Principal Engineer · Control Plane & Operator Architect · Go Enthusiast · Platform-as-Product Evangelist
I build composable cloud control planes so engineers ship faster—with guardrails, not gatekeepers.
What I Do · Current Projects · Leadership Themes · Tech Stack · Engineering Philosophy · Contact
I design and engineer internal cloud control planes (AWS & GCP) using:
- Crossplane compositions for governed, multi-cloud abstractions
- Kubernetes operators (custom controllers, CRDs, reconcilers)
- Go libraries & APIs with an emphasis on clarity, idempotency, and observability
I treat platform layers as product surfaces—versioned, documented, discoverable, and friendly to humans (not just automation).
| Project | Summary | Status | Tech Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
go-stream |
Embedded, batteries-included NATS/JetStream dev experience to slash setup friction. | Early development | Go, NATS, JetStream, Dev UX |
Personas Framework |
Persona-based agent coordination runtime for cognitive load reduction via role specialization. | Design + prototyping | Go (planned), Agent orchestration, Extensibility |
| Theme | How I Practice It |
|---|---|
| Platform-as-Product | Treat compositions & APIs like user-facing contracts (versioning, upgrade paths, docs). |
| Mentorship | Coaching on Go concurrency, reconciler design, failure modes, “abstraction hygiene.” |
| Org-wide Standards | CRD lifecycle policies, naming/tagging conventions, golden path scaffolds, ADR stewardship. |
- Primary: Go, Kubernetes, Crossplane, NATS, gRPC/REST APIs
- Patterns: Reconciliation loops, declarative abstractions, event-driven design, contract-first API modeling
- Cloud: AWS, GCP (focus on consistent abstractions & policy layers)
- Tooling Interests: Operator SDK patterns, dynamic composition strategies, env bootstrap automation
APIs are promises.
Reconciliation is a superpower: determinism + observability = velocity.Standards should feel like a cheat code, not a chore.
Multi-cloud only “exists” if the contract layer is portable.
Operator observability (events, conditions, traces) is non-negotiable—it's your debugging budget.
Site: andydonnell.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andydonnell
Email: hi@andydonnell.com