Brandon J. Bjelland
Platform & Agentic Engineering Leader
brandonjbjelland@gmail.comgithub.com/brandonjbjellandlinkedin.com/in/brandonjbjellandbrandonbjelland.com
Summary
Over the past 3 years my workflow has shifted toward agentic development, and that shift shapes what I want to build next: software factories, where agents and people share one path from idea to production. I’m most interested in designing and building the interfaces that make this work, both for product developers and ambitious builders in the enterprise.
I bring over a decade of cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, and employ many boring but effective methods of yesteryear. These are the foundations keeping teams and agents safe.
I’m adaptive to the situation but generally biased toward…
- doing over analyzing – Production-quality deliverables are the goal. I analyze the problem space but dive in quickly to gain better domain understanding.
- showing over telling – If a picture is worth a thousand words, a demo speaks volumes.
- communicating in multiple mediums – Code, talks, docs, diagrams, decision trees, and slide decks. Ideas are only as useful as one’s ability to communicate them effectively.
Technical proficiencies
- Agentic development
- Claude Code, pi, Agent-driven CI/CD for code review and issue resolution
- Platform & GitOps
- Kubernetes resource model (incl. Config Connector), ArgoCD, Helm, CUE, Terraform / OpenTofu, Spacelift
- Cloud infrastructure
- Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services
- Languages
- Go, TypeScript, Rust, Python, Shell
- CI/CD
- GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Google Cloud Build, Cloud Deploy, Spinnaker, Harness
Experience
Palo Alto Networks
Joined through the Protect AI acquisition as architect and technical owner of the platform infrastructure under every Prisma AIRS product. When I left, it supported 12+ teams across 10+ regulated regions on AWS and GCP, with all products deployed under a common framework. Set the team’s multi-year technical direction and grew the core team from four to seven engineers.
Key projects:
- Architected CELLARS, a cellular infrastructure model where each geo-bound cell inherits its compliance controls from the platform, cutting a new sovereign region from months of bespoke work to weeks.
- Architected HERBS, a GitOps deployment framework (ArgoCD, CUE, Helm) giving every team one way to ship to any cell: 500+ version rollouts after its December 2025 launch, with zero production outages on platform-owned systems.
- Built internal network-provisioning OpenTofu/Terraform providers, letting AIRS (and other PANW) teams self-serve corporate networking, firewall, and load balancer changes as code instead of through manual provisioning.
- Led platform architecture for FedRAMP Moderate readiness, and ran the Prisma AIRS GPU capacity program, reserving scarce GPU capacity ahead of regional expansion.
- Built group-wide Claude Code CI/CD components for automated merge request review, conflict resolution, MR-comment-driven Claude interactions, CI failure resolution, changelog updates, and plan and blast-radius analysis.
Protect AI
Hired as a forward-deployed solutions architect, then moved to platform engineering to lead Protect AI’s SaaS build-out. Took product deployments from proof of value to Replicated installs in customer environments, leading directly to signed customers.
Key projects:
- PASTA (Protect AI Single Tenant Automation) to provision dedicated single-tenant infrastructure in AWS, the precursor to CELLARS and HERBS at Palo Alto Networks.
- Built sauce on PASTA’s foundation for tenant-level provisioning on shared clusters with ArgoCD and Spacelift/OpenTofu, supporting 100+ customers across trials and production and letting the forward-deployed team provision tenants on their own.
Onix Networking
Delivery lead for large GCP customers, then directed field engineering: hiring, staffing engagements, mentoring, and serving as the top technical escalation point. Led foundational infrastructure, networking, and data platform delivery for an EV manufacturer.
Run at Scale
Self-employed. Spent 5 years embedded in Google Professional Services on large GCP deployments carrying billions of dollars in spend commitments, for clients ranging from Fortune 100 enterprises to state government and higher education.
Partners: Google, Atmospheric, Data Piper, Globant, Container Heroes, New Context
Open source
- terraform-aws-eks · Original author; ~193M registry downloads; top all-time contributor.
- terraform-aws-alb · Original author; ~61M registry downloads; top all-time contributor.
Earlier experience
- Tableau Software · Senior WebOps Systems Engineer2015 – 2017
- Salesforce · Senior Member of Technical Staff2015
- DreamBox Learning · Operations Engineer → Senior Operations Engineer2013 – 2015
- Big Fish Games · NOC Administrator → Senior NOC Engineer2010 – 2013
- NBC Olympics · IT Systems Operations Support2010
Education
University of Wisconsin–La Crosse · B.S., Sociology & Mathematics