# Mark Mercado

**Senior Platform Engineer | Cloud Automation | Compound Engineering**

[GitHub](https://github.com/mamercad) | [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/mamercad) |
[Portfolio](https://mamercad.github.io) | [Resume](https://mamercad.github.io/resume/) |
[CloudMason](https://cloudmason.org)

## Summary

Senior engineer with 20+ years of experience building the systems behind reliable software: cloud
infrastructure, automation platforms, CI/CD workflows, observability, and developer tooling.
Currently focused on platform engineering at DigitalOcean, with a steady bias toward infrastructure
as code, public technical writing, and agent-assisted workflows that turn operational knowledge into
repeatable systems.

Comfortable across the stack, with a particular strength in compound engineering: combining
software development, infrastructure operations, documentation, automation, and AI-assisted
workflows so teams can move faster without losing operational rigor.

## Selected Impact

- Designed and operated automation platforms around Ansible AWX, StackStorm, GitHub Actions,
  Kubernetes, and internal APIs for cloud infrastructure workflows.
- Modernized infrastructure code by moving bespoke automation toward supported upstream collections
  and staging-first validation.
- Built test-driven infrastructure readiness workflows for data center and region configuration,
  using canonical source data and local validation before rollout.
- Created monitoring and observability systems with Prometheus, Grafana, StatsD-style metrics,
  custom exporters, and actionable operational dashboards.
- Built agent workflow knowledge systems around MCP, Obsidian, reusable prompts, session memory,
  and human-in-the-loop review.
- Maintained a public technical writing practice covering cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, secrets,
  PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, networking, and home lab operations.

## Technical Strengths

**Languages**  
Python | Go | TypeScript | JavaScript | Bash | SQL | Ruby | Perl

**Platform & Cloud**  
Kubernetes | Docker | Linux | Terraform | Ansible | Chef | AWX | StackStorm |
GitHub Actions | CI/CD | DigitalOcean | AWS

**Reliability & Operations**  
Prometheus | Grafana | StatsD | PostgreSQL | Patroni | HAProxy | Nginx | DNS | SSO/SAML |
runbooks | incident response

**Developer & Agent Workflows**  
MCP | AI-assisted development | multi-agent workflows | evaluation and review loops |
Obsidian knowledge systems | Markdown-driven documentation

**Product & Web**  
React | Next.js | Node.js | REST APIs | component architecture | static sites |
technical content systems

## Experience

### DigitalOcean - Platform Engineering

**Systems / Platform Engineer, 2020 - Present**

- Build and improve internal automation workflows for cloud infrastructure operations.
- Work across platform services, orchestration, configuration management, CI/CD, and operational
  tooling.
- Develop structured approaches for safe infrastructure changes: staging validation, reusable
  runbooks, source-controlled configuration, and reviewable automation.
- Contribute to durable engineering knowledge systems that capture operational context and make
  future changes easier to reason about.

### Barracuda Networks - Cloud / Infrastructure Operations

**Lead Site Reliability Engineer, 2018 - 2020**

- Operated hybrid cloud infrastructure across on-premises data centers and public cloud
  environments.
- Implemented and maintained systems for bare-metal provisioning, private cloud, image pipelines,
  DNS automation, package delivery, observability, and service discovery.
- Built Terraform, Terragrunt, Packer, Puppet, Ansible, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Helm, and Docker
  workflows for infrastructure delivery.
- Created Prometheus exporters, Grafana dashboards, operational runbooks, and deployment patterns
  for internal platform teams.

### TotalCAE - High Performance Computing

**Senior HPC Consultant, 2016 - 2018**

- Administered a 1,200+ node HPC environment supporting engineering simulation workloads.
- Worked with RHEL, Lustre, Infiniband, PBS Pro, Ansible, Zabbix, Elastic Stack, InfluxDB,
  Grafana, and custom operational integrations.
- Built automation and dashboards for cluster operations, troubleshooting, reporting, and
  SLA-oriented support.

### University of Michigan-Flint

**UNIX Systems Administrator / Lecturer / Business Systems Analyst, 2005 - 2017**

- Administered UNIX/Linux, Solaris, virtualization, storage, Oracle-backed ERP systems, LMS
  platforms, SSO, disaster recovery, monitoring, and CI/CD services.
- Built custom integrations in PL/SQL, Perl, PHP, Bash, and Python for campus systems and
  operational workflows.
- Taught computer science courses including Python, C++, operating systems, and programming
  fundamentals.

### Early Web & Systems Work

**Founding Partner / Systems Administrator / Web Developer, 1996 - 2003**

- Built web applications, publishing systems, billing tools, search systems, secure client portals,
  and small-business infrastructure.
- Worked across FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows, PHP, Perl, JavaScript, MySQL, networking,
  firewalls, and backups.

## Selected Projects

### CloudMason

- Personal infrastructure and engineering hub for home lab systems, GitOps-style network
  management, DNS, Cloudflare, UniFi, NextDNS, runbooks, and operational experiments.

### AgentBrain / OpenPaw / envx

- Personal agent workflow ecosystem exploring MCP, Obsidian-backed memory, machine convergence,
  reusable context, tool gateways, and repeatable AI-assisted engineering loops.

### Public Technical Writing

- Maintains technical notes on CI/CD, SSH, secrets, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Patroni, Prometheus
  exporters, UniFi, Let's Encrypt, and home lab operations.

## Education

**Master of Science, Computer Science**  
University of Michigan-Flint

**Bachelor of Science, Computer Science** and **Bachelor of Mathematics, Computer Science**  
University of Michigan-Flint

## Publication

**Cybersecurity in Banking and Financial Sector: Security Analysis of a Mobile Banking
Application**  
2013 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems

## Working Style

- Automation first, with enough documentation for future operators to understand the system.
- Comfortable moving from low-level infrastructure detail to product-facing developer experience.
- Strong preference for source-controlled workflows, explicit review, safe rollout, and
  observability.
- Interested in roles involving platform engineering, cloud automation, developer experience,
  reliability, and AI-assisted engineering systems.