Barry Walker

I

Full-stack product engineer who builds fast, ships clean, and hands off running systems

About

Problem solver. Automator. Toolsmith.

When infrastructure breaks at 2 AM, I'm the one who fixes it—and then builds the system that prevents it from breaking again. I've spent 20+ years turning manual, error-prone processes into automated pipelines that teams can trust.

My open-source Terraform modules have been installed over 31,000 times. I build tools because I hate doing the same thing twice, and I'd rather spend a week automating a problem than a year working around it.

I bridge development and operations because I've done both. I've shipped production applications and managed the infrastructure they run on. That dual perspective means I build solutions that developers will actually use and ops teams can actually maintain.

Facts

Years building and deploying applications.

Years of production AWS experience.

% client satisfaction

Resume

Professional Experience

Senior Systems Engineer

Sep 2020 - Present

Rocket Mortgage, Remote

Rocket Mortgage is the nation's largest retail mortgage lender, processing billions in loan volume annually. Part of Rocket Companies, a Fortune 500 organization known for its Super Bowl advertising presence and digital-first approach to home lending.

  • Architect and maintain AWS infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines for the Client Communications & Engagement group, directly supporting quickenloans.com and rocketmortgage.com—the primary digital front doors for the nation's largest retail mortgage lender.
  • Primary infrastructure owner for the enterprise Sitecore XP installation running multi-region in AWS. Over four years: implemented disaster recovery capabilities, built internal tooling to accelerate deployments while reducing risk, and led the migration of 15 service pipelines from CircleCI to GitHub Actions.
  • Designed and built the Global Preference Center from the ground up, a platform enabling customers to manage contact preferences across Rocket's entire Family of Companies. This system handles compliance-critical communication preferences at enterprise scale.
  • Core member of the Super Bowl Operations team every year since joining. Responsible for ensuring platform stability during peak traffic events when millions of viewers hit the site simultaneously following nationally televised ad spots—zero tolerance for downtime.

Senior Software Architect

Feb 2017 - Sep 2020

ZeroNorth, Boston, MA (acquired by Harness)

ZeroNorth was a security orchestration platform that unified vulnerability scanning across the entire SDLC—from code commit through production deployment. The company was acquired by Harness in 2021, validating the platform's approach to DevSecOps automation.

  • Owned the complete infrastructure and deployment strategy for a 15-microservice security orchestration platform (Python/Node.js). Company was acquired by Harness in 2021.
  • Led the full platform migration from Mesosphere DC/OS to Kubernetes. Rebuilt all deployment automation using Helm and Terraform, reducing full environment provisioning from days of manual work to a single 'make deploy' command.
  • Architected the on-premise deployment capability by packaging the entire platform into a VMware OVA running microk8s. This unlocked the enterprise sales motion for customers who couldn't use cloud deployments.
  • Implemented comprehensive observability across all environments using DataDog, including custom log processing pipelines that enabled real-time debugging and alerting across the distributed system.
  • Built and operated the CI/CD infrastructure: Jenkins with 8 parallel build pipelines servicing 80+ GitHub repositories, plus a dedicated ELK cluster for centralized logging and metrics.
  • Developed the platform's build-time integration agent—a customer-facing product feature that scans artifacts during CI builds and fails pipelines when security vulnerabilities are detected.
  • Implemented full horizontal autoscaling across all Kubernetes environments, configuring both pod autoscalers and cluster autoscalers to handle variable workloads efficiently.

Senior Software Engineer

Jun 2012 - Feb 2017

Autodesk, Boston, MA

Autodesk is a global leader in design and engineering software, serving industries from architecture to manufacturing. Joined through the acquisition of Vela Systems, where the product I helped build became BIM 360 Field—a cornerstone of Autodesk's construction technology portfolio.

  • Transitioned to Autodesk through the acquisition of Vela Systems. Continued as a Ruby on Rails engineer on BIM 360 Field, a construction field management platform used by major contractors and project owners worldwide.
  • Assumed full SRE ownership of BIM 360 Field in 2013. Managed production infrastructure on AWS, deployment automation via Capistrano, and configuration management with Chef. Responsible for uptime of a platform supporting thousands of active construction projects.

Senior Software Engineer

Feb 2008 - Jun 2012

Vela Systems, Burlington, MA (acquired by Autodesk)

Vela Systems pioneered mobile-first construction management software, transitioning from Windows Tablets to become one of the first enterprise iPad applications in the market. The company's vision and technology attracted Autodesk, leading to acquisition in June 2012.

  • Core engineer on the Vela Field Manager platform—a Ruby on Rails application that revolutionized construction field management and was acquired by Autodesk in 2012, becoming BIM 360 Field.
  • Architected and built the mobile REST API layer that synchronized data between the Rails backend and mobile clients, handling offline-first workflows critical for construction sites with unreliable connectivity.
  • One of two engineers who built the original iPad application in Objective-C from scratch. Owned all device-to-server communication, REST API integration, and local data persistence with SQLite. This was pioneering mobile development—the iPad had only launched in 2010.
  • Designed and implemented the reporting infrastructure using Jasper Reports Server, enabling construction managers to generate compliance and progress reports directly from field data.

AWS/Kubernetes/Terraform Consultant

Dec 2015 - Present

Independent Consulting Practice

Engaged by startups and enterprises to architect cloud infrastructure, execute datacenter-to-cloud migrations, and implement modern CI/CD pipelines. Selected engagements:

  • Equip Health: Architected serverless AWS infrastructure for their next-generation eating disorder treatment platform using Terraform and the Serverless Framework. Enabled the engineering team to deploy and iterate on a fully serverless backend.
  • Autodesk: Led the containerization initiative for BIM 360 Ops, migrating the product from AWS OpsWorks to a modern container-based deployment model. Established patterns subsequently adopted by other Autodesk teams.
  • BuildingEngines (acquired by JLL): Executed full datacenter migration from Rackspace to AWS for their legacy Java/Tomcat application. Subsequently built greenfield EKS infrastructure for their cloud-native products using Terraform and Helm, with Bitbucket Pipelines for CI/CD. Served as interim Director of Cloud Operations.
  • Polis (TechStars, acquired by Ad Practitioners): Brought in post-accelerator to build production-grade AWS infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines. Established the foundation that supported the company through acquisition.
  • Tenant Technologies: Migrated five PHP applications from on-premise datacenter to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Implemented autoscaling and auto-healing patterns, transforming their operational model from manual intervention to self-managing infrastructure.

Portfolio

Personal projects reflect my curiosity—I have a particular passion for retro computing and Commodore hardware. Professionally, I've focused on cloud migrations, lift-and-shift deployments, and building AWS infrastructure for next-generation products.

  • Personal
  • Professional
terraform-aws-rds-scheduler

terraform-aws-rds-scheduler

A custom Terraform module that you can use to schedule on and off times for your RDS instances/clusters.

terraform-aws-zookeeper

terraform-aws-zookeeper

A custom Terraform module that you can use to build a Zookeeper ensemble.

terraform-aws-rds-asg

terraform-aws-rds-asg

A custom Terraform module that you can use to turn your RDS instances/clusters on and off based on the size of an AWS Autoscaling Group.

SIM6502

SIM6502

A custom tool for running unit tests against 6502 assembly language programs. I built a custom DSL using ANTLR that works very similarly to how modern unit test tools work.

C128 Quad Kernal

C128 Quad Kernal

This is a cool piece of hardware for the Commodore 128 that lets you switch between 4 different Kernals by tapping the 128's RESTORE key. No case modifications required. I designed the circuit using Autodesk EagleCAD, had the boards built by PCBWay and built a PIC version and an Atmel version.

BJR (Barry's Job Runner)

BJR (Barry's Job Runner)

A job scheduler/runner that I built using Ruby on Rails and React (a separate repo).

Equip Health

Equip Health

Built out AWS infrastructure for their next-gen platform using Terraform and the Serverless framework. Backend was built entirely on API Gateway and Lambdas.

Building Engines

Building Engines

Migrated primary Java/Tomcat application from Rackspace to AWS. Served as interim Director of Cloud Operations, instituting best practices for tool standardization, security, logging, and secrets management. Acquired by JLL

Zeronorth

Zeronorth

Joined initially as a consultant to improve infrastructure and deployments, then accepted a full-time role as Sr. Software Architect/DevOps Engineer. Built a full CI/CD pipeline using Docker, Jenkins, and Kubernetes. Infrastructure was managed with Terraform; applications were packaged with Helm. Acquired by Harness

Polis

Polis

Secured AWS infrastructure and built a CI/CD pipeline using Travis and Elastic Beanstalk for v1. Migrated v2 to containerized deployments using Travis and Rancher. Acquired by Ad Practitioners

Autodesk

Autodesk

I was brought on to assist a transition of the BIM 360 Ops product from AWS Ops Works to a container based, standardized deployment model.

Tenant Technologies

Tenant Technologies

I migrated several PHP applications from an on-prem environment into AWS using Elastic Beanstalk.

Services

This isn't a comprehensive list, so if you need something not covered here, please reach out to me.

Prototype to Production

You built something that works on your laptop. I'll add proper error handling, logging, testing, deployment automation, and documentation so you can actually ship it and sleep at night.

System Rebuilds

Inherited a Frankenstein system held together with duct tape? I'll rebuild it clean with battle-tested tech (Python/Django, Postgres, Redis, K8s) so your next hire doesn't immediately quit.

Rapid Product Development

Need a production-ready POC fast? I build complete applications in days, not months. Full-stack: database design, backend APIs, intuitive UIs, deployment infrastructure, and handoff documentation.

Production Readiness

I turn vibe-coded apps into systems you can operate: observability (know when things break), automation (deploy without fear), testing (catch bugs before users do), and documentation (so you're not calling me at 2am).

Cloud Infrastructure & Deployment

AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines. I've been doing this since before EC2 existed. Your app will deploy reliably, scale automatically, and cost what it should.

Professional Handoff

I don't just build and disappear. You get: comprehensive documentation, deployment runbooks, architecture diagrams, and knowledge transfer so your team (or future hire) can maintain it without me.

Contact

Location:

Quincy, Massachusetts

Call:

(781) 817-3094