Rachad Alao

Senior Engineering Director, Meta

As a seasoned technology leader, Rachad brings over two decades of experience in the high-tech industry, with a focus on responsible artificial intelligence, operating systems and embedded systems. Currently, he serves as Senior Director of Engineering at Meta, leading Meta’s Generative AI Trust and Safety organization, which focuses on building safe and responsible GenAI foundation models, including Llama open-source models. Rachad's professional journey spans multiple roles and companies. Before rejoining Meta, he was Senior Director of Engineering at Google, where he led the Applied Responsible AI effort as well as Google Maps User-Generated Content, Trust and Safety AI engineering teams. Previously, he was Director of Engineering at Facebook AI, leading the Facebook Responsible AI effort centered around AI fairness, privacy, security, robustness, and safety, as well as transparency and control. Rachad's experience also includes six years at Google as an Engineering Director, helping Android scale to 3 billion devices. He led Android's multimedia efforts, including Android OS Audio, Video, and Camera teams, contributing to the development of Google's Pixel Camera and a more secure Android multimedia stack. Earlier in his career, Rachad spent nine years at Bluestreak Technology in Montreal, serving as Chief Technology Officer and other engineering leadership roles. As CTO, he helped build the company's embedded Flash and HTML technology, deploying it to millions of devices for Orange France and Time Warner Cable US. Rachad holds a Master's degree in Telecommunication Engineering and Computer Architecture from Telecom ParisTech in Paris. He was born in Benin, West Africa and grew up in Côte d'Ivoire before moving to France at the age of 16 to pursue his studies.