Christopher Rothmeier

Infrastructure & Cloud Operations Engineer

13 years in enterprise IT — from identity and virtualization to hybrid cloud and container orchestration. I operate and improve production infrastructure with an emphasis on reliability, observability, and change safety. This site is my technical portfolio and lab notebook.

• Production Experience: Windows/VMware estates, Active Directory, M365, Azure hybrid identity, Veeam backup/recovery, endpoint security (Intune, CrowdStrike, Defender).
• GPU-Backed Homelab: K3s cluster with NVIDIA L4/A4000/T4 GPUs, 10/25GbE networking, ZFS storage, Prometheus/Grafana observability stack.
• Cloud & Automation: AWS SAA-C03 in progress. Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Python — focused on repeatability and drift control.

Seeking full-time W-2 roles in infrastructure engineering, systems engineering, or cloud operations — Philadelphia area or remote.

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About Me

I'm an operations-first infrastructure engineer. My background spans finance-grade enterprise environments (Windows/VMware with strict uptime requirements) through to a hands-on GPU-backed Kubernetes homelab where I validate technologies against real constraints before recommending them.

I'm currently pursuing AWS SAA-C03 to formalize my cloud knowledge alongside 13 years of on-prem and hybrid experience. I'm looking for W-2 infrastructure, systems, or cloud operations roles (Philadelphia or remote) on teams that value reliability engineering, observability, and hands-on troubleshooting.

Not available for freelance or contract work. W-2 employment only.

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Core Competencies

13 years of hands-on experience across enterprise infrastructure and cloud operations

Microsoft & Azure Infrastructure

Active Directory, Entra ID, Azure AD Connect, Conditional Access, Exchange Online, SharePoint/OneDrive, Intune.

AWS & Hybrid Cloud

AWS fundamentals (SAA-C03 in progress) with practical hybrid patterns and an operations-first mindset.

Endpoint Security & Compliance

Intune baselines, CrowdStrike, Defender for Endpoint, CIS benchmarks, audit-friendly controls including HIPAA contexts.

Data Protection & Recovery

Veeam, M365 backup design, restore testing, RPO/RTO planning, and operational runbooks.

Virtualization & Storage

VMware vSphere/ESXi, Proxmox/KVM, GPU passthrough, ZFS-backed storage, backup/recovery patterns.

Automation & IaC

Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Python, Git — focused on repeatability, drift control, and change safety.

What I Bring

A combination of enterprise operations depth, hands-on lab validation, and a focus on reliability and change safety.

Enterprise Operations

Managed Windows/VMware estates for finance and trading environments with strict uptime requirements.
Planned and executed hybrid Azure migrations including Azure AD Connect, Conditional Access, and M365 tenant configurations.
Implemented endpoint security baselines, backup/recovery strategies, and compliance controls.
Strong change control, incident response, and stakeholder communication across varied team sizes.

Homelab & Continuous Learning

GPU-backed Kubernetes homelab (K3s) for testing realistic operational patterns — not a toy setup.
Full observability stack: Prometheus, Grafana, alerting wired to real failure modes.
ZFS-backed storage, 10/25GbE networking, GPU passthrough for inference workloads.
Technical blog posts documenting architecture decisions and operational patterns.

Technical Writing

Featured

Securing Healthcare LLMs: On-Prem Deployment Architecture for PHI Protection

May 14, 2025

Deployment patterns for running LLMs in HIPAA-regulated environments — architecture decisions around isolation, encryption, and audit controls.

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Migration

The Great Escape: VMware to Proxmox/KVM

May 10, 2025

Migration planning for virtualization estates in the wake of Broadcom's VMware acquisition, including GPU-aware workloads.

AI Infrastructure

Building an AEI Chatbot

April 12, 2025

Architecture notes on building an emotionally-aware chatbot with real-time emotion detection and adaptive responses.

GPU Ops

GPU Lab Build Notes

April 11, 2025

Hardware and operational lessons learned building a small GPU lab for testing inference workloads and monitoring patterns.

Data Protection

The Microsoft 365 Backup Reality

June 20, 2025

Retention is not backup. Design notes for third-party M365 protection, restore testing, and operational monitoring.

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