Database Engineer & Cloud Architect
Pivoting to Cloud & AI
10+ years of experience building business-critical enterprise databases. Now modernizing infrastructure through AWS and Generative AI.
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Technical Case Study
Building a Modern Cloud Architecture on Legacy Infrastructure
The Vision
The goal was to complete the Cloud Resume Challenge, a multi-tier project requiring a serverless backend, a global CDN, and a fully automated CI/CD pipeline. However, my journey began with a significant obstacle: a 10-year-old local machine that could no longer support modern AWS development tools.
The Solution: "Infrastructure as a Workspace"
Instead of seeing my hardware as a limitation, I treated it as a migration use case.
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1
The Dev Hub: I architected a secure Amazon VPC and launched an Amazon EC2 (t3.medium) instance to serve as my cloud-native workstation.
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The Environment: I used this EC2 instance to install and run the AWS SAM CLI, Python, and Git, allowing me to bypass local OS restrictions entirely.
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The Migration Logic: Drawing from my Per Scholas Gemini Project, I wrote Python scripts to manage the data flow from traditional SQL concepts into my modern DynamoDB visitor counter.
Technical Deep-Dive
Backend
REST API via Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda.
Frontend
S3 Static Hosting + Global CloudFront Distribution (HTTPS).
Database
DynamoDB NoSQL with atomic counters for analytics.
Automation
GitHub Actions for auto-invalidations and S3 syncing.
"This project proved that a Cloud Engineer's value isn't defined by their physical hardware, but by their ability to architect solutions around any constraint."
Professional Summary
Experienced database engineer (Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL) pivoting into cloud infrastructure and AI. Upskilling professional with 10+ years of experience building and tuning large-scale business-critical enterprise databases. Strong background in relational databases, system reliability with hands-on experience in Linux, Unix, Windows scripting and SQL to automate operations and optimize performance.
Expanding cloud skills through the Per Scholas AWS re/Start program combining proven on-prem database-systems best practices and modern cloud services-architectures.
Databases & Cloud
Automation & AI
Career Path
FC Associate (Cloud Systems Exposure)
2023 - PresentAmazon | Atlanta, GA
- Optimize high-volume automated workflows within AWS-powered fulfillment environments.
- Resolve complex system defects to maintain peak sortation throughput.
- Bridge the gap between physical logistics and AWS infrastructure management.
AWS re/Start Graduate - AWS Certified
2025 - 2026Per Scholas | Atlanta, GA
Focused on cloud computing, infrastructure automation, and security. Successfully bridged 10+ years of DBA expertise with modern AWS cloud-native services.
Senior Database Engineer
2010 - 2017Ericsson / Sprint | Atlanta, GA
- Engineered and supported 1000's of enterprise Oracle database platforms.
- Implemented high-availability architectures using Oracle RAC and Data Guard.
- Led complex database migrations and data center relocations with zero downtime.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
2002 - 2010HP / EDS | Atlanta, GA
- Designed and supported large-scale Oracle and SQL Server on UNIX/Linux/Windows.
- Delivered database engineering for mission-critical, 24x7 enterprise systems.
Roll Blog
Thoughts on Cloud Migration, AI Integration, and the future of Database Engineering.
Transitioning from On-Prem to AWS RDS
Lessons learned from a decade of Oracle DBA work while moving to cloud-native managed services.
Read Article →The DBA's Role in the Era of Agentic AI
How Large Language Models and RAG architectures are redefining data management workflows.
Read Article →Automating High Availability with Python
Scripting failover protocols and monitoring in hybrid cloud environments.
Read Article →Get In Touch
Have a project or opportunity in mind? I'd love to hear from you.