Patrick Force

SUMMARY

Principal-level engineer with deep roots in application development, infrastructure, platform, and systems engineering — focused on cloud-native architecture, Kubernetes, and developer experience at scale. Currently leading Twilio-wide engineering platform simplification and AI workflow adoption. I care about reducing toil, building things that last (or can be easily replaced), and helping engineering organizations move faster with more confidence.

SKILLS

Golang, Python, Javascript/Node.js, Bash/shell, Ruby
Kubernetes (including controller/operator development), Docker/containers, microservice architecture
Terraform, Helm, Kustomize, Chef, Salt, Ansible
AWS, GCP; bare metal and on-prem infrastructure; HPC systems
Agentic AI workflows, Claude/LLM integration, AI developer tooling and standards
Monorepo architecture, CI/CD design, SDLC and delivery best practices
Relational and NoSQL databases; Solr, Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2022 – present

TWILIO

PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Technical lead across platform, infrastructure, and AI workflow initiatives

Technical lead on an organization-wide effort to simplify engineering platform and practices into cloud-native approaches — delivering a monorepo-based distributed solution that gave product domains standardized CI/CD pipelines while preserving an open ecosystem for independent development.
Leading Twilio's next evolution of AI development workflows: defining standards and tooling for how engineers develop and use Claude skills for Twilio-specific needs, maximizing cost and output efficiency of AI workflows org-wide, and using DX survey results to drive adoption.
Kubernetes controller/operator development in Golang, Terraform module development, and Python/shell utilities — all with a strong emphasis on testability, SDLC, and continuous delivery for internal infrastructure tooling.
Mentoring platform and infrastructure engineers on Terraform, SOLID principles, and building resilient delivery pipelines.

2021 – 2022

DESCARTES LABS

SENIOR SITE RELIABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECT/ENGINEER/LEAD

Re-architected the company's cloud infrastructure from the ground up, presenting and getting approval for a new PaaS-based strategy at the CEO level

Designed and built a cloud-agnostic PaaS architecture to support distributed and OEM business needs — initially in GCP, then mirrored to AWS using shared tooling and modules.
Golang CLI development, Helm chart construction, ArgoCD administration, and CI/CD pipeline improvements via GitHub Actions.

2021

HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE

LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER

New product and infrastructure design using AWS, Kubernetes, Helm, and Spinnaker; cloud-to-on-prem security, observability, and availability architecture.
Internal and customer-facing tool development in Golang, Python, and Javascript.

2018 – 2020

CRAY/HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE

LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER, CLOUD DEVELOPMENT

Modernization and cloud adoption work at one of the world's leading supercomputing companies

Built a fully custom Kubernetes cluster in GCP for virtual HPC development — including dynamic net booting of HPC compute nodes — due to Linux distro constraints (SLES) that ruled out GKE.
Implemented a layered image-based install strategy using Packer for both VM and bare metal (PXE) environments, enabling composable base images for compute, storage, and Kubernetes node types.
Internal tool development in Golang and Python; Helm v2/v3 adoption; CI/CD and configuration management restructuring.

2018 – 2022

DEVELOP INTELLIGENCE/PLURALSIGHT

COURSE DEVELOPER & INSTRUCTOR

Developed and delivered corporate training courses on Terraform, Packer, Kubernetes, and Helm — in person and virtually

2018

PYTHIAN

OPERATIONS ARCHITECT & ENGINEER

Client-facing DevOps work focused on cloud adoption, automation, CI/CD, containerization, and incremental migration strategies

2015 – 2018

ROCKHOLLA

CONTRACT ENGINEER & CONSULTANT

Development and operations consulting for clients including CloudBees, CourseArc, Modern Tribe, Vidstore, and Bletchley Park

Pre 2015

I'm happy to discuss earlier career history on request.

EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA – ATHENS, GA

BBA in Management Information Systems — Honors Program Scholarship, Dean's List
COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY – FORT COLLINS, CO

School of Computer and Electrical Engineering — Golden Key International Honor Society, Dean's List
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY – NEW YORK, NY

Coursework in Astronomy

INTERESTS

Building and making things — construction, gardening, horses, mechanical work
Long distance hiking: hiked ~2,000 miles of the Continental Divide Trail in 2015
Music: composing score and soundtrack work for independent films, theatre, and video
Pizza, tacos, movies