Comment by nathan_douglas

    Location: Ohio (Eastern Time)
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to Relocate: No
    Technologies: Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, Nomad, GitOps, Argo CD, AWS, Rust, JS, etc.
    Résumé/CV: https://bitterbridge.github.io/resume/resume.pdf
    Email: safe.maze9320 AT tenesm DOT us (or look in my profile, or on my résumé)
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nug-doug/
    GitHub: https://github.com/ndouglas/
    Fun Project: https://clog.goldentooth.net/

I'm a DevOps/Platform/Infra/Backend generalist with ~13.5 years of experience and a bachelor's in CS and about a decade of farting around prior to that. I'm finishing up migrating and modernizing a major product for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and I'm looking to exit the civic tech space.

I'm interested in machine learning and AI, ideally HPC and/or scientific/research computing. My idea has been to move into MLOps, then move from there into HPC, and my longterm goal (5-10 years) is to move into deep tech research (possibly get my PhD).

But I have broad interests and my feelings about AI are complicated. I don't think I'm searching for a destination, but searching for a journey and companions. I don't know much more than that, except that it probably doesn't involve me doing frontend.

My current fun-time project is writing an LLM agent to personify my Raspberry Pi research cluster, and write tools, MCP plugins, etc to embody that simulated consciousness within the infrastructure. It feels weirdly like stapling a ghost to a circuit board.

    Q. Where do you see yourself in five years?
    A. Ascending slowly into the sky from the parking lot of the Santa Fe Institute.