I'm Jeff, an independent and experienced engineer.

I am passionate about open source, NLP, building efficient data pipelines, and improving search.

Fully AWS 15x certified | 8x GCP certified

Hire me for your cloud/data/NLP projects.

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Ways I can help...

The Cloud

AWS Consulting

I am a fully certified AWS architect and engineer. With 15 years of experience working with AWS, I can help you build, modernize, and secure your cloud applications.

Google Cloud Consulting

I have many Google Cloud certifications and years of experience helping clients build their apps on GCP. Whether it's AI or an ecommerce site, I can help you build it.

Multi-Cloud

I have helped design multi-cloud architectures for high-availability and disaster recovery.

Data and AI

NLP

I have been a Natural Language Processing practitioner for about 15 years. I am the chair of the Apache OpenNLP project, a Java framework for NLP methods.

Data Pipelines

I love data pipelines and have set up many. I can help you set up pipelines to ingest, analyze, and index data to make it usable and searchable.

I am passionate about protecting PII and PHI in data pipelines.

Search

What's data without search? I have experience with OpenSearch and Elasticsearch making data accessible and useful.

Code

Software Engineering

I still write code and it's still one of my favorite things to do. While helping you design your cloud applications, I also have the confidence to implement them.

If you design it, you should have a hand in building it. It shows confidence in your design.

DevOps

I have helped clients adopt DevOps environments and cultures, and helped to streamline and automate their development processes.

Whether it's Terraform or CloudFormation, I believe strongly in infrastructure-as-code.

Advisory Services

While most of my work is hands-on, I am available for advisory services around emerging technology, best practices, cloud architecture, and application development.

Emerging Technology

The technology landscape moves fast and your business success can depend on being prepared for the changes. AI/ML has clearly shown us that.

I have experience guiding companies, from startups to large corporations, with both utilizing emerging technology now, and helping to plan for its future adoption.

Well-Architected Cloud

A Well-Architected review is an important part of a cloud architecture. A comprehensive review provides insights into your cloud posture and can identify areas of improvement.

I have experience performing Well-Architected reviews across many industries and would be glad to discuss a review of your cloud projects.

Why work with me?

Great question, and one you should ask of anyone you consider hiring. Here's a couple reasons why I think I can help you. Of course, we'll talk about it to make sure! :)

Deep Experience

For instance - I have over 15 years experience with AWS from back when S3 and SQS were about the only services. In those 15 years, I have passed all AWS certifications, been an AWS Community Builder, and written questions for the AWS certification exams. I have also published VM-based products to the AWS Marketplace.

Broad Exposure

I have worked with lots of clients across many industries, from e-commerce to natural resources to healthcare to shipping logistics to data and AI and government (and others). This broad experience helps me see the big picture allowing me to better understand your current position and needs.

Value on Community

I value sharing my work with the community whenever possible. Whether it's by contributing to open source software or presenting at conferences, a rising tide lifts all boats. It helps others learn, gives me the opportunity to meet new people, and allows others to get to know me.

Some folks I have worked with

Let's chat!

I'm always happy to spend a few minutes discussing potential projects. I only take on projects where I am confident I have the skills to meet or exceed your goals.

Email Me

Schedule some time to talk.

My Certifications

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

My AWS Certifications

I am fully AWS certified!

My AWS Certifications transcript

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

My Google Cloud Certifications

Visit my Google Cloud transcript and my Google Developers profile.

My Conference Presentations

Building an NLP Model Training Pipeline with Apache OpenNLP and Apache NiFi

Apache Community Over Code

October 2024 - Denver, Colorado

Apache OpenNLP and LLMs – Where does OpenNLP fit in?

Apache Community Over Code

October 2023 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Using Apache OpenNLP with OpenSearch k-NN Vector Search

Linux Foundation Open Source Summit
May 2023 – Vancouver, Canada

What’s New and Coming in Apache OpenNLP 2.0

ApacheCon
October 2022 – New Orleans, LA

Getting the most from your OpenSearch Contributions | Recording

Amazon Web Services OpenSearchCon
September 2022 – Seattle, WA

Searching for the right words: Bringing NLP Transformers to Apache Solr via Apache OpenNLP

Linux Foundation Open Source Summit
June 2022 – Austin, TX

Applied MLOps to Maintain Model Freshness on Kubernetes

Berlin Buzzwords
June 2021 – Virtual

From Training to Serving: Machine Learning Models with Terraform

HashiTalks
March 2021 –  Virtual

Protecting the Healthcare Enterprise from PHI Breaches using Streaming and NLP

Strata Data
September 2019 – New York, NY USA

Leveraging Neural Networks and Learning-to-Rank in Document Workflows


Activate Search and AI Conference
September 2019 – Washington, DC, USA

Improving Organizational Knowledge with Natural Language Processing Enriched Data Pipelines

DataWorks Summit Washington DC
May 2019 – Washington, DC, USA

Using Sockeye Neural Machine Translation in a Streaming Pipeline

PyData Washington DC
November 2018 – McLean, Virginia, USA

Embracing Diversity: Searching Over Multiple Languages

Activate Search and AI Conference
October 2018 – Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Embracing Diversity: Implementing Multi-language Search


Haystack Search Relevance Conference
April 2018 – Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Some of my open source contributions

I strongly believe in open source software. These are some of my contributions.

Apache OpenNLP

I have been involved with Apache OpenNLP as a user, developer, and PMC Chair for about 15 years. Apache OpenNLP is a solid NLP framework for Java. I'm an ASF Member.

Phileas

Phileas is an open source library that provides many redaction capabilities. It supports redaction, anonymization, and logic controls to precisely redact PII.

OpenSearch

I contribute to OpenSearch and am a maintainer of the User Behavior Insights component.

Phinder PII Plugin for OpenSearch

The Phinder PII Plugin for OpenSearch is a plugin that redacts PII from search results.

Philter

Philter is a turnkey PII redaction software. Philter is also available on the cloud marketplaces.

Ping me!

Email Me