ASHTONFOULGER
I build and run the cloud platforms behind AI products with Kubernetes, Terraform, and Go on GCP and AWS, engineered for scale, speed, and reliability.
ABOUT
USER BIO
I'm an infrastructure and platform engineer with full-stack roots and a DevOps mindset. I design and operate the cloud-native platforms that AI products run on, working in Kubernetes, Terraform, and Go across GCP and AWS. I also build the internal platforms that let engineering teams ship fast: ephemeral environments, GitOps pipelines, and self-service infrastructure.
My focus is automation, reliability, and fast, boring deployments: if a system can page a human, I'd rather it heal itself first.
TECHNOLOGY STACK
INFRASTRUCTURE
- • Kubernetes
- • Terraform
- • Helm
- • Ansible
- • KEDA
CLOUD
- • GCP
- • AWS
- • Cloudflare
- • Proxmox
CI/CD & GITOPS
- • GitHub Actions
- • GitLab CI
- • Argo CD
- • Docker
OBSERVABILITY
- • Datadog
- • Grafana
- • Prometheus
- • Splunk
LANGUAGES & BACKEND
- • Go
- • Python
- • TypeScript / JavaScript
- • Node.js
FRONTEND & DATA
- • React.js
- • Next.js
- • PostgreSQL
- • Redis
FOCUS AREAS
PERSONAL DATA
PROJECTS
HOME LAB AUTOMATION
Personal homelab automated end-to-end: Terraform provisions five Proxmox VMs, and Ansible deploys a k3s cluster wired up with MetalLB, Traefik, and Rancher.
TECHNOLOGIES
JENKINS TERRAFORM MODULE
Terraform module that stands up a VPC, public and private subnets, and a Kubernetes cluster, then deploys a fully provisioned Jenkins server with connected workers for CI/CD. Works across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
TECHNOLOGIES
MY PET TAG
Full-stack application that pairs NFC pet tags with live pet profiles: health, behavioral, and veterinary history at a scan, helping reunite lost pets with their owners.
TECHNOLOGIES
PROJECT SOLAR
Solar monitoring dashboard fed by a personal solar-panel API: live power production, energy collected over time, and per-panel operational status.
TECHNOLOGIES
KLA BREAKTHROUGH CONSULTING
Freelance engagement to design and build the website for KLA Consulting, a firm providing FDA regulatory consulting services.
TECHNOLOGIES
COUNTER STRIKE CLONE
Multiplayer FPS built in Unity with C#, recreating Counter-Strike mechanics: map design, game mechanics, netcode, and the optimization work needed for smooth multiplayer.
TECHNOLOGIES
EXPERIENCE
INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER
Own the cloud and platform engineering behind an AI ed-tech product used in classrooms every day. Built on Kubernetes, GCP, Terraform, and Go, with a focus on reliability, developer velocity, and cost efficiency. Lead platform initiatives end to end, from developer requirements through production rollout.
PATHFINDER // EPHEMERAL ENVIRONMENT PLATFORM
Architect and lead Pathfinder, SchoolAI’s ephemeral environment platform: any engineer can claim a full, isolated copy of the product stack in Kubernetes on demand. Set the V2 roadmap by surveying the engineering team, then drove adoption across developers and designers. Built as a pluggable Go control plane, with one core library powering a CLI, an in-cluster controller, GitHub Actions, and an MCP server. Ships with warm pools of pre-provisioned environments, in-cluster emulators replacing external cloud dependencies, and drift detection that auto-heals running environments.
- Eliminated platform-wide HTTP 524 timeout errors by migrating from GCP’s classic load balancer to the Gateway load balancer, tuning Prisma connection pooling, and fixing Node.js event-loop delays.
- Built the multi-region GCP infrastructure that launched the product in Canada, provisioning staging and production end-to-end with Terraform: Kubernetes resources, operators, IAM, secrets, and deployment pipelines.
- Drove SOC 2 Type II audit-readiness on the infrastructure side: organization-wide GCP audit logging, access-control reviews, vendor security reviews, coordinating external penetration testing, and facilitating the annual incident-response tabletop exercise for the engineering team.
- Rolled out GitOps across every repository with Argo CD and Argo Rollouts, adding canary rollbacks and self-service debugging so developers can troubleshoot pods and infrastructure without waiting on ops.
- Hardened container security by moving services to distroless and clean base images, driving base-image CVEs from 192 to near zero, with same-day critical CVE patching and daily ZAP scans.
- Cut compute costs with KEDA event-driven autoscaling and modernized the toolchain: Datadog APM across all services, a Turborepo 2.x monorepo migration, faster CI pipelines, and Cloudflare Tunnel replacing IP allowlists.
TECHNOLOGIES USED
DEVOPS ENGINEER
Led infrastructure automation and DevOps modernization for enterprise identity and access management products.
- Rebuilt the ephemeral environment system on VMware and Rancher with Jenkins runners, automatically deploying disposable environments where developers could test local changes with full end-to-end test compatibility for up to 12 hours.
- Built custom Ansible deployments that automated and scaled internal tooling and systems infrastructure on VMware: VM creation and updates, plus Kubernetes provisioning with k3s, MetalLB, Traefik, Let's Encrypt, and internal DNS.
- Pioneered the migration from Jenkins to GitLab CI, modernizing build pipelines and orchestrating Kubernetes-native workloads.
- Re-architected the Advanced Authentication infrastructure with Terragrunt for modular, scalable deployments across AWS and EKS, and authored new subsystem modules for the stack.
- Built integration test suites simulating monthly-active-user behavior for IAM systems, and maintained complex Terraform, Helm, and Ansible deployments for consistent CI/CD and cluster operations.
- Updated the internal dashboarding system to accurately track pipeline health and end-to-end test reports across teams.
TECHNOLOGIES USED
FULL-STACK ENGINEER INTERN
Engineered full-stack features for Smart Buildings dashboards.
- Integrated Django and PostgreSQL backend data pipelines with responsive React/Redux frontends, and extended the ASIP API to support large-scale dataset transfers.
- Diagnosed and resolved 20+ UI/UX bugs and implemented high-coverage integration test suites for functional reliability.
TECHNOLOGIES USED
SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
Managed infrastructure operations and automated user provisioning across the organization.
- Designed scripting-based automation for Active Directory and endpoint setup, enabling scalable onboarding for 500+ users.
- Deployed servers and Splunk forwarders to accelerate log ingestion for analytics, and enforced consistent system management with Jamf, Grafana, and Group Policy.