Jackson West
Engineering Leader - Kubernetes at NVIDIA
Athens, Alabama, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJackson West is an engineering leader with 12 years of experience specializing in Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure, currently leading Kubernetes engineering at NVIDIA after senior leadership roles at AWS and D2iQ. He combines hands-on DevOps and cloud engineering expertise—demonstrated by contributions to prominent open-source projects like Amazon's EKS Distro and EKS Anywhere—with a track record of automating CI/CD, cross-architecture builds (including ARM), and networking integrations. Known for scaling teams and products, he has led Kubernetes-focused organizations from feature engineering to operational reliability in both startup and hyperscale environments. Based in Athens, Alabama, he brings a systems-first mindset from a long software engineering pedigree that includes CTO experience and early engineering roles. Peers describe him as a pragmatic builder who moves between strategy and code, often surfacing non-obvious reliability improvements such as automated license and checksum workflows that harden large-scale distributions.
11 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science at Juniata College
Github Skills (18)
amazon-eks10
kubernetes10
docker10
kubernetes-cluster10
bash10
cloud-infrastructure10
dockers10
cicd10
automation10
go10
aws10
build-automation10
kubernetes-pods10
automations10
devops10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
aws/eks-distro
Nov 2020 - Jan 2023
Amazon EKS Distro (EKS-D) is a Kubernetes distribution based on and used by Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) to create reliable and secure Kubernetes clusters.
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:420 reviews, 184 commits, 229 PRs in 2 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Jackson primarily contributed to the automation and configuration of the AWS EKS Distro project. Their commits focused on integrating license generation into the build process and creating scripts to manage checksums, and run test suites. The user also automated parts of the CI/CD pipeline, including the creation of pull requests for attribution and checksum file updates. Furthermore, they added support for testing Kops clusters, including setting up cilium and validating DNS resolution.
securekubernetes-serviceamazon-ekskubernetes-deploymentclusters
aws/eks-anywhere
Sep 2021 - Oct 2022
Run Amazon EKS on your own infrastructure 🚀
Role in this project:DevOps Engineer & Cloud Engineer
DevOps Engineer & Cloud EngineerContributions:363 reviews, 22 commits, 56 PRs in 1 year 1 month
Contributions summary:Jackson primarily contributed to the operational aspects of the EKS Anywhere project. Their work involved automating build processes, integrating new tools like 'govc', and configuring ARM-based builds for controllers and CLIs, showcasing skills in build automation and infrastructure management. The user's commits included modifications to the CI/CD pipelines and validation processes, indicating a focus on improving the deployment workflow. Furthermore, the user added and configured networking options, with particular attention to the integration of kindnetd.
kubernetes-deploymentamazon-ekstinkerbellhelmamazon
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