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Seriously injured by high cloud costs? Call Shawn Azar, The Strong Arm 💪

I'm a technologist based in Denver, Colorado, obsessed with tinkering. When I'm not with my family or getting outdoors, you'll find me in my homelab experimenting with GPU clusters for LLM inference, optimizing Kubernetes deployments, or testing CNCF projects to see which ones actually deliver. I'm a Senior Engineering Manager of Foundation at Strava, and I've spent the last decade helping fast-growth startups navigate technical challenges at scale. I write here about what I'm actually building: AWS cost optimization that drives 40%+ savings, AI/ML infrastructure in production, cloud architecture patterns that work under pressure, and the real experience of working with emerging technologies (not the conference talk version). I consult on cloud infrastructure, AI implementation, and Kubernetes management for companies that need systems to work reliably at scale.

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Recent Posts

Framework selection AI tooling integration architecture decisions 2025

Framework Choice Is Now an AI Tooling Decision

If you’re a CTO or engineering lead making framework decisions in 2025, you’re probably evaluating based on familiar criteria: performance, ecosystem maturity, team expertise, hiring pool. Those still matter. But…

Diagram showing MCP server architecture with LLM sending queries to MCP Server which makes API calls to external systems like Kubernetes, GitHub, and WordPress, with a warning callout about token costs at every step

MCP Servers in My Homelab: What I Actually Learned

My four-year-old learned to use a shape sorter yesterday. Watching her figure it out reminded me of my experience with MCP servers over the last six months. Not because the…

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