Former Google, AWS, and Epic Games engineering leader will unify StrongMind's products on a single platform and build AI into how the company engineers software

CHANDLER, Ariz., Aug. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- StrongMind, a leading provider of digital curriculum, learning technology, and homeschool programs for K–12 students, today announced the appointment of Rui Costa as Chief Technology Officer. Costa brings more than a decade of experience shipping AI and machine learning systems in production at Google, Amazon Web Services, and Epic Games, and will lead StrongMind's engineering organization as it builds a shared platform foundation and makes artificial intelligence central to how the company designs and delivers software.

Costa's mandate is to complete a unified platform on which every StrongMind product is built, deployed, and secured the same way, and to make the company "AI-native" — treating AI not as a feature bolted onto products, but as the way software is built at StrongMind, with engineering judgment mattering more rather than less.

"Rui combines deep, hands-on engineering with the ability to translate hard technical work into decisions the whole business can act on," said Damian Creamer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of StrongMind. "He has already stood up the foundation our products will run on for the next decade, and he understands the position only StrongMind can hold: real AI grounded in accredited curriculum, inside real programs, with real teachers and real records. There is no better person to lead our technology into that future."

A career building AI and platforms at scale

Before joining StrongMind, Costa held senior engineering roles across three of the most demanding platforms in technology:

At Google, as a Senior Software and Machine Learning Engineer, he built the Google Speech Analysis Framework — a core component of Google Cloud Contact Center Insights — along with developer tools for Google Cloud's natural language, speech, and vision services. He holds a patent for securely sharing pre-trained machine learning models at scale and co-authored the Google Cloud Cookbook for O'Reilly. That work reflects a philosophy Costa carries into his new role: an AI strategy built on engineering discipline rather than novelty.

At Amazon Web Services, as a Principal Solutions Developer, he led enterprise prototype engagements and delivered the first public success story for generative AI in manufacturing, with Volkswagen Production and Logistics. He also built an MLOps framework for regulated healthcare deployments — experience that taught him how compliance and delivery can coexist.

At Epic Games, as a Principal Software Development Engineer, he built platform and developer tooling for the Epic Games Store at a scale of millions of daily users, including the Gifting Service and a cache-invalidation service that reduced streaming costs, and rebuilt the Achievements system using agentic AI. Epic is where he saw firsthand how shared platform standards let many teams ship independently — the model he has brought to StrongMind.

Earlier in his career, Costa served as Director of Cloud Engineering at Alphaserve Technologies, where he established the firm's cloud consulting practice, and as Data Center Practice Manager at Presidio, leading engineering teams on large-scale infrastructure programs. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, where he was a teaching assistant for computer organization and architecture, and remains an active researcher in database systems and cryptography.

Building the foundation StrongMind's products will run on

Since joining StrongMind, Costa has established the company's engineering operating model and stood up its platform foundation across identity, runtime, API, security standards, and technology stack. Measured against the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's platform capability model, twelve of thirteen domains are now covered — most of it built within ninety days.

Among the early milestones under his direction: the company took its first production service live on a new Kubernetes platform standard with promotion gates and full audit; defined an API platform standard and gateway conventions, with the new gateway replacing the legacy system in staging with zero downtime; and set the direction and proof of concept for an identity platform migration spanning 153 client applications and roughly 292,000 accounts. He also standardized the engineering stack on Go, React, and Protobuf with shared packages so any engineer can contribute to any service, and created an architectural decision record system that makes the reasoning behind every platform choice available to both engineers and AI agents.

"My focus is on three things," said Costa. "Finish the platform foundation so every product ships on it — one way to authenticate, one way to deploy, one way to build. Make StrongMind deliberately AI-native, where AI is how our software gets built. And own the position only StrongMind can hold: AI grounded in accredited curriculum, inside a real program, with real teachers and real records. That is a combination almost no one else in education has."

Over the next twelve months, Costa plans to complete the identity platform migration and retire the legacy system, bring StrongMind's products onto the shared platform, take the rebuilt Communication Hub to production, and stand up dedicated reliability and quality engineering functions — with a standard that no student or family communication path operates without monitoring capable of catching a failure the same day.

About StrongMind

StrongMind is a learning experience company creating innovative technology and curriculum for families, educators, and schools. Its growing portfolio includes StrongMind Homeschool, launching September 30, 2026; StrongMind CoursePro, an AI-assisted course-building solution launching in October 2026 that empowers educators and curriculum teams to create engaging, standards-aligned learning experiences; and StrongMind Campus, a next-generation K–12 learning platform launching for the 2027–28 school year. StrongMind Homeschool, StrongMind CoursePro, and StrongMind Campus are all powered by StrongMind Intelligence, the company's proprietary AI layer designed to enable more personalized, intuitive, and meaningful learning experiences.

Founded in 2000 and rebranded as StrongMind in 2015, the company's work is grounded in decades of experience in digital learning and research-backed curriculum. StrongMind has earned multiple Regional Emmy Awards and recognition as a Top 25 Global Impact-Certified EdTech Company. Its mission is to empower learners through innovative tools, flexible learning experiences, and a deeply supportive community—advancing its vision to unleash the full potential of every learner. Learn more at strongmind.com.

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SOURCE StrongMind