Senior platform architecture, without the full-time hire.

I'm Joey Brown, a fractional platform architect. I work alongside your engineering team to design the infrastructure, delivery pipelines, and developer experience that let your product ship faster — and keep working as you scale.

Start a conversation See what I do
Cloud & Kubernetes platforms CI/CD & developer experience Architecture & technical strategy
What I do

Platform leadership, scoped to what you actually need

Most teams don't need another full-time architect — they need someone senior in the room for the decisions that are expensive to get wrong. That's the role I fill.

Platform & cloud architecture

Design cloud environments, networking, and Kubernetes foundations that fit your team's size and skill set — not a reference diagram from a vendor deck.

CI/CD & delivery

Build pipelines that make deploys boring: automated testing, repeatable builds, safe rollouts, and fast feedback for every engineer on the team.

Infrastructure as code

Replace click-ops and drift with version-controlled, reviewable infrastructure your team can confidently change on a Friday afternoon.

Developer experience

Cut the friction between an idea and production: golden paths, self-service environments, sane local setups, and documentation people actually read.

Reliability & observability

Meaningful metrics, logs, and alerts — so you find problems before your customers do, and know exactly where to look when something breaks.

Cost & scale planning

Right-size what you're running today and map out what changes at 5x traffic, before the invoice or the outage forces the conversation.

Engagements

Three ways to work together

Every engagement starts with a conversation and a clearly defined outcome. No open-ended retainers, no surprise scope.

Architecture review

1–3 weeks · fixed scope

A focused assessment of your current platform, with a prioritized, practical roadmap.

  • Infrastructure and delivery audit
  • Risk and bottleneck analysis
  • Written findings and roadmap
  • Walkthrough with your team

Fractional architect

Ongoing · days per month

Embedded, part-time architecture leadership for teams without a dedicated platform lead.

  • Design reviews and decision records
  • Hands-on work where it counts
  • Mentoring for your engineers
  • A steady technical direction

Project delivery

Defined milestones

A specific platform initiative, designed and delivered end to end with your team.

  • Cloud or Kubernetes migrations
  • CI/CD platform builds
  • IaC and environment automation
  • Handoff and documentation
How it works

Straightforward from first call to handoff

Intro call

Thirty minutes on where you are, what's slowing you down, and whether I'm the right fit. No pitch.

Scope & proposal

A written outline of the work, the deliverables, the timeline, and the price. You decide from there.

The work

I embed with your team at an agreed cadence — designing, building, reviewing, and unblocking.

Handoff

Everything documented and owned by your team. The goal is a platform that doesn't need me.

About

Joey Brown

I've spent my career building the systems other engineers build on: cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and the internal tooling that decides whether shipping feels effortless or exhausting.

I work best with teams at an inflection point — growing fast, migrating, modernizing, or simply feeling the drag of infrastructure that was never designed for where the company is now. My bias is toward simple systems, clear ownership, and choices your team can maintain long after the engagement ends.

If that sounds like the problem on your desk, I'd like to hear about it.

Focus areas
AWS Azure GCP Kubernetes Terraform Docker GitHub Actions GitOps Observability Platform engineering Developer experience Technical strategy
Contact

Let's talk about your platform

Tell me what you're building and where it hurts. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help — and if I can't, I'll point you toward someone who can.