I containerize your applications, put your infrastructure under code, automate the deployments, and stay on to keep it running. No headcount req, no six-month hire.
What this usually looks like
Small teams build infrastructure by hand because shipping the product matters more. It works until the person who set it up is the only one who understands it. These are the symptoms I get called about.
Infrastructure configured through the AWS console, with nothing reproducible and no way to stand up a second environment.
Deployments run manually by one person, who is also the only one who can do them.
No staging environment, so testing happens against production.
You find out about outages when a customer calls, and the root cause is never established.
Application logs writing to the production database, competing with real queries for IOPS.
Certificates and API tokens that expire without warning because nobody is tracking them.
A cloud bill nobody can attribute, with untagged resources and NAT Gateway charges as the surprise line item.
Seasonal traffic peaks handled by over-provisioning year round and hoping.
Services
Your existing environment brought under Terraform or AWS CDK, imported incrementally so nothing is torn down and rebuilt. Reviewable, reproducible, and something a second engineer can read.
Terraform · AWS CDK · CloudFormation import
Applications packaged as images, with the assumptions about local disk, in-memory sessions and machine-specific config found and fixed along the way. Usually the step that unlocks everything else.
Docker · ECR · ECS Fargate · docker‑compose
A pipeline that builds, tests, and ships without anyone logging into a server. Rollback that works. Anyone on the team can deploy, which removes the person-shaped bottleneck.
GitHub Actions · CodePipeline · blue/green
Real staging and development environments that mirror production, created from the same code. Once infrastructure is defined once, a second copy of it costs almost nothing to maintain.
Per‑environment state · parameterized stacks
Structured logs off the database and into CloudWatch, dashboards for the metrics that predict incidents, and alarms that reach a person before a customer does.
CloudWatch · alarms · escalation policy
Right-sizing, idle resource cleanup, Savings Plan coverage, and a tagging scheme so spend can be attributed. Usually pays for a meaningful part of the engagement.
Cost Explorer · tagging · Savings Plans
IAM roles replacing long-lived keys, secrets out of config files, certificates on auto-renewal, and security groups narrowed to what is actually needed. SOC 2 evidence collection where it applies.
IAM · Secrets Manager · ACM · SOC 2
Scheduled scaling for predictable peaks, autoscaling for the rest, and caching or read replicas where latency is genuinely database-bound rather than guessed at.
Auto Scaling · CloudFront · read replicas
Engagements
The difference that matters is who owns the infrastructure when the work is finished. Pick the model that matches how your team is actually staffed.
Scoped technical work, billed for hours actually worked, with a ceiling agreed up front.
Best when you already know what you need built and want to keep control of the spend.
A defined outcome for a defined number, with the overrun risk carried on my side rather than your budget.
Best when the outcome is clear and you want budget certainty before work starts.
Ongoing ownership of the infrastructure after it is built, because infrastructure as code drifts back to hand-configured without someone maintaining it.
Best when your engineers are fully loaded on product and infrastructure is nobody’s actual job.
Rates depend on scope, duration, and how much of the work is on site. Volume and longer commitments are discounted. Tell me what you are trying to fix and you will get a number in writing, usually within two business days.
Enablement option
On any project engagement, one of your engineers can work through the build with me. We pair on the implementation, they run the final deployments themselves, and they finish able to maintain and extend it. They do not receive a handover document. They help write it.
This costs more than building it alone, because teaching while building is slower. What you are buying is that in twelve months you do not need me. If you can staff it, it is the right outcome, and I will tell you when it is not worth it.
Process
A working session with whoever knows the system, plus read access to the AWS account. The output is a written scope with a fixed price or an hours ceiling, not an open-ended engagement.
Work happens in your repositories against your accounts, reviewed the way your team reviews anything else. Weekly written updates so nobody is guessing about progress.
Runbooks for every operational procedure, an architecture document that reflects what was actually built, and a recorded walkthrough your team keeps. The point is that onboarding a new engineer does not require calling me.
Optional, and genuinely optional. Some teams take the retainer, some take the work in-house on day one. Either is a good outcome as long as the ownership question has an answer.
Included as standard
Warranty period
Any defect in what I build is fixed at no cost for 30 days after delivery.
Runbooks
Every operational procedure written down, in the repository, versioned with the code.
Recorded walkthrough
An architecture session recorded for your team to keep and re-watch when someone new joins.
Post-delivery support
A block of support hours after handover, with no expiration date.
Fixed pricing
On project engagements, if the work runs long that is my risk and not your budget.
Written recommendations
Including the things not worth building. You will get told when something is a bad investment.
Selected work
Replace the bracketed figures with your own before publishing, and get written permission before naming any client.
SaaS platform — messaging infrastructure
Ongoing responsibility for a live event-driven platform: webhook ingestion through SQS into Lambda and Aurora for persistence. Work has included a complete architecture overhaul to support scaling and reduce compute overhead, defect resolution, on-call support, an Aurora configuration review that cut monthly spend, and the infrastructure evidence for a SOC 2 audit.
Also available
Where a team is moving information between systems by hand, the same infrastructure discipline applies to automating it. Extraction from documents, classification, routing, validation. Built to run in production with a human reviewing anything the system is not confident about, which is what separates a working system from a demo.
Contact
A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether there is something worth doing. If there is not, I will say so. If there is, you will get a written scope with a number attached.
Based in Orange County, California. On site in Irvine and the surrounding area when it is useful, remote otherwise.
mattasparks27@gmail.com
Scheduling
https://calendly.com/sparksinfra
Location
Orange County, CA
Availability
Accepting work