Tim Hawes

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT TIM HAWES

I am a Platform engineer and technical lead operating at principal/staff scope — designing distributed systems, owning cross-team architecture, and translating complex organizational requirements into durable, maintainable infrastructure. I specialize in functional systems built to last: Clojure-based Lambda architectures, immutable infrastructure, and DynamoDB-backed distributed data patterns. My infrastructure philosophy grew out of early immutable infrastructure culture — Ansible as a build tool, AMIs as artifacts, deployment tooling that encodes operational opinion rather than just executing commands. That pattern has since become industry standard. I\'ve maintained production systems at this stack for over a decade while continuing to evolve them. Beyond the code, I lead — mentoring engineers from early career through senior, driving high-visibility initiatives like Sovereign Cloud compliance, and functioning as the connective tissue between platform concerns and organizational goals. I think of platform engineering fundamentally as a knowledge management problem: the system should encode decisions, not just execute them. Specialties: Clojure, AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, Ansible, Linux systems architecture, immutable infrastructure, distributed systems design, platform engineering, technical mentorship, Python, Java, PostgreSQL, BASH Core Strengths: Distributed systems architecture & platform ownershipFunctional programming (Clojure, Lisp family)Infrastructure as encoded philosophy (immutable AMIs, deployment toolchain design)Cross-functional technical leadershipEngineering mentorship & team developmentTranslating business requirements into durable technical solutions