Jarod Daws

DevOps and platform engineer. I build cloud platforms and the automation that keeps them in their desired state.

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Scroll to fly through the platform. Select any part to jump to it.

Where it starts

Desired state lives in Git

The platforms I build start as declarative specs. Git holds what should exist, and controllers keep reality matching it. Each stop on this tour is a piece of that system.

The loop

Drift happens. The platform fixes it.

Watch the scene: when a component drifts from its desired state, the control plane notices, sends the fix, and confirms it is back in sync.

All 8 components in sync

How I use AI

AI, used carefully

Early adopter
I've used AI tools since ChatGPT launched and have been a ChatGPT subscriber since 2022.
Prompt craft
When planning and prompt quality mattered most, I relied heavily on planning mode and put real care into writing precise prompts.
Data-safe by design
I built an agent skill that makes sure OpenTofu and Terraform code pulls sensitive values through data lookups and builds out variables as it goes, instead of hard-coding anything.

Summary

DevOps and platform engineer with 6+ years building Kubernetes fleet platforms on AWS for regulated and government environments. I design control planes that provision and manage clusters declaratively, write Go operators and platform tooling, and build AI tooling that keeps sensitive values out of infrastructure code.

Experience

Booz Allen Hamilton

Senior DevOps Engineer / Lead Engineer. Remote, Nov 2022 to present

  • Architected a hub-and-spoke EKS management platform that provisions and operates customer workload clusters from a central control plane; now in customer beta.
  • Designed Crossplane compositions with OpenTofu, AWS, Kubernetes, and composition-function providers for declarative cluster provisioning and lifecycle management.
  • Operate a fleet of 8–10 Amazon EKS clusters with general, CI runner, and GPU node pools.
  • Built a Go Kubernetes operator that automates Prometheus and Grafana deployment into customer environments.
  • Built an AI agent skill that ensures OpenTofu and Terraform code uses data lookups for sensitive values and defines variables as it is built, rather than hard-coding them.
  • Standardized Terraform modules for repeatable hardened-platform deployments and automated CI runner infrastructure with Terraform and OpenTofu.
  • Built Python tooling for a multi-terabyte migration between secure environments, moving source projects, CI/CD configuration, and container images.
  • Developed Go CLIs, Python automation, and AWS Lambda functions for recurring platform operations, including credential-expiry alerting.
  • Lead technical delivery for the team and serve as the main point of contact for customer stakeholders.

Raytheon Technologies

Systems Engineer I. State College, PA, Mar 2020 to Nov 2022

  • Maintained and improved a production DevOps pipeline, troubleshooting CI/CD failures and release-promotion issues.
  • Delivered seven product releases and built repeatable tooling for release preparation and promotion.
  • Expanded CI/CD support across Python, Puppet, and Terraform repositories.
  • Built developer tooling for local pipeline runs, promotion cleanup and retries, and automated release notes.
  • Implemented event-driven delivery automation with AWS SQS, S3 events, and Jenkins.

Skills

Cloud and platforms
AWS, AWS GovCloud, Kubernetes (EKS primary; RKE2, k3s), OpenShift
Infrastructure and GitOps
Terraform, OpenTofu, Crossplane, FluxCD, ArgoCD, Kustomize, Helm, Ansible
CI/CD and tooling
GitLab, Jenkins, Harbor, SonarQube, Keycloak, Artifactory
Observability
Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo
Languages
Go, Python, Bash
AI tooling
Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT, agent skill authoring, prompt design

Education and certification

Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg. B.S. Electrical Engineering, 2019

CompTIA Security+, 2024

Contact

Email jarod.daws@protonmail.com. Open to remote roles and hybrid roles near York, PA.