Joe Swanson — Software Consulting
I'm a staff-level engineer with 15 years in platform engineering, SRE, and AI tooling. I embed with your team, own the problem, and deliver — without the overhead of a full-time hire.
Get in touch What I doServices
01
Design and build LLM-powered tooling that engineers actually use — Slack-based AI agents with real integrations, CI/CD pipeline agents that gate and review code automatically, and agentic workflows orchestrated via MCP across your existing stack.
Experienced leading AI tooling transitions at scale: security auditing, developer rollout, and custom observability dashboards to track usage and ROI across the organization.
02
SLI/SLO definition, observability pipelines, incident runbooks, and reliability standards for platforms that can't afford downtime. CI/CD, containerized deployments, and IaC built to be owned by your team.
03
Internal developer platforms, self-service infrastructure, and Golden Path templates that let teams ship without waiting on ops. Backstage, automated onboarding, and the tooling that collapses the gap between code and production.
04
SaaS API integrations, event-driven orchestration, identity and access automation — and custom microservices when off-the-shelf tools don't cut it. Built in Go or Python to be fast, testable, and maintainable.
Approach
I'm Joe Swanson — a staff software engineer based in Bozeman, Montana. When you hire me, I'm the one doing the work. Every engagement is scoped honestly — if something isn't the right fit, I'll tell you.
I've been embedded across small teams, funded startups, and larger engineering orgs. I take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks — and I'm available for contract engagements on a project or retainer basis.
15 years of infrastructure and platform work, including hands-on agentic AI engineering in production — not just evaluating tools. MCP integrations, CI coding agents, and AI tooling rollouts at the org level.
Work
AI & Platform Engineering — Enterprise SaaS
Built a centralized Slack-based AI agent integrating six internal platforms via Model Context Protocol — GitLab, Atlassian, Grafana, Backstage, Datadog, and EKS. Engineers query infrastructure state, trigger workflows, and get real-time insights through a natural language interface. Also engineered CI/CD coding agents that perform automated code review and quality gating on every merge request, and led the company-wide transition from GitHub Copilot to Cursor and Claude Code.
Full-Stack — In Progress
Ground-up React/TypeScript application for a specialty automotive paint retailer. Custom vehicle Year/Make/Model selector, product bundling logic, and a performance-first architecture replacing a slow legacy storefront. Targeting a conversion rate improvement from 1.06% to 2.0%+.
Personal Projects
AI-powered recipe generator built on Google Gemini. Serverless on Cloud Run — scales to zero, deploys via Cloud Build CI/CD. Caching, retry logic, and health endpoints built in.
chomptron.com →Fleet maintenance tracker with Firestore, Firebase Auth, and Cloud Storage. Full PWA with offline support. No server — Firestore security rules handle all access control. Demo available, no login required.
wrenchtron.com/demo →Personal platform hub integrating Spotify, weather, MLB stats, a Hugo blog, and a Google Docs-backed resume. 93%+ test coverage with Vitest and Playwright. 457 commits of active development.
tronswan.com →Contact
Whether you need AI tooling built into your engineering workflow, an SRE embedded with your platform team, or a second opinion on an architecture decision — reach out and I'll figure out if there's a fit.
Get in touch