capabilities

From bare metal to cloud.

Nearly seven years at AWS and sysad roots at Rackspace — infrastructure and systems engineering with full-stack depth from the kernel up through distributed cloud workloads.

Cloud & AWS Infrastructure

EC2, VPC, IAM, and Linux-based workloads at AWS scale. Build, migrate, and operate cloud infrastructure — with CSE-level debugging depth behind every design decision.

EC2 AWS VPC IAM migration
Systems Engineering

SysDE experience designing and shipping systems infrastructure. Linux sysad at Rackspace, AWS tooling contributor, and daily operator of self-hosted Kubernetes on bare metal.

Linux k3s Kubernetes automation sysad
Software Development

Backend-focused development in Go and Python. APIs, tooling, and custom CS solutions built for real infrastructure environments — not abstract cloud-only assumptions.

Go Python APIs tooling consulting

hybrid infrastructure

The pendulum is swinging back.

The industry is shifting — organizations that over-rotated to public cloud are rediscovering the value of on-premises and hybrid architectures. Cost control, data sovereignty, latency, and operational ownership are all driving the move back toward owned infrastructure.

JBE Computer Solutions is positioned for exactly this transition. With deep AWS fluency and hands-on bare-metal systems experience, the work here bridges both worlds — designing hybrid solutions that put the right workloads in the right place, whether that's your rack, a colocation facility, or a cloud provider.

discuss your infrastructure →
On-Premises
Bare metal, colocation, owned hardware
Public Cloud
AWS, burst capacity, managed services
Hybrid Solutions
Right workload, right place — designed for your constraints

this site runs on

Not a managed platform. Not a SaaS page builder. This is what the work looks like.

Go Backend server
k3s Kubernetes runtime
Bare Metal Self-hosted hardware
Let's Encrypt TLS / cert-manager
Bootstrap 5 Frontend framework

J Bret Edwards

// owner · JBE Computer Solutions, LLC — Rockwall, TX

Systems engineer with a hardware-to-application background spanning bare metal, Linux systems administration, and nearly seven years at AWS across Cloud Support Engineering and Systems Development Engineering. I specialize in the full stack of infrastructure — from kernel tuning and network configuration up through distributed cloud workloads and the automation that ties it all together.

My work sits at the intersection of where things are actually built and run: not abstractions on top of managed platforms, but real systems with real constraints. I write primarily in Go and Python, operate my own k3s cluster on bare metal, run a dual-stack network at home, and believe that owning your infrastructure is increasingly the right call for organizations that need performance, cost control, and operational predictability.

The industry is moving back toward hybrid and on-prem. I've been running that way the whole time.

experience

Career history

Mar 2022 — Present
Owner & Principal Engineer
JBE Computer Solutions, LLC
Independent consulting and product development focused on systems engineering, cloud infrastructure, and hybrid solutions. Building Go-based tooling, advising clients on AWS architecture and on-prem/hybrid strategy, and operating self-hosted production infrastructure on k3s.
Aug 2018 — Feb 2022
Systems Development Engineer (SDE → SDE II)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) — EC2
Worked in the EC2 Fleet Health and Lifecycle Management organization on the Host Quality team. Analyzed host failures and reboots to improve fleet health by engaging the correct teams to address systemic issues. Created and maintained multiple reporting systems that surfaced fleet health data up to VP-level leadership, driving engagement from EC2 and Hardware Engineering teams. Co-inventor on a granted US patent for an AWS-compatible service and resource credit system (issued 2022).
Apr 2015 — Aug 2018
Cloud Support Engineer (CSE → CSE II)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) — EC2 & Linux
Specialized in EC2 and Linux workloads. Responsibilities included customer guidance on AWS best practices, API usage, IAM, and cloud architecture. Promoted to CSE II in October 2016, taking on escalation responsibility, documentation, knowledge creation, and internal education. Led the customer-side effort for the EC2 longer ID format migration (completed December 2016), which also resulted in a public contribution to awslabs/ec2-migrate-longer-id.
Sep 2013 — Apr 2015
Linux Systems Administrator
Rackspace
Supported international enterprise customers on Linux infrastructure stacks including MySQL, Apache, Nginx, Redis, Memcached, RHCS, OpenStack, Tomcat, and VMware ESXi. Expanded networking depth across Link Aggregation (LAG/LACP), VLANs, and IPv6. Developed a foundation in collaborative troubleshooting and outside-the-box problem solving under production pressure.

recognition

// US Patent — Granted Jun 2022
AWS-Compatible Service & Resource Credit System

Co-inventor on a patent filed with AWS covering a system for providing services and resources via an AWS-compatible service stack, including mechanisms for crediting usage by other customers — the kind of infrastructure-level work that comes from being deep inside EC2 fleet operations.

certifications

RHCE — Red Hat Certified Engineer
Red Hat · Aug 2014 — Aug 2017 · #140-049-065
RHCSA — Red Hat Certified System Administrator
Red Hat · Mar 2014 — Aug 2017 · #140-049-065

education

B.S., Computer Science
2006 — 2010 · Competitive Programming Club

recommendation

"J and I worked closely together on a number of time-sensitive, high-pressure projects, and his energy and commitment went beyond expectations. His attention to detail and breadth of knowledge were instrumental in achieving our goals. He has excellent knowledge on Linux, infrastructure and cloud technology. He is easy to reach and always available to support those in need of his assistance."

Killip Swart
Enterprise Support Manager (Cloud Operations / Incident Management) — Amazon Web Services

technical skills

Go Python Linux AWS Amazon EC2 k3s / Kubernetes Bash Docker Git / GitHub Red Hat Linux CentOS / RHEL System Administration Cloud Computing Networking VMware ESX OpenStack MySQL Apache / Nginx SSH SELinux Technical Architecture Back-End Development Java C/C++ HTML / CSS

beyond the terminal

Eagle Scout. When not building infrastructure: snowboarding, video games, smart home projects (lighting, electrical, light remodeling), building custom water-cooled computers, and digging into networking (BGP, VLANs, packet captures, SIP/RTP). Amateur Ethereum node operator running a Rocketpool validator node on self-hosted hardware.