Shawn M.

Senior DevOps, SRE and DevSecOps architect for regulated, production-critical systems. 20+ years in IT across fintech, healthcare data and SaaS (ex-Finicity, ex-Instructure). I design, harden and automate AWS and Kubernetes infrastructure. Teams usually call me when releases are slow or risky, access and secrets have sprawled, an audit is coming, or production keeps breaking in ways nobody can trace. WHAT I TAKE ON - AWS architecture, security hardening, and reliability and cost reviews - Kubernetes and Docker platforms on AWS and GCP, including Helm-based deployments - Terraform, Packer and infrastructure as code - CI/CD pipelines, including Jenkins, with secrets management and IAM built in - Production troubleshooting, incident root cause and ongoing SRE support I have worked on regulated systems in healthcare data (HL7 interfaces at Medicity, QA at Intermountain Healthcare) and fintech (Finicity). I am versed in financial industry compliance: secure handling of credentials and secrets, access control and audit trails built into the delivery pipeline, not cleaned up later. HOW I WORK I find the real failure point first, fix it, automate whatever should not be manual, and document it so your team can run it without me. WHAT CLIENTS SAY Clients describe me as extremely professional, clear in communication, quick to find the cause when production goes down, and honest when a requested approach will not work. SELECTED WORK - Designed secure, scalable and affordable fintech infrastructure at Finicity - Piloted a move from legacy Java applications to containerized microservices at Neovest, with production-grade Helm deployables, one delivery pipeline and secrets management - Reworked the database and security setup of a client's AWS architecture after an audit, and diagnosed the communication problems behind a client's system outage - 17 Upwork contracts and 282 hours, most of them rated 5.0, including mentoring a startup CTO through Kubernetes HOW AN ENGAGEMENT USUALLY RUNS 1. Production-readiness review: a fixed-scope look at your AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD and secrets setup, delivered as a ranked written plan in one to two weeks. 2. Hands-on fixes and automation, hourly, typically one to three months. 3. Ongoing platform and SRE support at a capped weekly commitment. You can stop after any step. AVAILABILITY 40 hours a week, Mountain Time, replies the same business day. I also run Purfect Labs, a small startup building a security tool that keeps secrets out of AI coding assistants. Client work always gets a fixed weekly commitment. Send me your stack, your biggest production problem and the deadline behind it. I reply within one business day with what I would check first.