Hi, I currently work as a Principal Software Engineer at Arbisoft and also as an Open edX Core Contributor with 7+ years of experience building and operating high-traffic web infrastructure on AWS. I run ecosystem-wide platform upgrades across 150+ repositories and own cloud architecture for a commercial AI document validation platform.

I bring deep experience across backend engineering, cloud-native DevOps, modern authentication systems, and open-source governance to every initiative I work on.

  • 📄 View My Resume - Get a comprehensive overview of my experience and skills.

🚀 What I Do

⚙️ Backend Engineering

  • Design scalable APIs using Python and Django across 150+ Open edX repositories
  • Build robust REST APIs with Django REST Framework, Pandas, and NumPy
  • Lead ecosystem-wide Python 3.12 and Django 4.2 migrations affecting 10+ critical services
  • Author reusable codemods, scripts, and shared workflow actions consumed across teams

☁️ Cloud and DevOps

  • Architect Lambda-integrated CI/CD for a commercial AI document validation platform on AWS
  • Build self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on AWS EKS with Kubernetes, HPA, and cluster autoscaler
  • Operate production workloads across Lambda, ECS, EKS, RDS, S3, CloudWatch, and Secrets Manager
  • Run observability with Datadog, Splunk, NewRelic, and CloudWatch custom metrics

🎓 Open edX Leadership

  • Core Contributor and Open Source Maintainer across 150+ Open edX repositories
  • Coordinate modernization across distributed contributor teams in 3 working groups
  • Present technical talks at Open edX conferences on platform health and tooling
  • Mentor new contributors through onboarding, documentation, and first pull requests

🛠️ Technical & Soft Skills

💻 Languages & Frameworks

  • Python
  • Django (advanced ORM, class-based views, signals, middleware)
  • Django REST Framework
  • Pandas
  • NumPy
  • React.js

☁️ Cloud & DevOps

  • Docker
  • GitHub Actions
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS (Lambda, ECS, EKS, RDS, Aurora, S3, CloudWatch, IAM, Secrets Manager)
  • ArgoCD
  • Jenkins
  • GoCD
  • Ansible
  • Datadog
  • Splunk
  • NewRelic
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol)

🤝 Soft Skills

  • Technical documentation and writing
  • Mentorship and succession planning
  • Cross-team collaboration across time zones
  • Public speaking and conference presentations
  • Project leadership and ecosystem governance
  • Community engagement and contributor onboarding

👥 Leadership in Open edX

Over the years, I have played an active role in improving the developer experience and ecosystem stability for Open edX. I serve as Core Contributor and Open Source Maintainer in the Open edX Maintenance Working Group and the edx-platform Working Group, collaborating regularly with Axim, 2U, and the broader Open edX community.

  • Community Leadership: Championed platform-wide upgrades and modernization projects across 150+ repositories. Led by example and supported contributors across time zones.
  • Speaker and Advocate: Delivered technical talks at Open edX conferences, presenting tools, best practices, and sharing behind-the-scenes of high-impact efforts including the Org Health Dashboard.
  • Mentorship and Onboarding: Helped onboard new contributors by documenting workflows, simplifying tooling, and guiding them through their first pull requests.
  • Standardization and Automation: Built codemods, scripts, and bots to automate repetitive tasks like PR creation, version bumps, and repository tracking.

☁️ Cloud Architecture (AI and MLOps Trajectory)

I serve as Senior Cloud Architect and DevOps Lead for a commercial AI document validation platform built on AWS. This is the live bridge between my established CI/CD and AWS depth and the MLOps destination.

  • Own the infrastructure topology for a cloud-native AWS-based AI document validation system serving a commercial client
  • Designed and operate a multi-environment Lambda-integrated CI/CD architecture with selective commit promotion across dev, QA, and production
  • Made RDS versus Aurora tradeoff decisions and defined Docker local-to-cloud parity patterns
  • Authored reusable Lambda functions for data processing and event-driven workflows
  • This role represents my first full architectural authority over an AI application and the proving ground for MLOps platform governance work

🏗️ Concurrent Open Source Work: Pressingly

I contribute to the Pressingly FOSS bundle, an organization that packages open-source applications for enterprise use. My work centers on the SSO and auth integration layer (mpass-auth-proxy) that makes multiple FOSS apps work with corporate identity, plus MCP server development for AI-tool integrations.

  • Built and maintain mpass-auth-proxy, the unified corporate SSO integration layer for the Pressingly FOSS bundle
  • Enforced corporate_id claim validation across authentication middleware in Twenty, Plane, Outline, Penpot, and SurfSense
  • Implemented the foss-sandbox to foss-main promotion pipeline for staging-to-production releases across the bundle
  • Built MCP server implementations for SurfSense, Plane, and Outline with mPass support, enabling AI coding tools to interact with these services natively
  • Fixed OAuth redirect URI handling in Dynamic Client Registration (DCR) across multiple MCP server implementations
  • Resolved critical production issues including a Redis crash loop in Twenty and shipped stability fixes across the stack

🔧 Highlight Projects

🐍 Python 3.12 Platform Upgrade

Led the Python 3.12 migration across 10+ critical Open edX services and internal tools, unblocking downstream dependency compliance for the wider community.

  • Audited dependencies, submitted patches to incompatible upstream packages, and tested under new runtimes.
  • Rebuilt Docker images to support Python 3.12, ensured backward compatibility, and upgraded CI workflows accordingly.
  • Managed risk across distributed teams by coordinating test freezes, staggered rollouts, and fallback strategies.
  • Used CI runners and codemods introduced in earlier projects to accelerate the migration effort.

📈 Open edX Repo Health Dashboard

Built the Org Health Dashboard, a real-time tool to surface engineering health signals across 150+ Open edX repositories, presented at Open edX Conference 2024.

  • Visualized repository health, Django upgrade status, stale PRs, CI failures, and contribution trends.
  • Integrated data scraping, transformation, and S3-hosted frontend as part of a scalable pipeline.
  • Used by maintainers as a single source of truth for ecosystem health and modernization coordination.
  • Extended the dashboard to auto-fetch GitHub data using scheduled workflows on GitHub Actions.

🧩 Coordinated Django Upgrade Across Open edX

Spearheaded the ecosystem-wide transition to modern Django versions across 150+ repositories with reusable codemods and contributor coordination.

  • Established a baseline version matrix for 150+ repos and created automation to track upgrade status.
  • Reviewed, refactored, and merged dozens of PRs from community contributors, ensuring consistency.
  • Developed codemods and reusable upgrade scripts used by multiple teams.
  • Triaged CI failures with custom test matrices and Docker runtime adjustments, working closely with CI and infrastructure teams.

🔄 CI/CD Revamp and GitHub Actions Migration

Transformed the CI/CD architecture by replacing legacy Jenkins, CircleCI, and Travis CI pipelines with GitHub Actions across the Open edX ecosystem.

  • Set up autoscaling GitHub runners on AWS EKS using Kubernetes, HPA, and cluster-autoscaler integrations.
  • Authored shared GitHub Actions consumed across internal and community repositories to ensure consistency.
  • Documented the full CI stack migration to help onboard Open edX community members.
  • Reduced CI cost and improved reliability, unlocking faster feedback cycles for developers.

☁️ Commercial AI Document Validation Platform

Senior Cloud Architect and DevOps Lead for a cloud-native AWS-based AI document validation system (client name private). This is the live bridge to the MLOps trajectory.

  • Own infrastructure topology, multi-environment CI/CD, and AWS service selection for the production platform.
  • Built Lambda-integrated CI/CD with selective commit promotion across dev, QA, and production.
  • Made RDS versus Aurora tradeoff decisions and defined Docker local-to-cloud parity patterns.
  • First role with full architectural authority over an AI application infrastructure.

🔐 Pressingly mpass-auth-proxy (SSO for FOSS Bundle)

Built the unified corporate SSO integration layer that makes multiple open-source applications work with corporate identity.

  • Enforced corporate_id claim validation across authentication middleware in Twenty, Plane, Outline, Penpot, and SurfSense.
  • Bypassed Cognito hosted UI when federated IdP is configured for corporate identity providers.
  • Implemented the foss-sandbox to foss-main promotion pipeline for staging-to-production releases.
  • Resolved a Redis crash loop in Twenty and shipped stability fixes across the stack.

🤖 MCP Server Implementations

Built and shipped Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for multiple FOSS applications, enabling AI coding tools to interact with services natively.

  • MCP server for SurfSense, a privacy-focused NotebookLM alternative, with mPass support.
  • MCP server for Plane, the open-source Jira and Linear alternative.
  • MCP server for Outline, the open-source knowledge base.
  • Fixed OAuth redirect URI handling in Dynamic Client Registration across these implementations.

🐳 Containerization and Environment Unification

Migrated over 8 monolithic or script-based services into standardized Docker containers, eliminating environment drift.

  • Unified development, staging, and production environments to eliminate "works on my machine" issues.
  • Refactored legacy Ansible scripts into clean Dockerfiles and docker-compose configurations.
  • Reduced onboarding time for new developers by introducing a self-contained dev environment.
  • Coordinated with QA and DevOps to build GitHub Actions-based integration pipelines.

📊 Real-Time Analytics Dashboard

Architected a real-time analytics system by integrating RESTful APIs, leveraging Pandas for transformation and computation, and deploying compute logic using AWS Lambda.

  • Configured AWS CloudWatch to monitor application metrics and set up alerts for anomalies.
  • Designed data flows that minimized latency and supported on-demand insights for stakeholders.
  • Collaborated with frontend developers to expose meaningful data visualizations for operational decision-making.
  • Acted as a performance lead to trace bottlenecks and optimize Lambda cold start impact.

☁️ Serverless Data Pipeline

Led the design and deployment of a fully serverless, event-driven data pipeline using AWS Lambda, S3, and Secrets Manager.

  • Embedded robust error handling and monitoring with CloudWatch logs and custom metrics.
  • Integrated API responses with data transformation logic using Pandas, achieving scalability under fluctuating workloads.
  • Authored modular Lambda functions reusable across Open edX monitoring tools and data ingestion components.
  • Shared this design pattern with the team to inform best practices for other AWS-native projects, including the CI autoscaler and health dashboards.

I am always open to connect, collaborate, or share ideas. The best way to reach me is by email at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.