Nov 2024 – Present
IT Specialist
U.S. Small Business Administration
IT support for federally declared disaster response operations and Disaster Recovery Centers.
IT Specialist · Cloud Engineer · Washington, DC
Federal IT specialist building cloud infrastructure on AWS.
Five years supporting federal agencies, from VA Telehealth to disaster response at the U.S. Small Business Administration. I'm an AWS Certified Solutions Architect who writes infrastructure as code, automates deployments, and runs a working lab to learn what breaks.
Systems I built and run
jeromeaaron.comThis website, hosted on AWSS3 · CloudFront · WAF · Route 53 · Terraformlivepi-stack homelabA private server that travels with me9 containers · Docker Compose · Ansible · Caddy · TailscalerunningLocal AI labPrivate AI models on my own laptopOllama · Qwen3.6 35B · ~25 tokens/s · CUDArunningHybrid cloud backupOffsite backups from the homelab to AWSS3 Glacier · Lambda · IAM · Terraformplanned
5 yrs
Supporting federal agencies
4
Industry certifications
99%+
Customer satisfaction on the service desk
100%
Of this site's AWS setup written in Terraform
How this site ships
How I built it →Every change is tested automatically before it goes live. There are no servers to patch, and nothing is clicked together by hand in the AWS console.
- 01git pushI commit a change
- 02GitHub ActionsType check, link check and accessibility audit
- 03Amazon S3Private file storage
- 04CloudFront + WAFGlobal delivery behind a firewall
- 05jeromeaaron.comLive for you minutes later
$ terraform plan No changes. Your infrastructure matches the configuration.
The whole AWS setup lives in Terraform. "No changes" means what's running matches the code exactly.
- Deploys sign in to AWS with short-lived OIDC credentials. No AWS keys are stored in GitHub.
- The S3 bucket is private. Only CloudFront can read from it.
- A web application firewall and strict security headers cover every request.
- Every GitHub Action is pinned to an exact commit, not a tag that can move.
Certifications
4
- AWS Solutions Architect
SAA-C03 - Security+
SY0-701 - A+
220-1101/02 - ITIL 4
ITIL4
Now
- Day jobIT Specialist, U.S. Small Business Administration
- StudyingB.S. Cloud Computing, WGU, finishing Dec 2026
- BuildingOffsite backups for my homelab on AWS
- BasedWashington, DC, traveling full-time for work
Latest writing
All posts →Designing a Hybrid Cloud Backup for a Homelab That TravelsMy homelab moves with me from hotel to hotel, which means most of my data sits on one drive in one room. Here's my plan to pair it with AWS: encrypted offsite backups in S3 Glacier Deep Archive, least-privilege IAM, a cloud-side watchdog and Terraform for all of it.Pi-Stack: A Homelab That Travels With MeI live mostly out of hotels for work, so I built a small, encrypted, self-hosted homelab on a Raspberry Pi that comes with me from city to city. Why I built it, what it runs, how it shares the work with my laptop, how to build one, and what broke along the way.Building a Cloud Portfolio: Why IaC MattersHow I used Terraform to provision every piece of AWS infrastructure for this site — and why that approach matters when applying for cloud engineering roles.
Tools I work with
Cloud (AWS)
- S3
- CloudFront
- Route 53
- IAM
- WAF
- ACM
Automation & CI/CD
- Terraform
- GitHub Actions
- Ansible
- Git
- Bash
- Astro
Containers & Linux
- Docker
- Docker Compose
- Linux
- systemd
- SELinux
Networking & security
- Tailscale / WireGuard
- Caddy
- Pi-hole
- LUKS encryption
- fail2ban
Monitoring, backup & AI
- Uptime Kuma
- restic
- Ollama
- Open WebUI
IT operations
- Active Directory
- Identity & access management
- Endpoint management / MDM
- Workspace ONE
- Disaster recovery
- Federal compliance
- ITIL 4
Experience
Full resume →Sep 2021 – Dec 2024
Service Desk Technician
Iron Bow Technologies
Tier 1/2 support for VA Telehealth: about 20 tickets a day at 99%+ customer satisfaction.
Expected Dec 2026
B.S. Cloud Computing
Western Governors University
Coursework that runs alongside the hands-on projects on this site.
Get in touch
The quickest way to reach me is a message on LinkedIn.