Career Timeline
Two decades of building, measuring, and delivering software at scale — from performance engineering in defense systems, to cloud transformation in big media, to founding a platform engineering company and leading it through acquisition.
These threads overlapped far more than a linear list suggests — for most of two decades I was running my own company underneath the contracts and platform roles below. Open the interactive Career Map → to see all four themes on a single timeline.
2024 – Present: Civo & Konstruct
CEO & Co-founder, Konstruct · Director of Enterprise Cloud Solutions, Civo
In March 2024, Civo acquired Kubefirst — bringing the open source platform and our team into the Civo family, in a deal led by Civo CEO Mark Boost. In September 2024 we established Konstruct Inc. as a distinct company within that family, and I lead it as CEO and co-founder while serving as Director of Enterprise Cloud Solutions at Civo. The two roles are one arc: Konstruct builds the platform engineering products; Civo provides the cloud and the enterprise reach.
This is why the amber "building my own company" band on the Career Map runs unbroken from 2003 to today — Integrity Test Solutions, then Kubefirst, now Konstruct.
Key milestones:
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| March 2024 | Civo acquires Kubefirst |
| September 2024 | Konstruct Inc. formed; adopted a 4-day work week |
| November 2024 | Launched Colony for bare-metal Kubernetes; presented at KubeCon NA 2024 |
| 2025 | Konstruct Platform v0.2 — environments, pipelines, observability |
| Ongoing | Multi-cloud platform engineering: Civo, AWS, GCP, Azure, self-hosted |
Kubefirst remains the open source heart of the work — 2,000+ GitHub stars, CNCF Landscape, nine supported platforms — now stewarded under Konstruct.
2022 – 2024: The Kubeshop Chapter
CEO of Kubefirst (Kubeshop)
Kubefirst was acquired by Kubeshop, providing resources to accelerate development and expand the team. During this period:
- Achieved CNCF landscape inclusion
- Grew to support multiple cloud providers (AWS, Civo, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Google Cloud)
- Built out the team with talented engineers
- Presented at KubeCon NA 2022 in Detroit
- Established the Kubefirst Live podcast series
2021 – 2022: Kubefirst Genesis
Co-founder of Kubefirst
Together with Jared Edwards, I founded Kubefirst to solve a problem we had witnessed repeatedly: Kubernetes adoption taking 18 months or longer in enterprise environments.
- Built the initial platform during nights and weekends
- Ran our year-long stealth enterprise pilot with Virtru — the first company to adopt Kubefirst in production, and proof the approach worked outside our own walls
- Open sourced the project onto the CNCF landscape
- Acquired by Kubeshop accelerator
Virtru — first enterprise pilot
Before Kubefirst was public, Virtru — the data-protection and encryption company — became our first enterprise design partner. For roughly a year we hardened the platform against a real production environment and a real engineering team, turning a nights-and-weekends project into something an enterprise could stake its delivery on. That pilot is why Kubefirst launched credible rather than theoretical.
2013 – 2016: Gannett / USA Today Network
Developer → Build Master → Solutions Architect → Platform Architect
Modernizing the Content Solutions Platform at one of America's largest media companies, wearing every hat on the way up — developer to platform architect:
- Guided the application suite from Windows to Linux, .NET to Node.js, VMware to Chef, and on-premises to the cloud
- Pioneered public and multiregion private hybrid cloud architecture with cloud abstraction layers
- Replaced an error-prone, bureaucratic release process with a continuous delivery system that grew to over 1,200 build configurations, kept manageable by a versioned, template-driven design
- Built platform engineering practices from the ground up — the hands-on enterprise experience that later inspired Kubefirst
In the media:
- Gannett Embraces NoSQL and Cloud — The Next Platform
- How Gannett Achieved Scalability and Agility with NoSQL — Couchbase case study (archived)
- Transformation at Gannett — Chef's training course built on our migration (archived)
2003 – 2013: Integrity Test Solutions — The Consulting Decade
Founder & CEO, Integrity Test Solutions, LLC
At age 22, I bootstrapped my own software and services company — founded in 2003 to take on the Northrop Grumman Defense Travel System contract — and spent the next decade delivering performance engineering and software architecture for enterprise and defense clients. Highlights of those engagements — each detailed on the Previous Roles page:
- Northrop Grumman / Defense Travel System (2003 – 2007) — the founding ITS contract; lead performance analyst and production engineer for mission-critical releases of the DoD's military travel system
- Hewlett Packard / Edge (2007 – 2011) — software architect and lead developer of an SOA integration product connecting seven worldwide online systems
- Northrop Grumman / NG-CCAS (2010 – 2011) — designed a low-cost, high-volume load testing solution for a next-generation accountability system
- American Systems / DoD SPOT (2011 – 2013) — sole performance engineer for the system tracking deployed contractor personnel supporting military operations worldwide; drove a 65% reduction in average page time
- EIS / USCIS (2012 – 2013) — technical lead establishing performance testing practice across 112 distinct government software systems
Nineteen years of running Integrity Test Solutions taught me how to build a sustainable business from scratch, lead with customer focus, and balance vision with execution — the entrepreneurial foundation for everything since.
Early Career: Quality Engineering Foundations
Software Developer / Test Automation Developer at ADP-IMS
Where it started: automated testing implementation and quality assurance engineering — an early conviction that software should prove it works, which has run through every role since.
Client & Engagement Roster
The full list of accounts and engagements across the career, grouped by era. Government and enterprise work through 2021 was delivered under Integrity Test Solutions; the platform work from 2021 on was Kubefirst → Kubeshop → Konstruct.
| Account | Program / Focus | Years | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Konstruct | CEO & co-founder — platform engineering company | Sept 2024 – present | → |
| Civo | Director, Enterprise Cloud Solutions | Mar 2024 – present | → |
| Kubeshop | CEO of Kubefirst, post-acquisition | 2022 – 2024 | → |
| Kubefirst | Co-founded open source platform | 2021 – 2024 | → |
| Virtru | Kubefirst's first enterprise pilot | 2021 – 2022 | → |
| Gannett / USA Today Network | Content Solutions Platform modernization | 2013 – 2016 | → |
| Remine | Real-estate data platform (ITS consulting client) | 2016 – 2021 | → |
| Canda Solutions | Consulting engagement (via ITS) | approx. 2014 – 2019 | → |
| EIS / USCIS | Performance practice across 112 federal systems | 2012 – 2013 | → |
| American Systems / DoD SPOT | Deployed-personnel accountability system | 2011 – 2013 | → |
| Northrop Grumman / NG-CCAS | Next-gen contractor accountability, load testing | 2010 – 2011 | → |
| Hewlett Packard / Edge | SOA middleware integrating 7 global systems | 2007 – 2011 | → |
| Northrop Grumman / DTS | Defense Travel System — the founding ITS contract | 2003 – 2007 | → |
| ADP-IMS | Test automation, early career | approx. | → |
Missing or misremembered dates? A couple of the earliest engagements are approximate — tell me and I'll correct them.