Jim Torelli

What I Do

  • Platform engineering across AWS and Azure: EKS/AKS/OpenShift; GitOps (Argo CD/Flux); scalable CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins/JenkinsX, CircleCI, Harness).
  • Cloud and data center migrations: on‑prem→cloud and cloud‑to‑cloud; containerization and app modernization; IaC with Terraform, Pulumi, Helm/Kustomize; safe, low‑ or zero‑downtime cutovers.
  • Applied AI/ML: LLM applications (agents/tool use, RAG), prompt/program design and evaluation, classical CV (OpenCV/OCR/similarity), generative media; local LLMs (Ollama); PyTorch; workflow automation (n8n).
  • Developer experience and reliability: packaging (Deb/RPM), reproducible builds and releases, documentation, observability and security (Datadog, Grafana/Prometheus, Splunk, ELK; Cloudflare WAF; IAM/OIDC).

Expertise Snapshot

  • Cloud & Orchestration: AWS, Azure; EKS/AKS/OpenShift; Karpenter; Docker/Podman; Helm & Kustomize; Terraform, Pulumi & Bicep; GitOps (Argo CD/Flux)
  • Landing Zones & Governance: AWS Control Tower, IAM Identity Center, multi‑account organizations; Azure hub‑and‑spoke, Front Door/WAF, Private Endpoints, DNS Private Resolver; Transit Gateway, Client VPN; HIPAA‑aligned and regulated environments
  • CI/CD Platforms: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins/JenkinsX, CircleCI, Harness, Spinnaker; artifact repos (Artifactory, Nexus)
  • Observability & Security: Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana/Loki, ELK, Splunk; Azure Monitor/Log Analytics, CloudWatch/CloudTrail; Cloudflare WAF, Defender for Cloud; IAM/OIDC, Auth0/Okta
  • AI/ML: LLM apps (agents/tool use, RAG), prompt/program design; OpenCV/OCR/similarity; local LLMs (Ollama); PyTorch; Replicate/Flux, 11Labs, Whisper, FFmpeg; n8n orchestration
  • Data Stores: Postgres/Aurora, MySQL/RDS, MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch; Cosmos DB
  • Languages & Frameworks: Python, Java, JavaScript/Node, Bash, Kotlin, C/C++; Spring, Flask/WSGI

Projects & Results

  • Large healthcare SaaS provider — Code intelligence + AI‑generated workflows: scanned ~1,400 client repositories with local LLMs to extract a top‑feature taxonomy; generated Argo Workflows/Events to migrate in‑container DBs to AWS RDS. Tech: Python, local Llama 3.1, GPT‑4o, AWS EC2/RDS, Argo. Outcome: focused roadmap and reduced migration risk.
  • Healthcare SaaS platform — EKS migration and IaC: modernized legacy workloads and delivered GitOps via Argo CD on AWS EKS using Terraform/Helm. Outcome: zero‑downtime cutover, improved reliability, less operational toil.
  • Regulated B2B application platform — AWS multi‑account landing zone: designed and implemented Control Tower with IAM Identity Center; codified governance and networking (hub‑and‑spoke VPCs, Transit Gateway, Client VPN, NAT egress) and built reusable Terraform modules/stacks for app environments. Delivered MariaDB RDS with RDS Proxy and alarms, Windows EC2 compute patterns, and a production AppStream desktop/workspace‑app system (image builder, fleets, multi‑session, home‑folder and settings persistence). Outcome: governed multi‑account foundation with runbooks for operational handoff.
  • Healthcare technology provider — Azure IaC platform and HIPAA‑aligned network: built a Bicep platform for multi‑tenant environments with reusable modules for compute, networking, monitoring, SQL, and App Services; designed hub‑and‑spoke networking with Azure Front Door, WAF, Private Endpoints, and DNS Private Resolver to secure data‑tier services. Delivered Azure Monitor/Log Analytics coverage for 75+ App Services, 15 App Service Plans, and 47 SQL databases with tuned, low‑noise alerting; automated Defender for Cloud remediation reporting via Resource Graph/KQL. Outcome: repeatable tenant provisioning and audit‑ready monitoring.
  • National media publisher — Ephemeral PR environments: implemented Kubernetes preview environments with JenkinsX and Pulumi‑based AWS infrastructure pipelines. Outcome: faster reviews and higher release confidence.
  • Major financial services — Azure migrations + CI/CD: migrated EOL Windows containers and in‑container/VM databases to new Azure VMs and Azure SQL; implemented a modern CI/CD pipeline. Outcome: supported platform and predictable deployments.
  • Aviation membership platform — Datadog observability rollout: rolled out a full Datadog implementation across the environment for alerting and monitoring; containerized services; built pipelines with Docker, CircleCI/Harness, Helm on AWS EKS. Outcome: proactive alerting and clear operational visibility.
  • Regional telecom provider — Containerized DNS resolver system: designed Podman‑based containers inside a VM estate for captive‑portal authentication. Outcome: reliable auth path and simplified ops.
  • Systems software vendor — Distributed storage platform, prototype to product: took a kernel‑space driver plus user‑space services from one developer’s machine to a distributable system — one‑step Deb builds, DKMS kernel module management, Ubuntu 20.04→24.04 (5.x→6.x) support, systemd integration, benchmarks, man pages, and docs/tests. Then built a Next.js web UI with real‑time monitoring, a node agent for multi‑node management, Prometheus/Loki metrics and log aggregation, and post‑quantum cryptography over QUIC transport; optimized performance‑critical I/O paths. Tech: Autotools/Makefiles, FPM, DKMS, systemd, Next.js, Prometheus/Loki. Outcome: reproducible releases, operational visibility, and easier onboarding.
  • Industrial/IoT monitoring company — Azure platform buildout: designed AKS‑based cloud with CouchDB, MongoDB, and Azure Database for MySQL; added GitHub Actions CI/CD and automated releases. Outcome: reliable data ingestion and repeatable deployments.
  • National broadcast media company — Ultra‑low‑latency AndroidTV app: integrated high‑performance encoding SDK to enable remote live broadcast during pandemic constraints. Outcome: live-from-home capability for on‑air talent.
  • AR/virtual events company — Live encoding on AKS: helped implement the live encoding and streaming system on Kubernetes (AKS) in Azure; optimized Azure Storage; modernized SharePoint infra. Outcome: resilient live streaming and smoother operations.
  • Nonprofit grants software provider — Source control modernization: migrated hundreds of repos from CVS/TFS to GitHub with full history and metadata preservation. Outcome: unified, modern VCS and release process.
  • Telecom analytics startup — Edge analytics on Azure: built and operated AKS infrastructure for real‑time ingestion and analytics workflows. Outcome: scalable ingestion and faster delivery.
  • Hospitality software platform — CI/CD with Jenkins (no Kubernetes): ran Jenkins with Docker build nodes; supported 100+ developers across 20+ projects and three teams. Outcome: faster, reliable builds and coordinated releases.
  • Consumer e‑commerce brand — Legacy store hardening: migrated Miva to HTTPS, created long‑term backups, and safely decommissioned legacy infra. Outcome: improved security and continuity.
  • Healthcare supply‑chain platform — Heroku→AWS EKS migration: implemented Terraform+Helm delivery and Datadog observability; led DevOps operations through launch and scaling. Outcome: stable platform and clear SLOs.
  • Mobile data privacy company — Android app UI + observability: built app UI and a Splunk dashboard for device data/events. Outcome: enterprise‑grade monitoring and visibility.
  • Enterprise personal safety platform — Bluetooth/device reliability: resolved persistent device sync issues with Android app and BLE devices. Outcome: dependable device experience.
  • Personal safety wearables vendor — Cloud redeploy and hardening: redeployed backend on Pivotal Cloud Foundry; configured JBoss/Hibernate and PostgreSQL. Outcome: stabilized platform operations.
  • Construction equipment services platform — Cloud‑native redesign on AWS: EKS, Aurora RDS, ElastiCache, Elasticsearch, ALB. Outcome: modern, scalable architecture.
  • Hourly‑worker communications platform — Heroku observability + WAF: deployed Datadog and Cloudflare WAF protections. Outcome: better visibility and security.
  • Online education platform — First Kubernetes platform + mentorship: implemented the company’s first Kubernetes platform and mentored the team to migrate all apps from a standard legacy AWS stack; automated app/infrastructure delivery with Terraform, Helm, JenkinsX/Spinnaker. Outcome: faster iteration and consistent releases.
  • Early computer‑vision startup — Commercial CV products: facial similarity, OCR (~90% success), image‑based search, mobile barcodes; early AWS (EC2+S3) training at scale. Outcome: CTIA‑recognized spin‑out and productionized pipelines.
  • WaterDamageDirect.com — AI‑first business, built end to end (own venture): used foundation models to take the business from concept through brand, product, and infrastructure. Built a custom AI‑powered crawler and classifier to discover and verify water‑damage contractors across the U.S., producing a proprietary, continuously refreshed contractor database. Public site in Next.js, admin tooling in Python/Flask, offline Python crawlers, AI‑driven tasking through Redmine. Infra: DigitalOcean Kubernetes (3‑node prod, 2‑node QA), Postgres + PostGIS, Redis, Cloudflare. Outcome: a complete, operating product delivered with AI in the loop at every stage.
  • Multi‑model investment research tool — Private project: ingests investor dossiers, fetches market data and news, and evaluates symbols through each investor’s philosophy; provider‑pluggable orchestration across Anthropic/Google/OpenAI with cross‑advisor summarization to a Buy/Hold/Sell call. Outcome: end‑to‑end research pipeline for strategy comparison and triangulated decisions.
  • Generative video workflow — One‑prompt to MP4: orchestrated OpenAI→Replicate/Flux→11Labs→FFmpeg via n8n. Outcome: fully automated short‑form video generation.

Notable Past Clients

  • T‑Mobile
  • Logicalis
  • Ziply Fiber
  • Xfinity/Comcast
  • NASDAQ
  • NCSoft
  • Agilysys
  • NexStar
  • Varsity Tutors
  • NexTech AR
  • EMD Millipore
  • Snopes
  • Matrix Medical Network
  • Cerbo
  • Wheels Up
  • Abeo Systems / CrystalPM
  • TrueMed
  • Ultrata

Patents & Open Source

  • Patent — Devices and Methods for Identifying and Monitoring Changes of a Suspect Area on a Patient: WO/2006/078902 (PCT/US2006/002037); a method for monitoring changes in skin cancer using CCD cameras.
  • YaCy (2025) — added Helm chart support and documentation for Kubernetes deployments.
  • Crypto Coin Printer (2014) — released an openSUSE‑based LiveCD for offline printing of Bitcoin/altcoin paper wallets.
  • jGameBase (2012) — implemented a command‑line launcher mode for integration with MAME/arcade front‑ends.
  • Freevo (2007) — patches for improved Hauppauge PVR‑350 support.

Earlier Experience

  • Logicalis (Senior Delivery Consultant): enterprise Java and large-scale systems for T-Mobile, EMC, Corbis.
  • ActiveSymbols (Co‑founder/VP R&D): CV productization; early commercial CV deployments; academic collaboration (UW PhD interns).
  • NCSoft (Lead Web App Engineer): led team post Aion launch; Spring/MongoDB, Alfresco CMS.
  • 1Cast, All Star Directories (consulting), eScreened, TalkSpot/Worldstream, Coolworld/Cooluniverse, JukeNet — backend platforms, distributed testing frameworks, ISP infrastructure, and early internet products.