Contact

Email: nathan@chowning.me | GitHub: nchowning | LinkedIn: nchowning
Location: Columbus, OH Area (Open to Remote)

Summary

Senior Platform Engineer with 15+ years transforming infrastructure organizations—from VMware/Puppet environments to cloud-native Kubernetes platforms. Designed GitOps app deployment architecture for Autodesk’s company-wide Kubernetes platform: multi-tenant, hub-and-spoke, serving global production environments across multi-account AWS architectures. Combines deep Linux expertise with modern platform engineering to deliver elegant, maintainable infrastructure that enables developer self-service at scale.

Skills

Container & Orchestration: Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, Docker, Helm, Kustomize, Karpenter
GitOps & Continuous Delivery: ArgoCD, GitOps workflows
CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) & Pipelines: GitHub Actions, Harness, Jenkins
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform, Ansible
Cloud Platforms: AWS (EKS, EC2, IAM, VPC, RDS, S3, KMS, ElastiCache, Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, multi-account architectures)
Service Mesh & Networking: Istio, Envoy
Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Dynatrace, OpenTelemetry
Languages: Python, Bash, Go, YAML
Operating Systems: Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux)

Professional Experience

Autodesk (Senior Platform Engineer | Apr 2024 - Present)

Designed GitOps deployment architecture for KaaR (Kubernetes as a Runtime), Autodesk’s next-generation internal developer platform built to replace legacy ECS infrastructure company-wide. KaaR operated on clusters provisioned via a hub-and-spoke model with multi-tenant isolation across AWS accounts.

  • Authored ArgoCD ApplicationSet patterns, GitOps repository structure, and Helm/Kustomize templating standards adopted as the platform’s deployment foundation. Enabled declarative, self-service deployments that eliminated manual pipeline management for application teams.
  • Architected Helm values schema consolidating 5+ charts into single-file application configurations, eliminating per-chart values sprawl. Designed layered override system (base → environment → environment+region) enabling teams to manage complex multi-region deployments without duplicating configuration.
  • Designed secrets management integration using External Secrets Operator, navigating the platform’s cross-account architecture to securely inject Terraform-provisioned credentials (RDS, S3) from data accounts into Kubernetes workloads on Runtime clusters.
  • Supported deployments across 5 global production clusters (Tokyo, London, Frankfurt, Canada, Mumbai) serving 50+ applications across the Autodesk Construction Cloud stack, with architecture validated for company-wide scale.
  • Led GitOps adoption initiative, transitioning teams from imperative pipeline deployments to declarative workflows. Reduced configuration drift to near-zero and established golden paths for consistent deployments.
  • Platform stack: EKS, ArgoCD, Helm, Kustomize, Karpenter, External Secrets Operator, Istio, Terraform, Harness

Loop (Senior DevOps Engineer | Oct 2022 - Present)

  • Automated EKS cluster bootstrap process, reducing cluster provisioning from multi-day manual effort to under 1 hour. Enabled rapid environment teardown and recreation across dev, stage, and production environments.
  • Architected ArgoCD-based continuous delivery platform supporting 3 clusters with 20+ daily deployments, improving deployment consistency and reducing release friction.
  • Migrated on-premises Teleport infrastructure to Teleport Cloud, eliminating self-managed infrastructure maintenance overhead and improving access reliability for engineering teams.

eFuse (System Engineer | Mar 2022 - Oct 2022)

  • Automated Terraform import workflows for 10+ Cloudflare DNS zones, reducing manual configuration effort from hours to minutes for frequent campaign-related changes.
  • Deployed Doppler Kubernetes Operator for centralized secrets management, eliminating secrets stored in container images and reducing application attack surface.

Immuta (System Engineer II | Aug 2021 - Mar 2022)

  • Improved security posture by migrating databases from vulnerable PostgreSQL containers to managed AWS RDS instances.
  • Designed snapshot-based backup processes for Consul and Vault clusters, improving disaster recovery posture and reducing RTO.

CoverMyMeds (Senior System Engineer | Feb 2016 - Aug 2021)

  • Pioneered container-based deployment on a platform originally built on VMware with Puppet-managed VMs. Designed process and automation for first production Docker application; 95% of ~1,000 production servers now run containerized workloads.
  • Designed Kubernetes testing environment supporting cloud-native migration initiative, establishing technical foundation for on-premises to AWS transition.
  • Built Ansible automation framework adopted as standard for day-to-day maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting—significantly reducing manual effort and operational incidents across VMware infrastructure.

Nationwide Insurance (Linux System Engineer | June 2013 - Feb 2016)

  • Redesigned server lifecycle management Django application and deployed custom Python package across 3,000+ servers to standardize API interactions and reduce provisioning errors.

Earlier Experience

Linux systems engineering roles at Highlights for Children and Jumpline.com (2010–2013), focusing on infrastructure automation, SSO implementation, and technical operations management.

Certifications

  • Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA)
  • Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)