Experience

15+ Years of Platform Engineering Excellence

Remote work pioneer since 2011. Principal-level expertise in DevOps, multi-cloud infrastructure, and custom OS development. Employee of the Month winner (Sept & Dec 2024).

15+
Years Experience
40:1
Performance Improvement
6
Year Platform Owner
2011
AWS Cloud Pioneer

Professional Journey

From database administration to principal platform engineering, building systems that scale.

Tacitsoft LLC

Founder & Principal Engineer

Current

Building proper.legal — AI-powered Legal Case Management SaaS platform serving solo practitioners to enterprise law firms.

  • Developing cloud-native architecture with enterprise-grade security (256-bit encryption, SOC 2 program)
  • Implementing AI assistant integration (Llama 3.1, Claude, GPT-4) for legal document processing
  • Creating scalable multi-tenant SaaS platform with document management and deadline automation
  • Live platform at proper.legal demonstrating technical leadership in legal technology

CIQ

Principal Solutions Delivery Engineer

Dec 2022 – Aug 2025

Led platform engineering organization, delivering multi-cloud automation that enabled millions in partnership revenue.

  • Built DevOps engineering organization from ground up, scaling team and establishing platform standards
  • Delivered CAMP (Cloud-Agnostic Management Platform) supporting AWS/Azure/GCP/OCI
  • Achieved 40:1 performance improvement optimizing Azure HPC deployment (40+ minutes to <1 minute)
  • Created USIF (Universal System Inspection Framework) adopted by top FinTech customers
  • Led large-scale validation across 1,000+ GCP instances for enterprise reliability benchmarks
  • Employee of the Month (Sept & Dec 2024)

CloudBees

Senior DevOps Support Engineer

June 2021 – Dec 2022

Owned complex CI/CD escalations for Fortune 500 FinTech development teams.

  • One of two support engineers cross-trained on entire CloudBees platform (CI, CD/RO, Accelerator)
  • Conducted JVM performance analysis and Kubernetes troubleshooting for enterprise environments
  • Mentored global engineering teams and established DevOps incident response procedures
  • Built internal automation tools improving mean time to resolution by 60%
  • JVM Performance Certified by Ram Lakshmanan (yCrash author)
  • Identified critical compliance violations in FinTech CI/CD pipelines

Rackspace Technologies

Linux Systems Engineer III

Jan 2018 – Apr 2021

MySQL SME supporting enterprise database infrastructure with DevOps automation.

  • Developed DevOps automation tools integrated with enterprise infrastructure management
  • Maintained NPS-10 customer satisfaction through expert DevOps consulting
  • Authored internal automation tools adopted across support engineering organization
  • Served as MySQL Subject Matter Expert for database automation and CI/CD integration

GardenQuest / 10-20 Media

Platform Engineer & Database Architect

2011 – 2017

Built and maintained the entire infrastructure and database platform for pioneered social gaming platform GardenQuest.

  • Engineered complete AWS cloud infrastructure from ground up (2011 cloud pioneer)
  • Designed and maintained high-performance database architecture supporting millions of users
  • Built scalable 3D social gaming platform with real-time multiplayer capabilities
  • Maintained 99.9%+ uptime over 6 years with zero data loss
  • Pioneered cloud-native gaming infrastructure before it became standard
  • Managed full platform lifecycle: development, staging, production, disaster recovery

Notable Projects & Platforms

Enterprise-scale platforms that solve real-world problems.

proper.legal

AI-Powered Legal Case Management

Cloud-native SaaS platform serving solo practitioners to enterprise law firms with document management, AI integration, and enterprise security.

AI/ML Multi-tenant SaaS Enterprise Security Document Processing

CAMP

Cloud-Agnostic Management Platform

Multi-cloud DevOps orchestration enabling consistent CI/CD across AWS/Azure/GCP/OCI with automated policy enforcement.

Multi-Cloud Kubernetes GitOps Policy Automation

USIF

Universal System Inspection Framework

Container debugging platform integrated into CI/CD pipelines for automated security scanning and performance validation.

Container Security CI/CD Integration FinTech Compliance Automated Testing

AWS WorkSpaces Image Factory

VDI Image Automation

Fully automated VDI image creation and deployment pipeline with enterprise identity integration and self-service provisioning.

AWS WorkSpaces Identity Integration Automated Provisioning Cost Tracking

Custom OS Images

Enterprise Operating Systems

Tailored operating system images optimized for specific cloud workloads, security requirements, and enterprise compliance.

OS Customization Security Hardening Cloud Optimization Compliance

GardenQuest Gaming Platform

3D Social Gaming Infrastructure (2011-2017)

Complete AWS cloud platform for pioneered 3D social gaming with millions of users. Built entire infrastructure and database architecture from ground up.

AWS Pioneer (2011) High-Performance Database Real-time Multiplayer 6-Year Platform Ownership

Technical Expertise

Deep expertise across the modern technology stack.

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS Pioneer (2011) • Azure • GCP • OCI
  • Multi-cloud architecture
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • 6-year platform ownership (GardenQuest)
  • Custom OS Images

Container & Orchestration

  • Kubernetes (production-grade)
  • Docker • Helm • Mirantis
  • Container security
  • Service mesh
  • Image optimization

CI/CD & DevOps

  • Jenkins • GitHub Actions • GitLab CI
  • CloudBees enterprise CI/CD
  • Pipeline optimization
  • Blue-green deployments
  • GitOps workflows

Database & Performance

  • MySQL (Expert • Sun certified)
  • PostgreSQL
  • Performance tuning
  • High availability
  • Disaster recovery

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus • Grafana • ELK Stack
  • Distributed tracing
  • SLI/SLO frameworks
  • Incident management
  • Alerting & automation

Languages & Automation

  • Python • Bash • Go • C/C++
  • Advanced scripting & tooling
  • YAML/JSON expertise
  • Shell scripting
  • Infrastructure automation

Education & Certifications

B.S. Computer Science

Southern Illinois University

Focus: System architecture and distributed computing

B.S. Theology

Iona Disciples College

Focus: Ethics, philosophy, and critical thinking

Professional Certifications

  • JVM Performance Certification — Ram Lakshmanan (yCrash), 2022
  • MySQL DBA Certification — Sun Microsystems, 2009

Beyond the Code

Remote Work Pioneer

Leading distributed teams since 2011 — before it was cool. Expert in asynchronous collaboration and building remote-first engineering cultures.

Security Sleuth

Discovered datacenter-wide malware using forensic techniques, leading to same-day patches from Microsoft and Norton. Problem-solving in the wild.

Published Photographer

Published photographer and former Olympic diving hopeful. The same attention to detail and precision that drives my photography informs my approach to system architecture.

Ready to work with a principal-level platform engineer?

15+ years of enterprise expertise. Custom OS images, multi-cloud architecture, and platform reliability without the full-time hire.

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