Blackwell Systems

Consulting Services

I provide expert consulting on cloud infrastructure architecture and technical documentation for engineering teams and developer-facing products.

Cloud Infrastructure Consulting

Specialization: Cloud-native architecture, distributed systems design, comprehensive testing strategies for GCP and AWS environments, and architecture patterns including REST APIs, gRPC/Protocol Buffers, event-driven systems (SNS/SQS/EventBridge), pub-sub, message queues, and distributed caching.

Services Offered

Architecture & Design

  • Event-driven architecture (SNS, SQS, EventBridge pipelines)
  • Serverless systems (Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB)
  • Data pipeline design (ingestion, transformation, warehousing)
  • Real-time processing (Redis caching, stream filtering)
  • Microservices architecture and API design
  • API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC, JSON-RPC)
  • Database architecture (SQL/NoSQL selection, single-table design)
  • Secret management and security boundaries
  • Infrastructure-as-code (CDK, Terraform)
  • ETL pipeline architecture (Glue, Redshift, Athena)
  • Legacy modernization to cloud-native patterns
  • Authentication/authorization design (Lambda authorizers, IAM policies)
  • Cost optimization strategies (instance selection, caching patterns)

Testing & CI/CD

  • Local emulation for hermetic testing
  • CI/CD pipeline optimization
  • Integration testing without cloud dependencies
  • Cost reduction through local development strategies
  • Test coverage and quality improvements

Distributed Systems Reliability

  • Idempotent message handling patterns
  • Observability and debugging strategies
  • Error handling and retry logic design
  • Production incident analysis and postmortems
  • Scalability reviews and performance optimization

Experience Highlights

  • Backend developer for global hospitality loyalty platform serving millions of customers
  • Designed serverless event-driven promotion system (Lambda, EventBridge, DynamoDB, Redis)
  • Built data pipelines processing millions of events/day (Redshift, Glue, S3)
  • Migrated legacy systems to cloud-native architecture (AWS, Terraform, CDK)
  • Built production-grade GCP Secret Manager emulator with enterprise adoption
  • Author of “You Don’t Know JSON” (107,000 words on JSON architecture and streaming)
  • Creator and maintainer of 11 open-source tools (Go, Rust, TypeScript) for cloud, security, and distributed systems.
  • 5 years enterprise backend engineering, 3x AWS Certified

Ideal For

  • Teams migrating to cloud-native architectures
  • Engineering leaders scaling distributed systems
  • Companies needing hermetic CI/CD testing strategies
  • Teams struggling with cloud service costs in development
  • Organizations improving system reliability and observability

Technical Writing & Documentation

Specialization: Comprehensive technical documentation, API references, and developer experience for engineering teams.

Services Offered

Documentation Creation

  • API documentation (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)
  • Architecture guides and system design documentation
  • CLI tool documentation and usage guides
  • Developer onboarding and tutorial content
  • Open source project documentation

Documentation Strategy

  • Information architecture and content organization
  • Docs-as-code workflows and tooling setup
  • Style guides and writing standards development
  • Documentation quality audits and improvements
  • Developer portal design and implementation

Technical Communication

  • Complex systems explained clearly for technical audiences
  • Architectural decision records (ADRs)
  • Technical blog content and thought leadership
  • Conference talk preparation and workshop materials
  • Internal technical documentation for platform teams

Portfolio

  • 225,000+ lines of technical documentation
  • Published author: “You Don’t Know JSON” (107,000 words)
  • 11 open-source projects with comprehensive documentation
  • 27 published articles (5,000+ words each) on distributed systems and architecture
  • 3x AWS Certified, Azure, Terraform certified

Ideal For

  • Startups needing initial documentation infrastructure
  • Platform teams improving internal developer experience
  • Open-source projects requiring professional documentation
  • Companies with significant documentation debt
  • Developer tools companies needing API references

Engagement Models

Architecture Review

Duration: 1-2 weeks
Deliverable: Comprehensive architecture assessment with recommendations

Implementation Consulting

Duration: Ongoing (hourly or retainer)
Deliverable: Hands-on architecture guidance and code review

Documentation Projects

Duration: 2-8 weeks depending on scope
Deliverable: Complete documentation suite for product/platform

Team Workshops

Duration: Half-day or full-day sessions
Topics: Distributed systems patterns, testing strategies, documentation best practices

Speaking & Content

Available for:

  • Conference talks on distributed systems, cloud architecture, API design
  • Podcast interviews on systems design, language design trade-offs, developer productivity
  • Corporate workshops on architecture patterns and testing strategies
  • Book talks on “You Don’t Know JSON” and JSON ecosystem architecture

Contact

Ready to discuss your project?

Response time: Within 24-48 hours for all inquiries.

Open Source & Projects

All consulting work is informed by real production experience. View my open source portfolio:

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