Cloud & Data Center
- AWS
- S3
- CloudFront
- Route 53
- Dell Data Center
- Hybrid Cloud
Hi, I'm Jason 👋
I build things that
don't fall down.
Architect who builds things that scale — and occasionally writes about it.
Get to know me
The Human Behind the Architecture
It's always hard to talk about yourself. Here's my attempt.
At a point when most people my age are savoring the early stages of the empty nest, or counting down to grandkids, I took a sharp left turn. I'm in my mid-50s, widowed, with two kids in the early double digits and two dogs who collectively make sure I am never, ever not needed by someone. Very much in the game. Very much on the go. Very much unable to sleep in on weekends.
Life has a way of rewriting your plans without asking. It hands you things you didn't choose and then dares you to figure out who you are on the other side of them. I'm still figuring it out — which is probably the most honest thing I can say about myself.
I'm also lucky enough to be with someone who gets it. She's a fellow member of what we call the world's worst club — also widowed, with a kid and a dog of her own. Between us: three kids, three dogs, and a combined calendar that would make a project manager nervous. That shared understanding of loss, resilience, and just how complicated everything gets in the middle of it all? That's rare. That matters.
So that's me, beyond the job title. Architect. Solo dad. Member of a club nobody asked to join. Still building things that don't fall down — at work and at home.
Where I've been
The Story So Far
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Eleven years of making the complex feel obvious
The job title says Sales Engineer. The actual job is being the person in the room who can hold a conversation with a skeptical CTO at 10am, design an architecture by noon, and have a compelling Bill of Materials ready by 2pm. At Insight, I've been the bridge between what clients think they need and the infrastructure that actually solves their problem — across data centers, cloud, networking, security, and everything in between.
That means leading discovery sessions, running whiteboard architectures with C-suite stakeholders, responding to RFPs, and building proof-of-concept engagements that show real value instead of just promising it. The work spans Dell data center solutions through the full Insight partner ecosystem, and no two deals look the same.
What I took away → The hardest technical problem in any deal is usually the communication one.
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I was at Dell before I was selling Dell
After more than a decade in support and operations, an opportunity landed to shift into a sales-oriented role at Dell. It was a genuine turning point — a chance to stay close to technology while actually talking to people for a living, which, it turns out, suited me well.
It also came with travel. If you've ever experienced the romance of a Midwest regional airport at 6am, you know exactly the kind of adventure I'm describing. The destinations weren't glamorous. The experience was invaluable.
That chapter set the foundation for everything that came next at Insight — the product fluency, the relationships, and a hard-won understanding of what customers actually need versus what looks good on a slide deck.
What I took away → Switching lanes doesn't mean starting over. The pivot that makes you a little nervous is usually the one that takes you further.
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The Foundation
Some careers start in the trenches. The unglamorous work that actually makes you good.
The kind of roles where your phone rings at 2am and you answer it — not because you have to, but because something is broken and someone needs it fixed. Support and operations teaches you things no certification ever will: how systems actually fail, what users actually need, and the particular zen of staying calm when everything is on fire.
That decade of late nights, war room calls, and problems nobody else wanted to touch is what made everything that came after possible. You can't fake that foundation.
Went to DePaul. Double Demon. Tech and business both times — turns out that wasn't an accident.
What I took away → Turns out a decade of fixing things is the best possible prep for selling them.
What I work with
What I Bring
The skills I reach for. Grouped by what they do, not by buzzword density.
Solution Architecture
- System design
- BOM & sizing
- PoC development
- RFP/RFI response
- Architecture diagrams
Domains
- Networking
- Storage
- Compute / HCI
The Human Skills
- Executive presentations
- Technical discovery
- PowerPoint over Teams
- Partner management
- Calm under fire
Proof, not promises
Things I've Actually Built
Side projects, experiments, and things built just for fun. More always in the works.
Websites
capyarcade.com
Built this for my capybara-obsessed daughter. Classic arcade games, capy-fied. Some still need polish — it's on the list.
Visit →dcworkbench.com
Data center tools and calculators built for the conversations I have every day. Always online, always accessible. The technical side of me — available 24/7.
Visit →funfacts.space
Interactive calculators that put the true scale of the universe in your hands. Numbers only — no fluff. All pointed at the night sky.
Visit →onceuponamodel.com
Short, punchy AI tutorials and interactive simulators. Turns out a decent AI URL was available after all.
Visit →Fun with Gen AI
A few favorites — AI as a creative tool. I make the weird choices, it just executes.
Almost daily trips to the studio with my daughter. I didn't choose Dance Dad life. Dance Dad life chose me. Pitching this to the networks.
Me, if I were a cop. In Miami. In the 80s.
Lately
Random Musings, Current Thoughts... SQUIRREL!
Short thoughts, lessons, and things I'm chewing on. I post when I post — two kids, two dogs, you do the math.
The Decommission Plan
Ten to twelve years out from retirement, I finally ran the same sizing math on my own number that I'd run on a data center. Includes a full drawdown simulator — drag your own withdrawal rate and see what happens.
Read it →