MATT SHAW.

Cloud DevOps Engineer · Orillia, Ontario, Canada

Kitchen-tested.Cloud-built.

Twenty years in professional kitchens taught me how to ship under pressure. Now I build the infrastructure behind it: Terraform, AWS, GitHub Actions, Docker.

See the workRead the writing
Fig. 1 · How this site is servedmattrshaw.com
  1. Browser
  2. Cloudflare DNS
  3. CloudFront + ACM
  4. S3 · private · OAC
  1. git push
  2. GitHub Actions
  3. OIDC role · no stored keys
  4. s3 sync + invalidate

$ whoami

Kitchens and cloud systems fail the same way. I learned to prevent both.

20 years in Hospitality and Retail taught me one thing: systems either hold under pressure, or they don't.

I spent two decades managing commercial kitchens — First Cook at Horseshoe Resort, then Food Service at Costco Wholesale Canada. You learn fast that a kitchen at full service and a cloud system at peak load have the same failure modes: unclear ownership, missing redundancy, no recovery plan.

In 2024 I started formally bridging those worlds. Google Cybersecurity Certificate. Then the Level Up In Tech 37-week Cloud DevOps Engineering program, graduating May 2026. Now I build and document infrastructure on AWS — Terraform-provisioned, GitHub Actions deployed, version controlled, and publicly documented.

I write about the transition in my newsletter, Terraforming My Career — currently at 134+ subscribers and growing.

The pass

Selected work

TICKET 008CASE STUDY

Migrating an AEO Agency Off Squarespace

Rebuilt Penpixel Creative's own site from Squarespace into a custom Astro build on Cloudflare Pages, with a scoped CSP, HSTS and AI-crawler allowlisting.

Astro · Tailwind CSS · Cloudflare Pages · CSP · HSTS preload · Cloudflare TurnstileRead the case study →
TICKET 007CASE STUDY

28 AWS Resources for $22/Month

Auto-scaling, highly available AWS infrastructure in Terraform: ALB, two availability zones, CloudWatch scaling and S3 state with native locking.

Terraform · AWS EC2 · ALB · Auto Scaling · CloudWatch · GitHub ActionsRead the case study →
TICKET 006CASE STUDY

The Jenkins Job That Took 6 Tries

Provisioned Jenkins on EC2 with Terraform and documented all six failed attempts: AMI, Java version, wget, GPG order, nested heredocs and key rotation.

Terraform · AWS EC2 · Jenkins · Amazon Linux 2023 · S3Read the case study →
TICKET 005CASE STUDY

WordPress on a Three-Node Docker Swarm

A three-node Docker Swarm on EC2 running WordPress with three replicas and MySQL on separate overlay networks, deployed from the AWS CLI.

Docker Swarm · AWS EC2 · WordPress · MySQL · Overlay networkingRead the case study →

All 8 projects →

Terraforming my career

Latest writing

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Let's talk.

Open to Cloud and DevOps roles · Remote and hybrid across Canada

Hiring for a cloud or DevOps role, or want to compare notes on Terraform and AWS? Message me on LinkedIn.

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