Alexander Gershfeld

whoami

Alexander Gershfeld

Cloud & DevOps Engineer

Computer science graduate focused on cloud infrastructure and automation. I build Docker-based infrastructure, AWS environments, and CI/CD pipelines, and like systems that are reliable, observable, and boring to deploy.

Open to entry-level cloud, DevOps & SRE roles · Orlando, FL / Remote

View projects Resume (PDF)

01 · experience

Experience & education

Lockheed Martin · Industry-sponsored capstone

DevOps & Infrastructure Lead, VITALS

Aug 2025 – May 2026

An end-to-end hardware and software system that automates search and rescue with autonomous drone swarms. Its human-in-the-loop design uses computer vision and large language models to scan large search areas, flag targets of interest, and coordinate multiple UAVs from a single ground control station.

  • Led DevOps and infrastructure for a six-person engineering team, designing the development and deployment environments for the drone swarm platform.
  • Deployed AWS infrastructure with EC2, Elastic IP, and API Gateway, with automated server start/stop to cut operating costs.
  • Designed a containerized microservices architecture on Docker user-defined networks, making services portable and reliable across development and deployment.
  • Ran an offline OpenStreetMap tile server in Docker, bringing map query response time from 10 seconds to under 1 second.
  • Owned the GitHub CI/CD pipeline that runs unit and integration tests on new features, and kept the team on a consistent Git workflow.
  • AWS EC2
  • API Gateway
  • Docker
  • CI/CD
  • Python
  • Bash
  • ArduPilot
  • YOLOv11

University of Central Florida

Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Discrete Structures

Jan 2025 – May 2025

  • Ran weekly labs, wrote lesson plans and problem sets, and occasionally lectured the full class.
  • Worked with the instructor and other TAs to keep grading and assignments consistent.

Student Academic Resource Center, UCF

Supplemental Instruction Leader & Peer Tutor

Dec 2023 – Jan 2025

  • Led interactive sessions for Discrete Computational Structures and Object-Oriented Programming, using Socratic questioning to teach students how to reason through the material.
  • Students who attended averaged 5% higher on exams.
  • Collaborated with faculty on lecture plans, problem sets, and exam reviews.

University of Central Florida

B.S. in Computer Science

Graduated May 2026

Relevant coursework: Analysis of Computer Communication Networks, Security in Computing, System Software, Data Structures and Algorithms, Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Processes of Object-Oriented Design, Artificial Intelligence, Senior Design

Awards: President's Honor Roll (2021, 2023, 2024) · Dean's List (2023, 2024)

02 · projects

Projects

What I've built, the problem each one solved, and what I learned shipping it.

VITALS

A search-and-rescue platform for Lockheed Martin that coordinates autonomous drone swarms from a single ground control station.

  • Computer vision (YOLOv11) and large language models scan large search areas and flag targets for a human operator to confirm.
  • Services run as Docker containers on user-defined networks, backed by AWS EC2 and API Gateway with automated start/stop to keep costs down.
  • An offline OpenStreetMap tile server in Docker cut map query time from 10 seconds to under 1 second.
  • Docker
  • AWS EC2
  • API Gateway
  • ArduPilot
  • YOLOv11
  • Python

Source code Showcase video Live demo on YouTube

This portfolio

Live

A static site hosted on AWS, provisioned entirely with Terraform and deployed on every push by GitHub Actions.

  • Private S3 bucket served through CloudFront with Origin Access Control, HTTPS, and managed security headers.
  • GitHub Actions signs in to AWS with OIDC and a least-privilege IAM role, so no long-lived access keys exist anywhere.
  • CI validates the HTML and Terraform on every pull request, and only a passing build on main deploys.
  • AWS S3
  • CloudFront
  • Terraform
  • GitHub Actions
  • IAM / OIDC

Source code How it ships

Dev Fusion

A MERN-stack web app that brings software developers together to find teammates and build projects as a team.

  • Project manager for a seven-person team, built as the final project for Processes of Object-Oriented Software Development.
  • Set up the team's Git flow and a CI/CD pipeline that runs unit tests on each change before it reaches production.
  • React
  • JavaScript
  • MERN
  • HTML/CSS
  • CI/CD

Source code

2-4 Tree Database

A 2-4 tree for integer keys, built from scratch in Java out of curiosity.

  • Implemented a working 2-4 tree for integer values in Java.
  • Wrote C++ test inputs of varying sizes and measured average run time for each.
  • Java
  • C++
  • Data structures

Source code

03 · skills

Skills & tools

The tools I've used on real projects and can talk through in depth.

Cloud

  • AWS EC2
  • Elastic IP
  • API Gateway
  • S3
  • CloudFront
  • IAM
  • Cloud security

Infrastructure as code

  • Terraform
  • YAML

CI/CD & version control

  • GitHub Actions
  • Git
  • Unit & integration testing

Containers

  • Docker
  • User-defined networks
  • Microservices

Linux & scripting

  • Linux
  • Bash
  • Python
  • VirtualBox

Languages

  • Python
  • C/C++
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • HTML/CSS
  • LaTeX

Certifications: Google IT Specialist (Aug 2023) · AWS Academy Cloud Security Foundations, training badge (Apr 2026)

04 · how it ships

How this site is deployed

This page is a small, working example of the kind of pipeline I want to build professionally. Every change goes through the same five steps.

  1. 01

    Push

    A commit lands on main in GitHub.

  2. 02

    Validate

    GitHub Actions validates the HTML and runs terraform fmt and terraform validate.

  3. 03

    Authenticate

    The workflow assumes a least-privilege IAM role through OIDC. No stored AWS keys.

  4. 04

    Deploy

    aws s3 sync uploads changed files to a private, versioned S3 bucket.

  5. 05

    Serve

    The CloudFront cache is invalidated and the new version is live over HTTPS.

Infrastructure: S3, CloudFront, IAM, ACM, and Route 53, all defined in Terraform. Read the code

05 · contact

Let's talk

I'm looking for entry-level roles in cloud engineering, DevOps, or site reliability. Email is the fastest way to reach me.

alex.gershfeld@gmail.com LinkedIn GitHub