Ryan Taylor | Platform Engineer

About Me

I'm a Platform & Infrastructure Engineer with 3+ years at Raytheon building automated, reproducible systems for large-scale aerospace programs. I specialize in infrastructure as code, CI/CD-integrated environment provisioning, and Linux systems — with a current focus on embedded Linux platform development. I hold an active DoD Secret clearance.

Outside of work I run a homelab, work on a ton of little personal projects, play a lot of Magic the Gathering and Star Wars: Unlimited, and fly first-person-view drones and planes.

Clearance: Active DoD Secret
From: Long Beach, CA
Lives In: Broomfield, CO

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What I Build

Infrastructure as Code

Terraform and Ansible for reproducible VM provisioning, full lifecycle management, and configuration-as-code across multi-environment deployments.

CI/CD & DevOps

GitLab CI and GitHub Actions pipelines for end-to-end automated testing, build, and deployment — infrastructure provisioning triggered on merge.

Embedded Linux

OS-level configuration and build systems for custom embedded Linux platforms, enabling version-controlled, reproducible system images for aerospace hardware.

Full-Stack Development

React, Next.js, and Python/FastAPI on AWS, Vercel, and Supabase — explored through personal projects, building full-stack apps end-to-end outside of work.

Experience

June 2022 – Present

Systems Infrastructure Engineer

Raytheon Intelligence & Space | Aurora, CO

Internal R&D

September 2025 – Present

Designed and implemented OS-level configuration and build systems for a custom embedded Linux platform, enabling reproducible and version-controlled system images
Built internal automation tooling to standardize and accelerate developer environment setup, reducing manual configuration overhead and onboarding time

James Webb Space Telescope

June 2025 – September 2025 (budget-driven RIF)

Designed and implemented infrastructure-as-code workflows using Terraform to automate full VM lifecycle management across multiple environments
Developed Ansible-based configuration pipelines enabling consistent, repeatable environment provisioning from a single execution
Integrated infrastructure provisioning and configuration workflows into GitLab CI/CD pipelines, enabling fully automated environment deployment on merge

GPS OCX 3F

June 2022 – September 2025

Administered and maintained large-scale, multi-instance Atlassian environments (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket), including deployments, upgrades, and migrations
Designed and implemented custom Jira workflows to enforce Agile processes and reduce manual tracking overhead
Deployed and managed IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) environments (DNG, RQM, GC) with DB2 backends, supporting program-wide requirements and test management
Automated administrative workflows using Python and platform APIs, reducing repetitive operational tasks and improving system efficiency
Performed Linux systems administration (RHEL), including user management, patching, backups, and system troubleshooting in a production environment

November 2019 – April 2022

Print & Marketing Services Supervisor

Staples | Boulder, CO

Managed all operations for a 6-person department averaging $250K/year in revenue
Grew department sales by 60% over 12 months; maintained a 95% customer satisfaction rating

Education

Computer Science

University of Colorado Boulder

2018 – 2022

Political Science Minor

Relevant Coursework: Network Systems, Linux System Administration, Operating Systems, Database Systems, Data Structures, Software Development Tools, Intro Data Science, Intro Artificial Intelligence

Outside of Work

Trading Card Games

I've been playing Magic: the Gathering since 2011, mostly Modern and Legacy — but some Commander lately. I play at Total Escape Games and have a reputation for playing Burn in Modern, or really anything Red. Recently I've also been having a lot of fun exploring Star Wars: Unlimited!

FPV Flying

I fly both freestyle drones and fixed-wing planes with FPV systems. I build all my own aircraft and have been flying since 2015. When Colorado weather allows I fly local fields or head up into the mountains.

Homelab

I run a Proxmox server hosting game servers for friends, Pi-hole, and Cloudflare Tunnels. It's my main sandbox for trying out new tools and keeping skills sharp outside of work.

Linux & Open Source

My daily machines run EndeavorOS and CachyOS. I love digging into dotfiles, trying new distros, and generally spending more time configuring my setup than using it.

Projects

WhatAmI.cooking

A full-stack meal planning app built and deployed end-to-end on AWS. Includes OAuth via AWS Cognito, DynamoDB persistence, a weekly meal planner, auto-generated shopping lists, and a URL importer that scrapes recipes from any site. Deployed with CI/CD via GitHub Actions → Elastic Beanstalk.

AWS React FastAPI

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Deckbuilder

A full-featured Magic: The Gathering and Star Wars: Unlimited deck builder built because the tools I was using never felt quite right. Pulls live card data from Scryfall, suggests cards via EDHREC, and surfaces tournament results from EDHTop16 and MTGTop8. What started as a simple deck list builder grew into a full deck management and analysis platform as I actually used it.

React Vercel Supabase

View on GitHub

VimMail

A keyboard-driven Gmail client inspired by Vim's modal editing. A companion Flutter app brings the same visual styling and quick mail triaging to mobile.

Next.js Gmail API Flutter

Web GitHub Mobile GitHub

Calorie Tracker

A mobile-first calorie tracking app with plain-text food logging and AI-powered parsing.

Next.js GPT-4o mini Supabase

View on GitHub