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dayne@aws:~$ whoami

Dayne Andersen-Lambrecht

Senior Software Engineer who builds distributed systems at Amazon. Currently making content review platforms that don't fall over when you look at them wrong.

Previously launched AWS services, optimized away $5M+ in infrastructure costs, and mentored enough engineers that I should probably start charging for it.

// Also tried self-hosting everything once. Wrote about why that was a terrible idea for all three of my readers.

read my disasters judge my code email me
dayne@aws:~$ ps aux | grep "current_projects"

Current Projects

# stuff_that_pays_bills

  • ▶ Building content review systems that don't crash when someone uploads a 2GB video
  • ▶ Saving 450 operator hours/month via deduplication (the robots are finally helping!)
  • ▶ Teaching engineers how to stop making the same mistakes I made 3 years ago

# learning_and_breaking_things

  • ◆ IaC patterns that don't make developers want to quit programming
  • ◆ Finding out why my CPU is screaming at 90% (spoiler: it's always the cache misses, not the JSON parsing)
  • ◆ Writing blog posts that exactly three people will read
dayne@aws:~$ grep -r "employment_history" career/

Employment History

Amazon Publishing

Senior SDE making content review platforms that actually work

  • → Cut tenant onboarding from 11 weeks to 4 weeks (because 11 weeks is just mean)
  • → Processing 1.2M+ reviews/month without everything catching fire
  • → Built APIs that tenants actually want to use (revolutionary concept, I know)

AWS DataSync

Shipped DataSync Discovery from napkin sketch to public AWS service

  • → Hit a C-Suite deadline (miracles do happen)
  • → Optimized ETL jobs, saved $5M+/year (turns out NoSQL queries matter)
  • → Survived multiple security audits without crying

AWS Config

Built compliance features for people who have way too many AWS accounts

  • → Launched deployment orchestration across organization-wide AWS accounts
  • → Designed APIs that didn't make customers file support tickets
  • → Mentored interns who became exceptional engineers
dayne@aws:~$ cat philosophy.txt | head -5

Engineering Philosophy

"Build for the problem you have, not the one you think you'll have"

Premature optimization is still the root of most evil. I've learned this the hard way approximately 47 times.

"Mentorship is the ultimate force multiplier"

The best code I've written is the code I helped someone else write. Plus, teaching people means they fix your bugs faster.

"Embrace productive failure"

Self-hosting taught me why managed services exist. Docker taught me why orchestration exists. Both were expensive lessons.

"Infrastructure as Code should be human-readable"

If your CDK makes people want to quit software engineering, you're doing it wrong. Configuration should tell stories, not hide secrets.

dayne@aws:~$ sendmail dayne@localhost

Connect / Inquire

Want to chat about distributed systems, why your docker containers are misbehaving, or how to convince management that "it works on my machine" isn't a deployment strategy?

email: [email protected]

linkedin: linkedin.com/in/dayne-andersen

Response time: Usually pretty good, unless I'm debugging why my deployment pipeline decided to take a vacation.