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.