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About Jordan

Learning Tech Through Grit

I'm a Software Development Engineer and Platform Engineering Lead who believes in getting hands dirty to figure things out. While I have a B.S. degree, my real education happens in the trenches—debugging production disasters at 3 AM, breaking things to understand how they work, and turning "it should just work" into something that actually does.

Professional Background

My tech journey started in New Mexico where I began studying Computer Science while working at Best Buy's Geek Squad—where I met my future wife Kimberly. When a federal contracting help desk role offered better opportunities but conflicted with school, I made the pragmatic choice to drop out and learn on the job. This decision led to rapid growth through various IT administration roles, eventually becoming senior or lead admin across multiple organizations.

After a brief stint in Colorado, I realized federal contracting in the Southwest wasn't where I wanted to build my career. I transitioned to lead IT admin for a finance company, then moved into systems engineering for a medical backend software SaaS company that processed around 15,000 prescriptions per minute—serious scale that taught me about high-availability systems and the critical intersection of infrastructure reliability and business continuity.

Through several roles in Oregon, I discovered Veeam Backup & Recovery with VMware and was blown away by how much better it was than anything else I'd used. I actively sought out Veeam and joined as a Channel Sales Engineer, covering everything from small regional VARs to global players like WWT across Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Northern California, and Nevada. I worked with their entire ecosystem including storage partners like Nimble, Pure, NetApp, HPE, Dell/EMC, and ExaGrid—developing deep expertise in how different technologies integrate and the architectural trade-offs each brings.

As HPE acquired Nimble, I was brought into their Solutions Architect presales team as a "worldwide storage ambassador" and SME across multiple systems—Nimble, 3PAR, Primera, StoreOnce, and hyperconverged infrastructure. (Shoutout to Nimble's Cache-Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL)—brilliant technology that made order out of otherwise chaotic I/O patterns.) This role honed my ability to translate complex technical architectures into business value and design solutions that scale.

Feeling my technical edge slipping in presales, I worked through my network to land a role at AWS. In classic fashion, I was initially rejected for presales as "not technical enough," then immediately hired for post-sales implementation work. The irony wasn't lost on me, but AWS opened up the cloud world I'd been missing, and the possibilities finally clicked. More importantly, it taught me how to think about infrastructure as code and how platform decisions ripple through entire application ecosystems.

Currently at fabric, I'm applying those cloud and Kubernetes skills to platform engineering—building developer-centric infrastructure that enables teams to ship faster while maintaining operational excellence. I'm focused on creating self-service platforms that abstract complexity without hiding critical operational concerns, and designing systems that developers actually want to use.

Platform Engineering at Scale

Currently focused on building platform infrastructure that enables teams to ship faster while maintaining operational excellence. My work centers on creating self-service platforms that abstract complexity without hiding critical operational concerns—designing systems that developers actually want to use.

Core Focus Areas:

Developer Experience Engineering: Designing CI/CD pipelines that eliminate friction while maintaining security and compliance. Building self-service deployment workflows and exploring modern GitOps patterns with GitLab CI/CD components and Argo CD for streamlined continuous deployment.

Kubernetes Platform Architecture: Implementing cluster architecture patterns that support multi-tenant workloads and automatic scaling. Deep work with Amazon EKS and Karpenter for intelligent node provisioning, plus designing operator patterns and Helm library templates that application teams can consume as simple Kubernetes resources.

Infrastructure Automation: Building Terraform modules and GitOps workflows that enable infrastructure changes to follow the same review and deployment patterns as application code. Focus on infrastructure that's both declarative and debuggable, with particular emphasis on cost optimization and reliability patterns.

AI-Enhanced Development Workflows: Actively exploring Claude Code and MCP servers for enhancing developer productivity. Working with the Model Context Protocol to integrate AI tooling into existing development workflows and investigating how AI can improve platform engineering practices.

When I'm not breaking and fixing things professionally, I'm lounging with my wife and our small zoo of cats (too many), plus our dog. You'll find me hunting down unhinged custom game modes in Fortnite, running yet another Baldur's Gate 3 campaign, or occasional offroading adventures. Recently relocated from the Northwest to New England and loving the change of scenery.

Technical Leadership Philosophy

I believe exceptional platform engineering comes from balancing technical excellence with business pragmatism. My approach focuses on:

  • Developer Velocity: Building platforms that make the right thing the easy thing
  • Operational Excellence: Designing for failure, monitoring what matters, automating toil away
  • Strategic Technical Debt: Making informed tradeoffs between speed and sustainability
  • Cross-functional Partnership: Translating technical complexity into business value

The best infrastructure is invisible to those building on it—reliable, scalable, and intuitive.

Approach to Technology & Architecture

My expertise comes from practical experience solving real-world problems across the entire technology stack. I believe the best solutions emerge from understanding not just how technologies work, but how they fail, scale, and interact in production environments.

Systems Thinking: Having worked from bare metal to application layer, I approach problems holistically—considering how infrastructure decisions impact developer productivity, how application architecture affects operational complexity, and how platform design influences business velocity. Every technical decision is an architectural decision.

Technical Leadership: I focus on building systems that teams actually want to use while maintaining operational excellence. This means creating abstractions that hide complexity without hiding control, designing APIs that feel intuitive, and building platforms that enable rapid experimentation without sacrificing reliability.

Full-Stack Evolution: My transition from infrastructure to full-stack development isn't a career pivot—it's the natural evolution of platform thinking. Understanding how applications run in production makes me a better application developer. Knowing the operational challenges helps me design better APIs, choose appropriate data persistence strategies, and build applications that operators can actually support.

Current Learning & Exploration

I'm strategically expanding into full-stack development to build complete solutions that span from infrastructure to user experience. This isn't just learning new frameworks—it's applying platform engineering principles to application development and bringing operational excellence to the entire development lifecycle.

Active Learning Areas:

  • Modern Full-Stack Development: Growing skills in Python, TypeScript, and Go for building developer tools and platform solutions
  • AI-Enhanced Workflows: Deep exploration of Claude Code and MCP servers for improving development productivity
  • Advanced Kubernetes Patterns: Experimenting with operator development, custom resource definitions, and platform abstractions
  • GitOps Evolution: Working with modern GitLab CI/CD components and Argo CD integration patterns

This blog documents that journey—the successful implementations, lessons learned from failures, and architectural insights from working with technology at scale. I share both technical details and decision-making frameworks behind building resilient systems, with a focus on practical solutions that others can apply in their own environments.

Let's Connect

I'm always interested in discussing platform engineering challenges, technical leadership opportunities, and the intersection of AI tooling with developer experience. Whether you're scaling engineering teams, building next-generation platforms, or exploring how AI can enhance development workflows, I'd love to hear about it.

Connect with me: Email | LinkedIn | GitHub

Particularly interested in principal+ engineering roles where technical strategy, platform innovation, and AI-enhanced development intersect.

"Like a shadetree mechanic who can fix anything with creativity and elbow grease, I tackle complex platform challenges through hands-on experience and strategic thinking. Not just building infrastructure—enabling entire engineering organizations to ship with confidence."