Lance Keay

About / CV

Lance Keay

Senior full-stack developer & DevOps engineer · contractor

I build web applications end to end and run the pipelines and servers they live on. Lately that includes putting AI tooling into real teams' workflows, carefully.

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Profile

I'm a senior engineer who is equally at home in a React component, a SQL query plan and a Terraform diff. Most of my contracts sit where application code meets infrastructure: teams whose deploys are slow or scary, whose cloud bill has drifted, or who need someone to own a service from first commit to on-call.

I work in small, reviewable steps, write things down, and prefer boring technology that the team can run without me. When I recommend a tool, it's because I've used it in anger. That habit is what the posts on this site are.

Skills

Application

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • React
  • Go
  • Python
  • REST & GraphQL APIs

Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Queues & event streams
  • Schema migrations

Infrastructure

  • Linux
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Self-hosted / on-prem

Delivery

  • CI/CD pipelines
  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI
  • Observability
  • Incident response

AI tooling

  • Coding agents in team workflows
  • Self-hosted model serving
  • LLM API integration
  • Cost tracking
  • Sandboxing & guardrails

Experience summary

Sample outline: the kinds of engagement Lance takes on, written as placeholders. The CV files are placeholders too, ready to be swapped for the current CV with the full, dated history.

  1. Contract

    Platform and DevOps engagements

    Taking over CI/CD and infrastructure for product teams: moving deploys from hand-run scripts to reviewed pipelines, infrastructure into Terraform, and adding the monitoring that tells you about problems before customers do.

  2. Contract

    Full-stack product delivery

    Building and shipping web features end to end: API design, database changes, front-end work and the release itself, usually as the senior engineer on a small team.

  3. Contract

    AI tooling adoption

    Helping teams introduce coding agents and LLM features without leaking code or blowing the budget: choosing hosted or self-hosted models, sandboxing, and tracking per-token cost.

  4. Earlier

    Permanent engineering roles

    Years as a developer and then senior developer in product teams, which is where the ops side started: someone had to own the servers.

Working with me

I take on contracts remotely, or on site by arrangement. A good first message says what you're building, what's getting in the way, and roughly when you need help. I'll reply with whether I'm a good fit, and say so plainly if I'm not.