I'm Jeff, a certified cloud architect, DevOps engineer, and NLP consultant.

Hi Everyone!

My name is Jeff and my interests are in software engineering, DevOps, cloud architecture, big-data, and natural language processing. I have earned many cloud and data certifications. I am a software engineer at heart but also enjoy everything related to cloud and machine learning.

I am available for AWS, Google Cloud, and NLP consulting and will be glad to refer you to someone if I'm not currently available!

My AWS and Google Cloud Experience

I am proud to have a lot of AWS certifications and also a lot of Google Cloud Certifications. You can see my AWS certifications transcript and my Google Cloud certifications transcript. I have been an AWS Community Builder in 2023, 2022, and 2021, for Machine Learning. My first AWS certifications were obtained in 2014. Back then the certifications had issue numbers!

I am an AWS SME (since February 2020) and an AWS Lead SME, which means I have helped contribute to development of the AWS certifications exams. I have contributed to the AWS SysOps Adminstrator, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, AWS Data Analytics Specialty, and AWS Developer certification exams.

Most recently, my time has been about equally split between AWS and Google Cloud and I enjoy working with both.

My Background

I have worked in many domains from government, to security, healthcare, and search. I got started with cloud when AWS first launched around 2008. My interest in NLP was sparked in 2012 when I was working with unstructured data and learning about the difficulties in processing it. That interest led me to Apache OpenNLP. I started contributing to the Apache OpenNLP project where I could and today I am the current chair of the Apache OpenNLP PMC. I owe the Apache OpenNLP team a lot of gratitude for their help and guidance over the years. Most recently, I added ONNX Runtime support to Apache OpenNLP to facilitate the use of large-language models from Java.

As a programmer, I started out with QBasic, QuickBasic, and Visual Basic for DOS. I picked up C++ through Visual Studio 6 before moving to .NET. I moved to Java around 2010 and have since predominantly used Java as my high-level language. I also use Python and Go, and have experience with Scala. I do a lot of Bash, CloudFormation, and Terraform scripting and use Linux almost exclusively. Ubuntu has been my first pick since it was versioned using single digits and mailed out CD-ROMs.

My Work

Today, I do consulting in the areas of cloud, big-data, and NLP through my company Mountain Fog. I enjoy tackling data problems around data ingestion and search because those problems often fall directly in the intersections of my primary interests.

Some of my favorite tools are Apache Kafka and Apache NiFi. Combining these applications and frameworks with the scalability of the cloud can create very powerful platforms for data ingestion and manipulation. I believe search is important (and often overlooked) because without the ability to efficiently locate data the data is practically worthless. Vector search is now adding a new dimension to search - pun totally intended.

I maintain the Phileas project, along with the Philter software, under the Philterd organization. Philterd, LLC was created to further develop the software to find, identify, and redact sensitive information.

The Future

I believe the future lies in distributed computing across disparate cloud platforms. The internet of things and AI/ML will continue to expand and both will bring lots of technical and ethical challenges. I hope I can find ways to contribute for the betterment of society.


My work:

Mountain Fog, Inc. offers consulting services in the areas of cloud, big-data, and NLP. Learn more at www.mtnfog.com.

Philterd offers AI-powered software to identify, redact, and manage sensitive information in text. Learn more at www.philterd.ai.

My Certifications

I believe industry certifications provide a method of encouragement and a valuable way for engineers to validate and showcase their experience and skills.

My AWS Certifications

My AWS Certifications transcript

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
  • AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty
  • AWS Certified Databases – Specialty
  • AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
  • AWS Certified Security – Specialty
  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
  • AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty (Retired exam)
  • AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty (Retired exam)

I am also an AWS Certification Lead SME and an AWS Certification SME where I participate in activities related to AWS certification exam development.

My Conference Presentations

Apache Community Over Code

October 2023 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Title: Apache OpenNLP and LLMs – Where does OpenNLP fit in?

Technologies: Apache OpenNLP, Large-language models, NLP model training and evaluation

Resources: Coming soon!

Linux Foundation Open Source Summit
May 2023 – Vancouver, Canada
Title: 
Using Apache OpenNLP with OpenSearch k-NN Vector Search
Technologies: Apache OpenNLP, ONNX Runtime, OpenSearch
Resources: Code Repository

ApacheCon
October 2022 – New Orleans, LA
Title: What’s New and Coming in Apache OpenNLP 2.0
Technologies: Apache OpenNLP, ONNX Runtime

Amazon Web Services OpenSearchCon
September 2022 – Seattle, WA
Title: 
Getting the most from your OpenSearch Contributions
Technologies: Open Source
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j3IA546JQ8

Linux Foundation Open Source Summit
June 2022 – Austin, TX
Title: 
Searching for the right words: Bringing NLP Transformers to Apache Solr via Apache OpenNLP
Technologies: Apache OpenNLP, Apache Lucene, Apache Solr
Resources: Code Repository
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5za13Jc5OY

Berlin Buzzwords
June 2021 – Virtual
Title: 
Applied MLOps to Maintain Model Freshness on Kubernetes
Technologies: NLP, Text classification, Kubernetes, MLOps
Resources: Code Repository
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tzCH9YuM6s

HashiTalks
March 2021 –  Virtual
Title: 
From Training to Serving: Machine Learning Models with Terraform
Technologies: AWS, Terraform, MLOps, NLP
Resources: Code Repository

Strata Data
September 2019 – New York, NY USA
Title: 
Protecting the Healthcare Enterprise from PHI Breaches using Streaming and NLP
Technologies: Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, NLP

Activate Search and AI Conference
September 2019 – Washington, DC, USA
Title: 
Leveraging Neural Networks and Learning-to-Rank in Document Workflows
Technologies: NLP (document classification), Learning-to-Rank
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vja4P55OSag

DataWorks Summit Washington DC
May 2019 – Washington, DC, USA
Title: 
Improving Organizational Knowledge with Natural Language Processing Enriched Data Pipelines
Technologies: Apache NiFi, Apache Kafka, Apache OpenNLP, Apache Superset
Resources: Code Repository

PyData Washington DC
November 2018 – McLean, Virginia, USA
Title: 
Using Sockeye Neural Machine Translation in a Streaming Pipeline
Technologies: Apache Flink, Sockeye
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzt4g5Z-FBI

Activate Search and AI Conference
October 2018 – Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Title: 
Embracing Diversity: Searching Over Multiple Languages
Technologies: Apache NiFi, Apache OpenNLP, Apache Solr, Sockeye
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek-crQwMfnQ

Haystack Search Relevance Conference
April 2018 – Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Title: 
Embracing Diversity: Implementing Multi-language Search
Technologies: Apache NiFi, Apache Joshua, Elasticsearch
Resources: Code RepositoryPresentation

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