AI Engineering
Responsible AI-assisted delivery, durable context, governance, and human judgment.
Explore AI engineering ↗
Software · Integration · Cloud · Architecture · AI
Solve what matters.Build what lasts.
I build software, platforms, and cloud systems for complex environments. The technology matters. So do the people who have to trust it, use it, and keep it running.
Field of view
- Software development
- Systems integration
- Cloud & platform engineering
- Systems architecture
- Practical AI
01 / Experience in practice
With more than 15 years of practical experience, I have managed thousands of servers and more than 500 AWS accounts.
My work spans software development, systems integration, platforms, cloud computing, identity and access, infrastructure, and organizational controls. I have driven roughly $5M in annual cloud savings and kept hundreds of services operational through critical events.
02 / Explore by focus
Go deeper where the work is most relevant.
One broad portfolio can hold several strong engineering lenses. Choose the path that matches the problem you are trying to solve, then follow the work into projects, decisions, and diagrams.
Platform Engineering
Internal platforms, developer experience, automation, and operational clarity.
Explore platform engineering ↗Cloud Engineering
AWS scale, infrastructure, cost stewardship, reliability, and organizational controls.
Explore cloud engineering ↗Software Engineering
Applications, APIs, systems integration, automation, and practical delivery.
Explore software engineering ↗03 / Production work
The work that had to hold up under pressure.
These are the production systems, migrations, and operational services that shaped how I approach reliability, security, ownership, and delivery. Several backend services, scripts, and other components were developed with AI assistance, while design, validation, and operational responsibility stayed human-led. Each one has a deeper evidence view.
CloudCage
Led a team of engineers to build an AWS Organizations metadata system that turned fragmented account information into a usable cloud solution for ownership, visibility, and operational decisions.
170+ accounts in the delivery story · 500+ account estate
Stack AWS Organizations · API Gateway · Lambda · DynamoDB · Kubernetes · Terraform
Read the CloudCage story ↗Cloud Cost Governance
Drove roughly $5M in annual cloud savings by identifying orphaned, underutilized, and oversized resources across a large AWS environment, increasing owner accountability and driving remediation that improved cost discipline and platform hygiene.
~$5M annual savings · AWS estate
Stack AWS Org · Cost Explorer · Glue · Athena · Python · Lambda
Read the cost-governance story ↗AMI Migration
Migrated thousands of non-standard AMIs into a security-scanning workflow for SecOps, with several components developed using AI assistance. The work saved tens of thousands of dollars in scanner licensing and server costs.
Thousands of non-standard AMIs · tens of thousands saved
Stack Python · S3 · Boto3 · CloudFormation · AWS Inspector · GitLab
Read the AMI story ↗Proxy Server Automation
Modernized proxy-server delivery with reusable pipelines, staged validation, startup repair, and application readiness checks before traffic moved.
140+ servers · weeks to hours
Stack HAProxy · Docker · AWS Inspector · AWS AMI · ALB · ASG · GitLab
Read the proxy story ↗HashiCorp Vault Repair
Repaired and improved a degraded Vault platform with AI-assisted reference research and script development, alongside recovery automation, TLS fixes, observability, failover testing, and a sustainable SRE handoff.
250+ systems supported
Stack EC2 · HashiCorp Vault · TLS cert management · GitLab · Datadog · Grafana
Read the Vault story ↗Vulnerability Management Services
Built operational controls for high-volume CVE intake, AMI remediation, scripted health validation, closure checks, and account-specific reporting.
100k+ incoming CVE findings monthly
Stack CVE workflows · AMI remediation · AWS Inspector · Systems Manager · Terraform · Python
Read the vulnerability story ↗News & Sports Websites
Led the News and Sports site redesign and Bright House Networks Residential, SMB, and Enterprise pre-sales web designs with a 15-person developer and UX team, then trained implementation engineers and standardized deployments with DevOps.
31 sites · 12-node AEM · 5M visits/hour
Stack Adobe Experience Manager · Varnish · Linux · Java · Groovy · Maven
Read the publishing-platform story ↗AWS Security Incident Response
Led a 12-person engineering team through an AWS security incident response, coordinating with SecOps and senior leadership to contain the incident, investigate affected access, and harden the organization.
1 week triage · 6–9 month hardening effort
Stack AWS Organizations · IAM · SSO · Keycloak · Secrets Manager · WAF · logging
Read the incident-response story ↗Project and Asset Inventory
As a Principal Engineer acting as product manager, coordinated the recovery of a decade of undocumented engineering work, leading the initial repository inventory and organizing a broader documentation effort across the platform team.
~500 repos reviewed · ~150 active projects retained
Stack Scripted discovery · manual validation · documentation templates · Git/GitLab · Terraform · Docker
Read the inventory story ↗03 / A wider field of view
Engineering clarity into complex systems.
I’ve spent my career working across software development, systems integration, cloud computing, systems architecture, complex problem-solving, and AI. The technologies change, but the work is usually the same: understand the whole system, find what matters, and help people move forward. When the problem is still ambiguous, I move toward it rather than wait for clarity to appear: frame the problem, surface the constraints, and create a direction the team can act on.
01
Software Development & Integration
Build the platform or application, then put it to work within systems people already depend on—through APIs, automation, data flows, and reliable integration.
Applications · Platforms · APIs · Integration
02
Platform Engineering
Build internal platforms and delivery systems that make the reliable path easier for engineering teams to use.
Developer experience · Automation · CI/CD
03
Cloud Computing
Treat cloud as an operating model where reliability, security, cost, and developer experience have to work together.
AWS · Infrastructure as code · Cost stewardship
04
Systems Architecture
Make tradeoffs visible, keep change affordable, and design systems that teams can understand, operate, and evolve.
Distributed systems · Security · Operability
05
Complex Problem-Solving
Break large problems into smaller ones, surface the constraints, and find the next useful step without losing sight of the whole.
Systems thinking · Evidence · Practical delivery
06
Practical AI
AI can do the heavy lifting. It cannot own the outcome. I use it to accelerate the work, then test, verify, and validate the result before I trust it. Responsibility stays with me.
Build. Test. Verify. Validate. Then trust.
04 / Values
The values I work by.
These are my values—not abstract ideals or decorative statements. They are the standards I bring to engineering, leadership, and delivery: respect people, stay accountable to the work, and create the conditions for others to do their best work together.
Customer Priority
Start with the real need. Deliver the simplest useful solution.
The most committed wins
Long-term success usually goes to the person or team that stays focused, consistent, and resilient through hard times. Talent matters, but commitment is what keeps progress going.
The 1% Concept
Even a little shared ground can become the start of trust.
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast
Patience and precision create sustainable speed.
No One Gets Left Behind
Teams win together. Blockers belong to all of us.
Put Others Before Self
Help early. Share ownership. Celebrate others.
Think Like a Scientist
Stay curious. Test assumptions. Measure results. Follow the evidence.
Human-First Leadership
Lead with empathy, clarity, trust, and care.
Hope
Not blind optimism—the conviction that progress is worth pursuing.
Big, scary problems are usually smaller problems tangled together. Break them apart, solve what matters first, and don’t worry about pebbles during a landslide.
05 / Applied AI, in practice
Four projects. One responsible approach.
A closer look at how I explore AI governance, durable memory, reflective work, and author-led creative tools—without asking AI to own the outcome.
01
Risk-scaled SDLC workflow
Aegis
Build with AI. Decide with confidence.
Aegis is a risk-scaled SDLC workflow for AI-assisted software development. It turns ideas into bounded, testable work, preserves requirements and decision evidence, and keeps consequential approvals with people.
View Aegis on GitHub02
Human-centered work review
Review Assistant
Turn the trail of work into perspective.
Review Assistant turns the evidence of daily work into clearer priorities and useful reflection. It captures decisions, commitments, open loops, and patterns, then supports daily planning and weekly review with context that would otherwise disappear across conversations.
03
AI memory research
Mind’s Eye
Make memory useful, bounded, and visible.
Mind’s Eye is an ongoing research project into durable, trustworthy memory for AI systems. Its latest design explores an event-first architecture that captures useful context, preserves provenance, and returns grounded summaries while keeping memory local, auditable, and rebuildable.
04
Author-led creative tools
Writer’s Studio
Support the writer. Preserve the voice.
Writer’s Studio is a set of AI-assisted tools for revision, editorial review, reader response, and manuscript metrics. It supports the creative process while preserving the writer’s judgment, intent, and voice.
06 / Contact
Let’s solve something that matters.
If your team is working through a difficult problem and values practical engineering, responsible technology, and people who work well together, I’d be glad to talk.
dotnetdavid@gmail.com