Cloud architecture
Secure, highly available AWS for a regulated bank: Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, CloudFront, RDS, IAM, SNS/SQS, ECS/EKS, guided by the Well-Architected Framework.
LaGrange, GA · 25+ years shipping software
John B.
Roberts
Sr. Software Engineer / Cloud Solutions Architect / Dev Lead
I build high-leverage software systems: cloud architectures on AWS, automation that removes toil, and AI workflows that put LLMs to work inside real engineering processes. Secure, cost-aware, observable, and tested.
- BS Computer Science, Auburn University
- NOW Solutions Architect at Regions Financial, since 2013
- Now
- Regions Financial
- Since
- 1999
- Degree
- BS CS, Auburn
- Base
- LaGrange, GA
01 · About
From hand-written HTML to enterprise AWS, and back to the mainframe
I started in 1999 building a website for a research department at Auburn University, then spent seven years at AT&T writing C/C++ for data mining at a scale nobody called "big data" yet. Change management at Aflac, .NET modernization at GDIT, and agency work at Kelsey Advertising & Design followed. Since 2013 I've been at Regions Financial, where I design and deliver enterprise AWS solutions for a Fortune 500 bank.
Lately I point that experience at getting real leverage out of LLMs: agents that turn vulnerability tickets into reviewed pull requests, tooling that teaches AI coding agents to use the tools teams already rely on, and modern engineering wrapped around the systems most people would rather not touch, like mainframe COBOL batch.
- Ship it tested. CI, golden files, and end-to-end tests are part of the design, not an afterthought.
- Make it visible. If nobody can see into a system, it isn't done.
- Spend deliberately. Many of my projects run entirely on free tiers, by design.
02 · Capabilities
What I bring to a team
AI-powered automation
LLM agents wired into real workflows: ticket-to-PR remediation, provider-agnostic design across Claude and Gemini, and guardrails around what the model can touch.
Agent & developer tooling
Context for coding agents (Claude Code Skills, AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md, Copilot instructions) and CLIs that make engineers faster.
DevOps & IaC
Terraform, CloudFormation, and CDK; CI/CD in Harness and GitHub Actions with Docker and automated testing; change management learned the strict way.
Security & compliance
PCI DSS and SOC 2 in practice: encryption at rest and in transit, identity and access controls, Zero Trust, and audit-ready automation.
Modernization
ASP.NET MVC to .NET Core microservices on AWS, VB.NET to modern .NET, and COBOL batch surrounded by first-class tooling instead of rewritten.
03 · Architecture
How a vulnerability becomes a pull request
ticket-remediation in motion: two scheduled pipelines, a shared Jira board, and a pluggable LLM that reads the repository and writes the fix. State lives in SQLite, so re-runs never create duplicates.
04 · Career
Every layer of the stack, one era at a time
-
2013 – now
Regions Financial Corporation · Sr. Software Engineer / Solutions Architect
Enterprise AWS architecture for a Fortune 500 bank: DynamoDB, Lambda, S3, API Gateway, CloudFront, RDS, and IAM. Migrated internal tools from ASP.NET MVC to .NET Core microservices on AWS, built CI/CD in Harness and GitHub Actions with Docker and Terraform, and applied PCI DSS and SOC 2 controls. Earlier: full-stack internal tools, vendor management, and Tier 2 support for mission-critical apps.
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2011 – 2013
Kelsey Advertising & Design · Sr. Software Engineer
Led architecture and delivery of benefits-management and HR platforms for regional and national clients. PHP MVC frameworks, the MEAN stack, Backbone, Ember, and AngularJS, secure SOA web services, Raspberry Pi kiosks, and real-time KPI dashboards.
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2010 – 2011
General Dynamics Information Technology · Sr. Software Engineer
Converted a VB.NET legacy application to a modern .NET 4 web app with WCF data services over SQL Server, with automated build, deployment, and unit testing in TFS.
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2008 – 2010
Aflac · SCM DevOps
Software configuration management in Enterprise Application Services: source control for production applications and automated build and deployment with Serena change management.
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2001 – 2008
AT&T · Senior Member of Technical Staff
C/C++ for large-scale data mining and data-intensive projects. Senior Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Labs, project lead for special data projects, and international technical systems auditor.
-
1999 – 2001
Auburn University · Web Developer
Designed the website for the Cellular and Molecular Biosciences research department and maintained its web server. Where it all started.
Education BS, Computer Science · Auburn University · 1996–2001
05 · Projects
Selected work
mainframe-frontier
A realistic COBOL nightly batch cycle for a simulated bank (JCL job streams, generation data groups, packed-decimal master files) run by a JES-style job runner written in Rust, inside a container, without a mainframe. Around it: job visibility, data interfacing, monitoring, and a modern dev loop.
$ frontier ds print 'FFB.ACCTMAST(0)' --format jsonlticket-remediation
From vulnerability finding to pull request. One pipeline turns ServiceNow application-vulnerability findings into Jira issues; the other has an LLM read the target repo, write the fix, and open a GitHub PR, then notifies the team over Teams, Slack, and email.
ServiceNowJiraLLMPR
tool-enabler
Teaches AI coding agents to use your tools. One catalog of "how to use this tool" knowledge for CLIs and HTTP-only systems (Jira, Slack, Splunk, Jenkins, Harness), compiled into Claude Code Skills, AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md, and Copilot instructions.
aws-testing
Can a full event-driven AWS app be deployed and tested on a laptop? About 70 Terraform resources (Lambda, SNS/SQS with DLQs, DynamoDB Streams, S3, Kafka, CloudFront, Route 53) plus a Next.js front end, verified by 22 end-to-end tests, with the emulator's gaps documented.
VINScout
Used-vehicle opportunity screening. Pulls real listings every 6 hours, normalizes them by VIN, and gates every vehicle on its history (accident, salvage, flood) before ranking it on price, mileage, and NHTSA recall data. Runs entirely on free tiers.
world-radio
Listen to the world's radio on a live map: 5,000+ geo-located stations on a clustered map, HLS playback, a regional "radio scanner" mode, and shareable station lists.
More projects
AuraStream
Serverless sentiment analysis API, real-time and batch, with PII protection and caching.
Python · Lambda · Comprehend · TerraformAdPilot
Conversational AdTech agent system.
Next.js · Vercel AI SDK · Claude / OpenAI / GeminiIntelliDoc RAG
Query and summarize document collections with LLMs, with source citations.
FastAPI · ChromaDB · PostgreSQLusps-cobol-addresses
USPS address handling in COBOL/DB2, because sometimes JSON is too soft and PIC X(50) builds character.
GnuCOBOL · GixSQL · PostgreSQLguardrail-radar
The pipeline behind a weekly AI-coding newsletter for engineers at banks, fintechs, and insurers.
Python · GitHub Actions · Pagesaws-multi-account-organization
AWS Organizations with automated account provisioning and centralized security.
Terraform · AWS Organizationsaurora-batch
Serverless replication from Aurora PostgreSQL to Snowflake over PrivateLink.
Terraform Cloud · Aurora · Snowflakerole-fusion
Role-based access control UI with granular permissions and dynamic roles.
React · TypeScript · Tailwindssis-parser
Parses and analyzes SSIS packages and migrates them to Python-based ETL.
Python · CLI06 · Live activity
What I'm shipping right now
Languages across public repos
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Recently pushed
07 · Stack
Tools I reach for
Cloud
AI & agents
Infrastructure & delivery
Languages & frameworks
Observability & security
08 · Writing
Notes on architecture
Guardrail Radar
AI coding tools (Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor) for engineers at banks, fintechs, and insurers, where "does it save time" is the second question.
Serverless Architecture Patterns for Enterprise Applications
Proven patterns for scalable, event-driven applications.
Cost Optimization Strategies for AWS Infrastructure
Practical FinOps: finding and keeping savings.
Implementing Zero Trust Security in AWS
Security-first architecture design, layer by layer.
09 · Contact
Let's build something with leverage
Open to consulting, speaking, and the right opportunity. If you need cloud architecture, DevOps, or LLMs put to work inside your engineering workflow, I'd like to hear about it.