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Brendan Palkowski
Grand Rapids, MI palko.dev|github.com/bpalko|linkedin.com/in/brendan-palkowski

Technical Skills

  • Core: Go, Python, Bash, Kubernetes (operators, CRDs, Kubebuilder), Terraform, Helm, Crossplane, ArgoCD, Kargo, AWS, GCP
  • Infrastructure: Docker, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Postgres, Istio, Tyk, External Secrets, Kafka
  • Agentic: Cursor (self-hosted agents), Claude Code

Experience

Senior Software EngineerJan. 2024 – Present
First AmericanRemote
  • Wrote Go Kubernetes operators (Kubebuilder / controller-runtime) that extend the platform control plane: a preview-database operator for pull-request environments (namespace isolation; logical DBs with connection limits; migrations, roles, auth, teardown) and a reconciler that syncs Crossplane-managed Aurora RDS credentials into AWS Secrets Manager across disaster recovery.
  • Adopted Crossplane as the infrastructure API: custom resources and Helm packages for Aurora RDS/DocDB, S3, Redis, and IAM (Pod Identity), consumed by ~400 application tenants.
  • Rolled out ArgoCD and Kargo as the Golden Path, moving releases from multi-month cycles to per-commit delivery. Every tenant depends on a Helm chart we maintain that abstracts platform features onto Kubernetes, including the Istio mesh, External Secrets, ingress via Tyk, and autoscaling.
  • Technical Pod Lead for 3–8 engineers; platform on-call.
Cloud EngineerMar. 2022 – Jan. 2024
AlteryxRemote
  • Rebuilt the multi-cloud Terraform platform (GCP and AWS) across four platform accounts plus customer private data planes, and cut full environment builds from weeks to under 3 hours; wrote the architecture and runtime guide engineering used afterward.
  • Wrote Go services to create and destroy split-plane clusters, generate manifests, template Terraform, and mirror GitLab projects.
  • Technical lead for AI data-plane infrastructure in Terraform; onboarded teams onto Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and Helm.
Predictive ModelerJune 2020 – Mar. 2022
Auto-Owners InsuranceLansing, MI
  • Built and ran 70+ production microservice scrapers with Kafka and cron, used by underwriters for risk analysis.
  • Migrated the department to Konvoy Kubernetes (production and non-production) and trained modelers on the new cluster.

Education

University of MichiganAnn Arbor, MI
Bachelor of Science in Information Science

Volunteer

Coding Instructor, PiAcademyGrand Rapids, MI
  • Teach coding fundamentals through Raspberry Pi projects at a local youth tech nonprofit.