About

Site Reliability Engineer Apprentice, Vail Systems

• Help deploy and maintain Vail’s services with Helm and Argo CD, on Vail’s existing Kubernetes and Argo CD setup.
• Translated application ports, environment variables, secrets, dependencies and health checks into Kubernetes deployment configuration, and validated service startup and release behavior.
• Built GitHub Actions pipelines for Node.js/Next.js and .NET services that publish versioned container images and coordinate database migrations and health checks during releases.
• Wrote deployment, update and account-provisioning scripts to automate recurring operational tasks and application onboarding.
• Used Terraform for infrastructure and Ansible for host configuration.
• Managed Harbor, cert-manager, ingress, secrets, RBAC and service-account image-pull access for containerized workloads.
• Operated Grafana, Loki and Prometheus to inspect application behavior, container health, logs and failed deployments.
• Investigated CI/CD, rollout, networking and registry failures across application and infrastructure layers, and helped coworkers troubleshoot deployment issues.
• Containerized C++ services with Conan and build tooling, so native builds ship through container-based delivery.
• Mentored interns on networking, load balancing, SSH, Docker and Podman, container orchestration, Helm, Kubernetes deployments, environment security, and CPU and memory limits.

Software Engineer Intern, Vail Systems

• Developed and debugged in-house applications with JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Node.js, Express and object-oriented design, shipping features in weekly cycles with cross-functional teams.
• Designed and maintained backend systems: REST APIs, Prisma/ORM data access, SQL and database connection pooling.
• Traced defects across the UI, API, database, container runtime and deployment layers.
• Improved application configuration and container-based release workflows.
• Worked with experienced engineers to improve code quality, maintainability and delivery.

Kubernetes platform engineering, Seneca Foundation and Tidan Games

• Rebuilt the deployment architecture five times as scope grew: Compose, systemd services, AWS ECS with CI/CD, self-hosted Kubernetes, then Seneca Foundation’s official cluster under my mentor Harrison.
• Built deployment workflows for dedicated Linux servers with Podman Compose and systemd, and for AWS ECS with ECR, IAM, security groups, ACM and Route 53, with the configuration in the repo and tests before every deploy.
• Run two production k3s clusters, Seneca Foundation’s and Tidan Games’, with Helm and Argo CD GitOps, Prometheus, Grafana and Loki, self-managed PostgreSQL and Redis, Harbor, and Vault-style secrets.
• Provision hosts with Terraform and Ansible: certificate SSH, 2FA, firewalls and network policies.
• Wrote a 1 year and 10 year cost analysis of AWS and OVH for hosting the cluster.
• Built the home lab behind it: Proxmox, networking and routing, and my own DNS server and router.
• Built and run the training cluster where Seneca Foundation’s interns deploy real applications with Helm and GitOps.
• Studying for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam.

Software Engineer Apprentice, Seneca Foundation

• Built full-stack applications with Java, TypeScript and MySQL under senior engineer mentorship.
• Practiced debugging, testing, Git, terminal navigation and Vim, took part in code reviews, and delivered changes with engineering feedback.
• Applied Java, HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and SQL fundamentals to application development and technical exercises.

Founder, Tidan Games LLC

• Run an independent multiplayer game studio, leading engineers, artists and testers across game servers, clients, APIs, databases and deployment infrastructure.
• Lead engineer and designer of Arcana (formerly Tidan’s Realm VI): 818 player accounts on the live server.
• Run the studio’s platform on k3s: 35 Argo CD applications, including the games, a store, email, a wiki, an issue tracker and a support desk.

Lead Software Engineer and Owner, Cosmic Realm (originally Tidan’s Realm)

Reached 3,000 registered accounts and a peak of 200 concurrent players, with about 30 online on an average day.

Server

• Designed and deployed a C#/.NET MMORPG server with multithreaded game instances and real-time entity updates.
• Built hybrid UDP/TCP networking with encrypted binary packets, WebSocket support, and packet processing and queueing.
• Implemented real-time synchronization, combat, raids, loot, player progression and a persistent game economy, plus a player-driven market.
• Integrated Redis caching and built an XML/API-driven pipeline for game content.
• Modernized older C# 8 patterns with C# 11 conventions: LINQ, spans, hash-based collections, required members and ref semantics.
• Moved the client from browser Flash (ActionScript 3) to Adobe AIR so players kept playing when Flash support ended.

Delivery and operations

• Automated builds and delivery for game servers, launchers and clients with Docker and GitHub Actions, with development and production on separate branches watched by Argo CD.
• Hosted environments on k3s with Kustomize configuration and Argo CD app-of-apps.
• Deployed Redis with persistent volume claims and ran database backups three times a day through a Kubernetes CronJob, disconnecting Redis clients before each backup.
• Collected user-activity metrics and kept separate development and production observability with Grafana, Prometheus and Loki.
• Created an auto-updating XAML game launcher.

Team

• Hired and paid developers, artists and game-balancing contributors to spread the workload, and turned player feedback into a prioritized roadmap.

Lead Engineer and Designer, Arcana (formerly Tidan’s Realm VI)

• Developed the C#/.NET multiplayer server and client systems: multithreaded game instances, entity behavior, AI, and persistent player systems backed by Redis and PostgreSQL.
• Built player trading and markets, crafting and transmutation, skill trees, potion storage, quests, inventory and progression.
• Implemented and refined movement, sprint, AI-follow behavior and status effects, keeping game rules in step with client movement and server updates.
• Used entity inheritance and interfaces, XML/API-driven game data, caching and object disposal throughout the server.
• Maintained the ActionScript/Adobe AIR client and work on the current Haxe/OpenFL Windows client, with Lime, hxcpp and the Visual Studio C++ toolchain.
• Documented the Windows client build prerequisites and commands for the Haxe/OpenFL toolchain and the .NET server solution.
• Supported playtesting with about 200 to 500 unique testers over the project and 5 to 20 monthly playtesters, using their feedback to guide development.

Game infrastructure and operations, Cosmic Realm and Arcana

• Deployed and maintained game services on k3s with Helm, Argo CD, GitHub Actions and container registries, with separate testing and production environments.
• Managed Kubernetes manifests, namespaces, application configuration, RBAC, secrets and service-account access for game deployments.
• Worked on Caddy routing and MetalLB LoadBalancer configuration: exposed ports, IP pools, address allocation and service connectivity.
• Investigated Kubernetes node-readiness and CNI initialization failures, including Cilium routing and tunnel configuration and Calico networking issues.
• Investigated image-pull failures, registry authentication, pending workloads and deployment behavior on self-managed clusters.
• Managed hostPath-backed storage for game databases, backups and server logs.
• Integrated Stripe with player accounts across two game servers to support purchases.

Windows launcher engineering, Cosmic Realm and Arcana

• Developed and maintained auto-updating Windows game launchers in C#, WPF and XAML, starting on .NET Framework 4.8.
• Implemented version checking, asynchronous ZIP downloads and extraction, local version tracking, update states and game launch.
• Built reusable XAML components and scalable interface assets while keeping the existing update and play flow.

Technical collaboration, Independent projects

• Reviewed architecture, workflows and design decisions with C#, DevOps and SRE professionals, and applied their feedback across my projects.