Barry Walker

I build systems that

About

I take ownership of systems the business cannot afford to have fail, and design them to scale, evolve, and support real products over time.

For more than two decades, I've worked across the full arc of building software: product, architecture, implementation, and the production systems that keep everything running. That range spans founding new ventures, shipping consumer and internal products from zero, and stewarding enterprise platforms that cannot afford to go down.

I'm Co-founder and CTO of Dancing Panda, where we're building tools that connect families and schools through simple, meaningful daily interactions.

At Rocket Mortgage, I have been the primary infrastructure owner for an enterprise Sitecore XP platform running multi-region in AWS. That work has included disaster recovery, internal deployment tooling, CI/CD migration work, and Super Bowl operations where downtime is not an acceptable outcome.

  • Owned infrastructure and deployments for customer-facing storefront and communications platforms
  • Built automation, observability, and recovery paths for systems with real enterprise blast radius
  • Handled compliance-critical preference management and the ugly production issues that come with high-stakes systems

Earlier roles followed the same pattern: Kubernetes migrations, centralized logging, hardened AWS environments, on-prem enterprise packaging, and the cleanup work that turns fragile platforms into systems a business can trust. My open-source Terraform modules have been installed over 31,000 times because I build the operational tooling I wish every team already had.

I've led infrastructure and platform efforts across teams, helping engineers and organizations move from fragile systems to ones they can trust.

Facts

Years owning and operating production systems.

Years running production infrastructure on AWS.

Service Pipelines migrated from CircleCI to GitHub Actions for Rocket's Sitecore platform.

Resume

Professional Experience

Co-founder & CTO

Apr 2026 - Present

Dancing Panda

Early-stage venture building tools that connect families and schools.

  • Leading technical strategy and execution across product, architecture, engineering, and infrastructure.
  • Building the next-generation platform.

Senior Systems Engineer

Sep 2020 - Present

Rocket Mortgage, Remote

Fortune 500 retail mortgage lender, part of Rocket Companies.

  • Architect and maintain AWS infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines for the Client Communications & Engagement group, directly supporting quickenloans.com and rocketmortgage.com.
  • Primary infrastructure owner for the enterprise Sitecore XP installation running multi-region in AWS. Over four years: implemented disaster recovery capabilities, built internal tooling to accelerate deployments while reducing risk, and led the migration of 15 service pipelines from CircleCI to GitHub Actions.
  • Designed and built the Global Preference Center from the ground up, a platform enabling customers to manage contact preferences across Rocket's entire Family of Companies. This system handles compliance-critical communication preferences at enterprise scale.
  • Core member of the Super Bowl Operations team every year since joining. Responsible for ensuring platform stability during peak traffic events when millions of viewers hit the site simultaneously following nationally televised ad spots, with zero tolerance for downtime.

Senior Software Architect

Feb 2017 - Sep 2020

ZeroNorth, Boston, MA (acquired by Harness)

Security orchestration platform unifying vulnerability scanning across the SDLC. Acquired by Harness in 2021.

  • Owned the complete infrastructure and deployment strategy for a 15-microservice security orchestration platform (Python/Node.js). Company was acquired by Harness in 2021.
  • Led the full platform migration from Mesosphere DC/OS to Kubernetes. Rebuilt all deployment automation using Helm and Terraform, reducing full environment provisioning from days of manual work to a single 'make deploy' command.
  • Architected the on-premise deployment capability by packaging the entire platform into a VMware OVA running microk8s. This unlocked the enterprise sales motion for customers who couldn't use cloud deployments.
  • Implemented comprehensive observability across all environments using DataDog, including custom log processing pipelines that enabled real-time debugging and alerting across the distributed system.
  • Built and operated the CI/CD infrastructure: Jenkins with 8 parallel build pipelines servicing 80+ GitHub repositories, plus a dedicated ELK cluster for centralized logging and metrics.
  • Developed the platform's build-time integration agent, a customer-facing product feature that scans artifacts during CI builds and fails pipelines when security vulnerabilities are detected.
  • Implemented full horizontal autoscaling across all Kubernetes environments, configuring both pod autoscalers and cluster autoscalers to handle variable workloads efficiently.

Senior Software Engineer

Jun 2012 - Feb 2017

Autodesk, Boston, MA

Global design and engineering software company. Joined through Autodesk's acquisition of Vela Systems.

  • Transitioned to Autodesk through the acquisition of Vela Systems. Continued as a Ruby on Rails engineer on BIM 360 Field, a construction field management platform used by major contractors and project owners worldwide.
  • Assumed full SRE ownership of BIM 360 Field in 2013. Managed production infrastructure on AWS, deployment automation via Capistrano, and configuration management with Chef. Responsible for uptime of a platform supporting thousands of active construction projects.

Senior Software Engineer

Feb 2008 - Jun 2012

Vela Systems, Burlington, MA (acquired by Autodesk)

Mobile-first construction management software; one of the first enterprise iPad applications. Acquired by Autodesk in 2012.

  • Core engineer on the Vela Field Manager platform, a Ruby on Rails application for construction field management that was acquired by Autodesk in 2012, becoming BIM 360 Field.
  • Architected and built the mobile REST API layer that synchronized data between the Rails backend and mobile clients, handling offline-first workflows critical for construction sites with unreliable connectivity.
  • One of two engineers who built the original iPad application in Objective-C from scratch. Owned all device-to-server communication, REST API integration, and local data persistence with SQLite. This was pioneering mobile development; the iPad had only launched in 2010.
  • Designed and implemented the reporting infrastructure using Jasper Reports Server, enabling construction managers to generate compliance and progress reports directly from field data.

AWS/Kubernetes/Terraform Consultant

Dec 2015 - Present

Independent Consulting Practice

Engaged by startups and enterprises to architect cloud infrastructure, execute datacenter-to-cloud migrations, and build CI/CD pipelines. Selected engagements:

  • Dancing Panda: Advised technically from the earliest days; transitioned to Co-founder & CTO in April 2026.
  • Equip Health: Architected serverless AWS infrastructure for their next-generation eating disorder treatment platform using Terraform and the Serverless Framework. Enabled the engineering team to deploy and iterate on a fully serverless backend.
  • Autodesk: Led the containerization initiative for BIM 360 Ops, migrating the product from AWS OpsWorks to a modern container-based deployment model. Established patterns subsequently adopted by other Autodesk teams.
  • Building Engines (acquired by JLL): Executed full datacenter migration from Rackspace to AWS for their legacy Java/Tomcat application. Subsequently built greenfield EKS infrastructure for their cloud-native products using Terraform and Helm, with Bitbucket Pipelines for CI/CD. Served as interim Director of Cloud Operations.
  • Polis (TechStars, acquired by Ad Practitioners): Brought in post-accelerator to build production-grade AWS infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines. Established the foundation that supported the company through acquisition.
  • Tenant Technologies: Migrated five PHP applications from on-premise datacenter to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Implemented autoscaling and auto-healing patterns, transforming their operational model from manual intervention to self-managing infrastructure.

Portfolio

Personal projects sit where retro computing, AI tooling, self-hosted infrastructure, and hardware bring-up overlap. Professionally, I've focused on cloud migrations, lift-and-shift deployments, and building AWS infrastructure for next-generation products.

  • Personal
  • Professional
mac VICE

mac VICE

A native Apple Silicon macOS front end for VICE with SwiftUI, Metal display output, signed DMGs, Sparkle updates, machine-specific apps, a disk image manager, and MacVICEKit for building tools around the emulator core.

VICE MCP

VICE MCP

An embedded Model Context Protocol server for VICE that gives AI agents direct control over Commodore machines: memory, registers, breakpoints, sprites, SID/VIC-II/CIA state, disks, keyboard input, and hardware-accurate test automation.

NovaVM

NovaVM

A custom 6502-family computer implemented as a .NET VM, Verilator target, and ULX3S FPGA core with HDMI output, dual SID audio, sprites, copper, blitter, 512KB XRAM, NovaBASIC, NovaLogo, and a path toward real educational hardware.

ImmichMCP

ImmichMCP

A .NET 10 MCP server that lets AI assistants search and manage a self-hosted Immich photo library: smart CLIP search, metadata filters, albums, people, tags, shared links, uploads, bulk edits, and dry-run/confirmation guardrails.

PaperlessMCP

PaperlessMCP

A .NET MCP server for Paperless-ngx that exposes 43 document-management tools for search, upload, OCR reprocessing, tags, correspondents, document types, storage paths, custom fields, and safe bulk organization with dry-run defaults.

Pi-hole v6 Terraform Provider

Pi-hole v6 Terraform Provider

Terraform/OpenTofu provider written in Go for Pi-hole v6's REST API. It manages DNS records, CNAMEs, groups, adlists, allow/deny lists, clients, DHCP leases, upstreams, and settings with imports, drift detection, aliases, and idempotent sessions.

SIM6502

SIM6502

A 6502 assembly unit testing framework with a purpose-built DSL, symbol loading, CPU and memory assertions, and a VICE backend for running hardware-aware tests against a real Commodore emulator.

C128 Quad Kernal

C128 Quad Kernal

A no-case-mod Commodore 128 hardware board that switches between four Kernals from the RESTORE key. I designed the circuit, had the PCBs fabricated, and built both PIC and Atmel versions.

Dancing Panda

Dancing Panda

Co-founder & CTO. Building tools that connect families and schools through simple, meaningful daily interactions. Currently heads-down on the next-generation platform.

Equip Health

Equip Health

Built out AWS infrastructure for their next-gen platform using Terraform and the Serverless framework. Backend was built entirely on API Gateway and Lambdas.

Building Engines

Building Engines

Migrated primary Java/Tomcat application from Rackspace to AWS. Served as interim Director of Cloud Operations, instituting best practices for tool standardization, security, logging, and secrets management. Acquired by JLL Hear what Steve had to say about me!

Zeronorth

Zeronorth

Joined initially as a consultant to improve infrastructure and deployments, then accepted a full-time role as Sr. Software Architect/DevOps Engineer. Built a full CI/CD pipeline using Docker, Jenkins, and Kubernetes. Infrastructure was managed with Terraform; applications were packaged with Helm. Acquired by Harness

Polis

Polis

Secured AWS infrastructure and built a CI/CD pipeline using Travis and Elastic Beanstalk for v1. Migrated v2 to containerized deployments using Travis and Rancher. Acquired by Ad Practitioners

Autodesk

Autodesk

I was brought on to assist a transition of the BIM 360 Ops product from AWS Ops Works to a container based, standardized deployment model.

Tenant Technologies

Tenant Technologies

I migrated several PHP applications from an on-prem environment into AWS using Elastic Beanstalk.

Latest from the Blog

I build products and platforms as a core part of how I think. Recent work includes NovaVM and VICE MCP.

mac VICE: Native Commodore Emulation Finally Feels at Home on macOS

Mac users finally get a version of VICE that feels like it belongs on macOS: native Apple Silicon apps, Metal display output, signed DMGs, a disk image manager, and MacVICEKit, a reusable framework/SDK for building your own tools around the VICE core.

Read more »

NovaVM Hits Real Silicon: A Math Coprocessor, a Logo Interpreter, and a Path to the Arty Z7

Last time, NovaVM was a .NET emulator heading toward FPGA. Now it boots on real hardware over HDMI, it has a hardware math coprocessor, and it runs NovaLogo: a complete Logo interpreter written from scratch in 6502 assembly. Next stop is the Arty Z7, and that changes what this machine can become.

Read more »

NovaVM: A Fantasy Computer for the Next Generation, Now Heading to Real Hardware

I built a fantasy 6502 computer with dual SID chips, hardware sprites, a copper coprocessor, a blitter, and a built-in BASIC. It already runs as a .NET VM. Now I'm taking it to FPGA, because kids today deserve the same immediate, tangible computing experience we had in the '80s.

Read more »

Services

I don't just stabilize systems. I build new ones from the ground up, with simplicity and longevity as first principles.

Prototype to Production

You built something that works on your laptop. I'll add proper error handling, logging, testing, deployment automation, and documentation so you can actually ship it and sleep at night.

System Rebuilds

Inherited systems that have grown complex and difficult to maintain? I'll rebuild them clean with battle-tested tech (Python/Django, Postgres, Redis, K8s) so the next person who works on it can move forward confidently.

Rapid Product Development

Need a production-ready POC fast? I build complete applications in days, not months. Full-stack: database design, backend APIs, intuitive UIs, deployment infrastructure, and handoff documentation.

Production Readiness

I turn vibe-coded apps into systems you can operate: observability (know when things break), automation (deploy without fear), testing (catch bugs before users do), and documentation (so you're not calling me at 2am).

Cloud Infrastructure & Deployment

AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines. I've been doing this since before EC2 existed. Your app will deploy reliably, scale automatically, and cost what it should.

Professional Handoff

I don't just build and disappear. You get: comprehensive documentation, deployment runbooks, architecture diagrams, and knowledge transfer so your team (or future hire) can maintain it without me.

Contact

Location:

Quincy, Massachusetts