Hire Chris Martin

Hello! I am a systems and software engineer in Portland, Oregon. My recent focus has been open-source development for web and Linux server platforms, but my experience spans DevOps, systems administration, data analysis, and leading National Science Foundation grants for research infrastructure. I enjoy building robust systems and technical communities, deep troubleshooting, and removing incidental complexity from user interfaces and code. I can work across the whole stack, from user research to building the feature to building the back-end supporting it.

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Indicators of Culture and Values Fit

Career Highlights

From 2017 through 2025, I founded and led the Exosphere project with my colleague Julian Pistorius at the University of Arizona. For the first several years I committed the majority of code, and later served mostly in a maintainer role. Exosphere is a user-friendly web client for interactive workloads on OpenStack-based clouds, written mostly in Elm and Ansible. In 2021 Exosphere became the primary user interface for the Jetstream2 research cloud funded by the National Science Foundation. (See Exosphere’s code and docs.)

From 2022 to 2024, I was Principal Investigator for a $298,000 NSF award to grow Exosphere’s open-source ecosystem. In 2025 I was co-PI for a $1.5 million award to improve the security of NSF-supported research clouds (namely Jetstream2 + Exosphere).

Starting in 2024, I created the LLM Inference Service for Jetstream2. For most of 2025, we hosted the world’s most-capable open-weights LLMs with on-premises GPU hardware, and provided access free-of-cost to any US-based researcher via APIs and a ChatGPT-like web interface.

From 2021 through 2025, I built Jetstream2’s usage accounting system (Python), image build CI/CD pipeline for ~7 operating systems (Ansible), resource scavenging automation (Python), and infrastructure monitoring/alerting system (Prometheus, etc.) I built any automation we needed that OpenStack didn’t already provide. All of these still run in production.

In 2026 I am taking a year off to reset, and am seeking a new role to begin early 2027.

Work Experience

Indiana University — Bloomington, Indiana (remote)

Systems Engineer 2021 to 2026, contractor 2020 to 2021.

At IU, I developed and maintained Exosphere (details in previous section). As a member of the Research Cloud Infrastructure team within Research Technologies, I also developed several integrations and subsystems for Jetstream2 (see previous section). I was one of several administrators for RCI’s production systems, including a fleet of over 600 physical servers, 460 datacenter-scale GPUs, and 16 petabytes of storage. I also mentored new contributors and served as user support escalation for our sibling team (Research Cloud Services).

I also wrote an OpenStack Planning Guide and Automated Installation Guide for the XSEDE Cyberinfrastructure Resource Integration (XCRI) group.

CyVerse at University of Arizona — Tucson, Arizona

DevOps Engineer 2016 to 2019.

I designed, implemented, and supported systems for scientific computing workloads:

I also served in a supporting tole to develop Atmosphere (user-friendly client for OpenStack), and consulted with community members (research scientists) to help them use CyVerse systems effectively. Further, I created metrics/analytics to plan capacity and demonstrate adoption of services to funding agencies.

Brightworks (acquired by ICS in 2020, later TechMD, later Integris) — Ithaca, New York

Systems Engineer 2019 to 2020

I automated internal systems to increase efficiency of support team and reduce their workload. I also provided highest-tier escalation for support issues.

Integration Engineer 2014 to 2016, and 2011 to 2014.

I built business technology solutions for clients in health care, transit, education, telecommunications, finance, and other industries. I provided technical leadership for the complete project lifecycle. I maintained and upgraded a multi-tenant data center.

(Yes, I worked for Brightworks three separate times over 10 calendar years! It was not a software development shop, but the work culture was really good.)

Education

In 2010 I received a Bachelor of Science, Informatics from University at Buffalo, with summa cum laude distinction.

Technologies I’ve Worked With

Bold indicates particularly strong experience:

Technologies I Want to Learn

At this point I’m more interested in technical and business problems than in particular individual technologies, and I expect to learn whatever the organization uses. My mind has worked well with static type systems and functional programming languages, but I want to continue growing my repertoire. If your team uses Rust, Go, Erlang/Elixir, Scala, or Kotlin, then I especially want to pick up what you’re using.

FAQ

Where, geographically, do you want to work?

I am especially interested in in-person roles in the Portland metro area, but I’m not completely closed to a remote role. (I worked remotely for years before the pandemic.) I would be fine with the ‘3-4 days in-office’ schedule that many employers have settled on.

Do you want to be a manager?

If still contributing in a technical capacity, sure. I’ve done a lot of what amounts to managing people. That said, I don’t imagine transitioning to management as an exclusive focus, and I look for employers whose path to advancement doesn’t require crossing a rubicon from contributor to manager.

Willing to travel? Relocate?

I’m fine with some travel, but not planning to relocate.

On-call okay / flexible hours?

Yes, I’ll serve in a sane on-call rotation. Open to adjusting hours, otherwise I would default to a Western USA 08:30-17:30.

Where is your GitHub and LinkedIn?

My GitHub is here, though I have been more active on GitLab, especially in the Exosphere and Jetstream Cloud namespaces. I am also here on Codeberg. I don’t use LinkedIn or most other social media.

What is your computer?

My Framework 13 is still strong after 3 years, running Debian Stable and PaperWM. But I can use whatever you issue me.

How do I talk to you?

What Else Have I Built?

Side projects include a personal blog with a mix of serious and very unserious writing, a proof-of-concept browser extension (Elm and JavaScript) to help manage your focus, a bicycle (one of several), a personal inference server, and several waxed canvas computer bags.

I have also led several meetup experiments. The most successful was Code Commons (2023-2025), a weekly gathering of technologists at the University of Arizona. Tucson Code Works was a one-room downtown co-working space in 2024-2025. cmart’s Hardcore Coworking is just getting started now.

Finally, I am currently the Land Use and Transportation Committee chair for Kerns Neighborhood Association, one of several facilitators for Decompress and Connect meditation group, and a volunteer for Strong Towns PDX.