Engineering leadership · Seattle, WA

Michael J. Cohen

Engineering leader building reliable systems for ambitious teams.

I lead platform and infrastructure teams through architecture, execution, operations, and the work of making complex systems dependable.

Explore the work ↓ Get in touch ↗
✳

Currently focused on cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, GPU enablement, and making engineering organizations healthier.

$50M+annual infrastructure savings
7–16engineers led and coached
14+years building platforms
3cloud ecosystems shipped in

01 / Selected work

Things I built to learn something.

Case studies & working tools

01↗

Build log · 2026

Building an application with Claude Code

A practical account of taking an application from an empty repository to a tested, deployed, multi-client system in one week with AI-assisted development.

Read the article
02↗

Automation · Private

Job Search Tool

A personal workflow for discovering roles, scoring fit, generating application materials, and tracking progress.

View project
03↗

Technical guide · Networking

Home-Exit VPN

A from-scratch WireGuard tutorial for routing devices safely through a home network.

Read the guide
04↗

Migration · Web systems

Rebuilding Nancy Stewart’s websites

A case study in preserving a large music and literacy archive while making two legacy sites easier to maintain.

Read the case study
05↗

Case study · CRM & security

A private CRM for a real estate investor

Turning a spreadsheet pipeline into a self-hosted CRM behind Cloudflare Tunnel and Access, with a narrow, audited door for an AI assistant.

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Small projects

Small project · Web↗

Dad Joke of the Day

A tiny, dependable publishing system that delivers one fresh joke every day.

Visit project
Small project · Commerce↗

Mercer Island Custom

Custom apparel and goods for the Mercer Island community.

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Small project · watchOS↗

Lightrail

An Apple Watch complication showing the countdown to the next Link light rail train, built in an afternoon.

Read the write-up

02 / Experience

Turning complexity into momentum.

2019 — July 2026

Senior Software Development Manager

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Scale and coach platform engineering teams responsible for high-availability Kubernetes infrastructure, distributed tenancy services, observability, and GPU-platform integration.

  • Partnered with NVIDIA to validate next-generation GPU architectures for large-scale ML workloads.
  • Led retirement of a legacy tenancy system, unlocking more than $50M in annual infrastructure savings.
  • Built LLM-assisted log triage workflows that reduced repetitive analysis and accelerated incident response.
2016 — 2019

Software Engineer II

Microsoft · Azure Lab Services

Contributed to the launch of Azure Classroom Labs, designing student-facing workflows, production monitoring, and automated SQL IaaS image creation.

2012 — 2015

Associate, Full-Stack Application Developer

Pariveda Solutions

Led cross-functional engagements from architecture through launch across AWS and Azure, with a focus on distributed systems, security, and iterative delivery.

03 / Capabilities

Where I tend to be useful.

01

Organizational design

Team shape, hiring, coaching, career paths, and a sustainable on-call culture.

02

Platform architecture

Kubernetes, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, observability, and reliability.

03

Execution under ambiguity

Turning broad programs into a sequence of decisions that teams can actually ship.

04

Cross-functional alignment

Making technical tradeoffs clear to Product, Security, SRE, and executive partners.

Let’s make something sturdy.

Good systems are built by good teams.

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