~/jduncan.io / about

Jamie Duncan

Self-taught engineer. Help desk to agentic development.

I build and explain systems for a living. These days that means agentic development: giving AI agents the right context and guardrails so they can do the heavy lifting, while I orchestrate and supervise. I started on an ISP help desk in 2007 and I'm still chasing the same question: how does this actually work?

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Who I Am

I came up the long way. No degree to speak of: just a stubborn curiosity about how things actually work. My first IT job was an ISP help desk in 2007, talking people through static IP addresses on Windows XP. I learned by breaking things, reading the manual, and shipping. The tools change. The craft endures.

Most of my career has lived where infrastructure meets the people who depend on it. I like the hard, unglamorous parts: the operations, the failure modes, the gap between a clean demo and a system that holds up at 3 a.m. I care more about pragmatic outcomes than about hype.

Right now I'm deep in agentic development. I think the bottleneck isn't model capability, it's context: docs are infrastructure, specs beat tickets, and the developer's real job is building the harness that keeps agents honest. I write about it here, and I built Root to put the ideas into practice.

Off the keyboard I'm a maker. Woodworking, home automation, and whatever project has currently taken over the garage. That stuff shows up here too.

Experience

  1. Customer Engineer

    Now

    Google Cloud

    Helping organizations get real value out of the cloud. Most of my energy right now goes into agentic development: context-driven, spec-first workflows where you orchestrate a fleet of agents instead of typing every line yourself. I built Root, an open-source framework, to make that disciplined and repeatable.

  2. Staff Engineer

    2019 – 2020

    VMware

    Application transformation and modern infrastructure: meeting teams where they are and helping them get where they want to go.

  3. Cloud Solutions Architect

    2012 – 2019

    Red Hat

    Seven years on the operations side of containers and large-scale deployments, working with customers and advocates across multiple continents. That stretch included high-stakes platforms like Healthcare.gov, and it produced the book.

  4. Engineer

    2008 – 2012

    Startups & a large media company

    The scrappy years. Small teams where you do a bit of everything, plus a stint at a large media company. This is where I really learned Linux and how production actually behaves under load.

  5. Help Desk

    2007 · where it started

    A regional ISP

    My first IT job. I spent my days walking people through static IP addresses on Windows XP, including the occasional grandma. No degree, no fancy pedigree: I learned by breaking things and reading the manual.

The Book

OpenShift in Action book cover

OpenShift in Action

Manning Publications · with John Osborne

A practical, ground-up guide to running OpenShift in the real world: containers, Kubernetes, storage, networking, and the operational details that decide whether a platform actually works. Written for the people who have to keep it running.

The chapter on SELinux is the best piece of writing I've ever done. I'll stand by that.

View on Manning →

What I Work With

Get In Touch

I'm always happy to talk shop: platforms, cloud, careers, or whatever you're building. The fastest ways to reach me are below. If you want time on the calendar, grab a slot during office hours.

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