Felipe Lachowski · Platform Engineering Leader

I build systems
— and teams that outgrow me.

A platform-engineering leader who turns AI from impressive demos into systems that actually ship — and stay reliable in production. 15+ years making hard things work, from gas-turbine control software to cloud platforms at Citrix, NBCUniversal, and Vertex.

Citrix → NBCUniversal → Vertex

15+ years · gas-turbine control software → cloud platforms → AI-first systems

A personal page — not a pitch. I’m a platform engineering manager at Vertex; this is my story and a few things I’ve built.

Boynton Beach, Florida

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The arc

From gas turbines to multi-agent AI.

Felipe started in aerospace and gas-turbine engineering, writing real-time turbine combustion-tuning software. That systems mindset carried him through software, site reliability, and platform leadership — and now into building AI-first systems, and making them reliable enough to run in production, which is exactly where most AI stalls.

At a glance
now

Platform Development Manager

Vertex Inc. · Feb 2024 – Present

Leads a platform engineering team of six; owns reliability, observability, and development across the company’s open-source infrastructure.

focus

AI that ships

AI-first systems — multi-agent automation and LLM apps, built to survive production.

ask me

What am I like
to work with?

roots

Mechanical engineer

M.S., Mechanical Engineering — safety-critical rigor, now applied to AI systems.

studio

His own studio

A personal studio where he builds and ships his own systems on his own time — with a non-profit portfolio coming soon.

ai-first

HurricaneWise

An AI-first hurricane tracker he runs solo, end to end — Claude summaries, observability, incident automation, and IaC. Detects and closes its own incidents; runs on a near-free footprint.

The build story → hurricanewise.com ↗
Track record

Fifteen years, one through-line: make systems work.

  1. Platform Development Manager Feb 2024 – Present
    Vertex Inc.

    Leads a platform engineering team of six; owns reliability, observability, and development across the company’s open-source infrastructure.

    • Sets technical strategy across Kubernetes, Terraform, event streaming, workflow infrastructure, and API gateway services.
    • Introduced an AI build-run operations framework that cuts overhead and returns time to engineering.
    • Drives AI adoption through multi-agent architectures, workflow automation, and cross-functional upskilling.
    • Negotiates contracts and manages vendor relationships across the platform stack.
  2. Platform Development Manager Jan 2023 – Feb 2024
    NBCUniversal

    Managed platform engineering for NBC SportsNext.

    • Led the transition to GitOps and Infrastructure-as-Code practices.
    • Aligned the platform roadmap with business needs and improved delivery and uptime.
  3. Senior Software Engineer → SRE Manager → Platform Development Manager Oct 2018 – Jan 2023
    Citrix

    Grew from senior IC to platform manager over ~4 years, leading reliability and platform strategy for Citrix Desktop-as-a-Service.

    • Drove containerization (Docker) and self-healing systems for faster, more reliable delivery.
    • Built Splunk dashboards for insights, logs, security, and incident management; partnered with AWS, Azure, and GCP.
    • Embedded platform components into application teams via inner-sourcing, reducing operational toil.
  4. Technical Lead May 2015 – Oct 2018
    Power Systems Mfg., LLC (Ansaldo Energia Group)

    The bridge from mechanical engineering into software.

    • Developed gas-turbine combustion software to automate real-time tuning for the PSM AutoTune product line — generating millions in annual revenue.
    • Established a Center of Excellence for cloud-based data streaming on AWS, ingesting nationwide engine data into a Monitoring & Diagnostics center.
  5. Engineer May 2013 – May 2015
    Parametric Solutions, Inc.

    Mechanical / turbomachinery engineering.

  6. Early engineering roles (aerospace & turbomachinery) 2010 – 2013
    Florida Atlantic University · Florida Turbine Technologies · Aerospace Technologies Group

    Research and test/QA engineering roots in aerospace and gas turbines — where the systems mindset started.

  7. Personal engineering projects Ongoing · on his own time
    His personal studio

    Where he builds AI-first systems end to end to keep his craft sharp — personal projects, not a commercial service.

    • HurricaneWise — an AI-first hurricane-tracking system he designed, built, and operates solo: data pipeline, Claude-powered plain-language summaries, observability, incident automation, and infrastructure-as-code.
    • Goes deep across every layer a real platform has — frontend, backend, data, SRE, cost control, security, and CI/CD — while running almost entirely on free tiers.
How he works

Build teams that can operate without you.

Define the problem, design the architecture, then measure whether it works.

Honest feedback, early enough to actually help.

Useful in production beats impressive in a demo.

Some things need a human.

Ask Felipe handles the basics — his background, his work, how he thinks. For anything that deserves a human — a question, an idea, a hello — leave a note and it reaches him directly.