Cloud Engineer
Seven years running a retail business taught me that uptime, customer trust, and small failures that snowball are serious problems. Turns out, that's cloud engineering. I just didn't know it had a name yet.
About
I spent 7 years running my own retail business before making the leap into cloud computing. That experience taught me how to solve real problems for real people under real constraints - budget, time, things breaking at the worst moment - and I bring that same practical, ownership mindset to how I design and build cloud infrastructure.
I'm currently deep in hands-on AWS and Infrastructure-as-Code work, building out a portfolio of projects that mirror real consulting engagements rather than isolated tutorials.
AI in the Cloud
Embedding intelligence into cloud-native pipelines
Automation
If it runs twice, it should run itself
Security
Threat-aware design across every layer
Architecting Solutions
Designing systems built to survive reality
Skills
A practical, production-tested stack spanning cloud, automation, and security.
AWS core services for building secure, scalable, and resilient infrastructure across compute, storage, networking, and databases.
Event-driven architectures that scale automatically with minimal operational overhead.
Repeatable, version-controlled infrastructure at scale.
Modernizing legacy infrastructure into scalable AWS-based solutions.
CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation end to end.
Least-privilege access and hardened, defensible environments.
Packaging and orchestrating workloads reliably.
Exploring practical AI/ML integration on AWS.
Making systems measurable, diagnosable, and resilient with actionable operational insight.
Projects
A few builds that show how I approach architecture, migration, and security on AWS.
A fully serverless backend built on Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB with event-driven processing — zero idle cost and automatic scale to thousands of concurrent requests.
Moved manually managed healthcare infrastructure toward an auditable AWS platform with AWS CDK and TypeScript. Redesigned the environment as a two-AZ, three-tier architecture with public ALB and web layers, private app and Multi-AZ RDS tiers, layered security groups, Secrets Manager credentials, Auto Scaling Groups, and SSM administration without SSH. Added an event-driven S3, EventBridge, Lambda, Bedrock, and CloudWatch pipeline to review synthesized CloudFormation templates for security risks.
Refactored StartupCo’s AWS security baseline by hardening root access with MFA, introducing role-based IAM groups and least-privilege permissions, codifying the environment in Terraform, and validating the live state through incremental imports and plan reviews. The project also documents a future-ready multi-AZ target architecture with GuardDuty, CloudWatch, private application and database tiers, and layered network controls.
Deployed a statically exported Next.js portfolio to AWS using Terraform-managed infrastructure. Built a secure CloudFront and S3 architecture with Origin Access Control, HTTPS, blocked public bucket access, global content delivery, and remote Terraform state with S3 native locking for safe, repeatable operations.
Experience
Currently undertaking an intensive part-time cloud engineering program focused on AWS and real-world project delivery. Building practical expertise across first-principles engineering, cloud fundamentals, system design, Linux and Bash, Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, TypeScript automation, cloud security, and AI/ML on AWS while developing solutions based on realistic scenarios and operational problems.
Founded and scaled a nationwide nutrition retail business through digital transformation, building and managing an end-to-end e-commerce platform while maintaining 100% five-star customer satisfaction on Google Reviews. Developed expertise in customer experience, online sales optimization, data-driven decision-making, growth strategy, and business continuity.
Delivered operational support across 95–160 ft superyachts, progressing from dayworker to permanent deckhand while managing preventative maintenance, technical equipment inventories, documentation, docking operations, and strict safety and environmental standards. Contributed to shipyard refits and overhauls, developing a precision-focused approach to coordination and reliable execution in high-stakes environments.
Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (opens credential link)
Amazon Web Services
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner – Foundational (opens credential link)
Amazon Web Services
Cloud Engineer Academy Graduate (opens credential link)
Cloud Engineer Academy
Contact
Have a migration, an architecture problem, or a role in mind? Send a note and I'll get back to you.