://cribl.io/blog/mcp-and-the-new-power-struggle-in-the-saas-stack/

- **How to Monitor NVIDIA GPU Metrics with Cribl Edge & Stream** (Aug 13, 2025)
  Technical tutorial on collecting real-time GPU telemetry for AI/ML workloads.
  Link: https://cribl.io/blog/how-to-monitor-nvidia-gpu-metrics-with-cribl-edge-and-stream-complete/

## Technical Writing
- **SSH uses four TCP segments for each character you type** (2013)
  Front page of Hacker News at #2 in May 2013.
  Link: https://blog.hyfather.com/blog/2013/04/18/ssh-uses-four-tcp-segments-for-each-character/

- **Manual for ifconfig** (2013)
  Widely used technical resource with thousands of page hits per month.
  Link: https://blog.hyfather.com/blog/2013/03/04/ifconfig/

## Hobby Projects
- **HTTP Colon**
  The best tool to understand and learn about HTTP headers, used for debugging and optimizing HTTP requests and responses.
  Link: https://httpcolon.dev/

- **paperairplanes.js**
  Tiny library for interactive paper-plane SVGs
  Link: https://mungel.com/planes