Michael Tuszynski

Cloud Architecture & AI Engineering Leader | Former CTO & AWS Solutions Architect | 25 Years Building at Scale

Profile

I build and scale engineering organizations. Over 25 years, I've done this at every level—writing code at investment firms, running a 20-person engineering org at a streaming platform serving millions, spending six years as a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS, and now advising enterprises at Presidio on cloud modernization and AI strategy.

What I bring to the table: the ability to look at complex systems—technical and organizational—and identify what's load-bearing before someone knocks it down. I've architected platforms processing petabytes of video at 99.98% uptime, led container migrations that didn't end in disaster, and co-authored the ECS Workshop that's trained thousands of engineers. I write about cloud infrastructure and AI engineering at The Cloud Codex—real-world analysis, not conference-talk platitudes.

What I'm focused on now:

Helping enterprises separate AI signal from noise—building solutions that work in production, not just demos
Cloud modernization strategy that accounts for the migration you'll do after this migration
Engineering leadership that treats operational excellence as a feature, not a cost center

Core Expertise: Engineering Leadership | Cloud Architecture | AI/ML Strategy | DevSecOps | Platform Engineering

Professional Experience

Principal Architect | Presidio

July 2025 - Present
San Francisco Bay Area · Remote

Lead pre-sales technical strategy for AWS application modernization, conducting customer discovery workshops and defining target architectures for enterprise clients
Architect end-to-end solutions with detailed roadmaps, technical proposals, and ROI analysis for C-suite stakeholders across Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing
Design containerization strategies (EKS), serverless architectures (Lambda), and API-first approaches for legacy system modernization
Deliver modern application architectures incorporating LLMs and agentic AI, bridging the gap between AI hype and production-ready implementation
Serve as technical bridge between customers, sales, and delivery—translating business problems into viable solution architectures

Independent Consultant | MPT Solutions

April 2024 - June 2025
San Francisco Bay Area · Remote

Built CI/CD pipelines from scratch for multiple clients, cutting deployment cycles from weekly to daily with integrated security scanning
Led end-to-end development of a cloud-native platform, reducing client time-to-market by 50%
Provided fractional architecture advisory, helping companies make build-vs-buy decisions and avoid over-engineering
Implemented security and compliance frameworks preparing client environments for enterprise readiness

Senior Solutions Architect | Amazon Web Services (AWS)

December 2017 - March 2024

Spent six years as a customer-facing SA helping enterprises design and implement cloud-native architectures—primarily container-based (ECS, EKS, Fargate) and serverless
Led complex migration projects from discovery through production cutover, specializing in the applications that "couldn't be moved"
Co-authored the ECS Workshop, one of AWS's most-used container training resources
Drove consistent cloud cost optimization exceeding 30% for enterprise accounts
Conducted deep-dive technical workshops and architecture reviews for engineering teams across industries
Featured speaker on AWS re:Think Podcast on cloud cost optimization through right-sizing

Chief Technology Officer | Fandor

January 2014 - November 2017

Ran the full technical organization—engineering, product, and operations—for a streaming platform serving millions of users. 20+ person team, $4MM+ annual budget.
Architected cloud-native video processing pipeline handling 10,000+ titles with 99.98% uptime while processing petabytes of content
Led the monolith-to-microservices migration that enabled 100% YoY user growth without proportional infrastructure cost increases
Built the AVOD business from scratch, growing ad impressions 200% month-over-month
Established DevOps practices that improved deployment frequency by 10x

Director Technical Services | PointRoll

January 2006 - December 2014

Led Ad Server Engineering and Platform Engineering teams for a digital advertising technology company
Optimized system architecture reducing infrastructure costs by 35% while improving reliability
Implemented disaster recovery program that cut downtime by 50%

US Director of Technology | Flashtalking, Inc.

January 2012 - December 2013

Led a 10-person technology team through rapid scaling, achieving 30% system efficiency improvement
Developed strategic technology roadmap that contributed to 15% revenue growth

Earlier Positions

Web Developer | Gartmore Global Investments (2004 - 2006)
Systems Analyst | Towers Watson (2001 - 2004)

Technical Expertise

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS (deep): EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, S3, CloudFront, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache
Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK
Containerization: Docker, Kubernetes
CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline
Observability: CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic

Languages & Frameworks

Primary: JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Go
Proficient: Java, Ruby, C#, Rust
Frontend: React, Vue.js, Angular
Backend: Node.js, Django, Rails, .NET Core
Data: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch

Architecture & Practices

Microservices & Event-Driven Architecture
DevOps, SRE & Platform Engineering
Domain-Driven Design
Agile/Scrum at Scale

Certifications

Harvard Data Science Review - Agentic AI Intensive (December 2025)
UC Berkeley Executive Education - Professional Certificate in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
AWS Certified Developer Associate
AWS Certified SysOp Associate

Education

Saint Joseph's University - Erivan K. Haub School of Business
BS, Management Information Systems