Cloud & AI Platform Engineering · Agentic Systems · Identity at Scale

Benjamin Villanueva
builds platforms enterprises trust at scale.

Engineering leader with 20+ years architecting enterprise Azure infrastructure. I designed and led the platform behind a $150M global managed-services business. I still ship the code.

System Readout● Operational
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Platform Business Owned
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Annual Cost Reduction · 84%
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Engineering Team Built
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Azure Expert MSP · Consecutive
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Azure Tenants · 5K Subs
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Global Sites Operated
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Years Engineering Leadership
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Incident Response · from 5h
01

Profile

// who you're hiring

I architect and lead the platforms enterprises depend on. At Rackspace I built and ran the core Azure platform behind a $150M global managed-services business. It was PostgreSQL-backed, with Cosmos DB audit logging and an event-driven backbone of Service Bus, Event Hubs, and Azure Functions, serving 36,000+ tenants and 5,000 subscriptions across 13 global sites.

The outcomes are what I'm measured on. I refactored that platform from $56K to $9K per month, an 84% cut while increasing capacity, drove mean-time-to-resolution from five hours to fifteen minutes with AIOps, cut deployments from 48 minutes to 6, and passed every annual Azure Expert MSP audit with zero findings. I grew the team from myself to eight engineers and championed AI adoption across the org.

I lead by building. I architect the systems my teams run on and stay close to the code, so my technical decisions hold up and my team trusts them. That work runs from the enterprise identity practice I stood up on Entra ID and federation, through the Zero Trust security model, to the agentic systems I build now: MCP services, custom agent coding skills, and Borg, my open-source agent-memory engine.

02

AI Engineering

// building at the frontier

My AI work is real engineering, not a list of tools I've tried. I built the agentic surface of a production platform, led AI adoption across my team, and maintain open-source AI infrastructure with published benchmarks. The work below is grouped by where it happened: production, leadership, and open source.

Production · Rackspace

Agentic Platform Surface

Built the platform's programmatic and agentic layer: REST APIs, Model Context Protocol services, agent frameworks, and custom agent coding skills, with the documentation to make it usable inside and out.

MCPAgent FrameworksCustom SkillsREST APIs
Production · Rackspace

AIOps · 5h → 15min MTTR

Integrated an AIOps framework using machine-learning event correlation that cut mean-time-to-resolution from five hours to fifteen minutes across a multi-tenant estate.

AIOpsML Event CorrelationObservability
Leadership

AI Champion & Trainer

Served as my team's AI champion and trainer, running demos and proofs of concept, upskilling engineers, and integrating AI-assisted workflows into production engineering practice.

EnablementDemos & POCsWorkflow Integration
Open Source · Sole creator

Borg — Agent Memory Engine

Built an open-source, Postgres-native memory system giving AI coding agents organization-level memory. Benchmarked at 91.3% retrieval precision, 12.7 points over vector RAG. See details ↓

MCPPostgreSQLpgvectorApache 2.0
Daily practice

AI-Native Development

I build with agents daily, writing custom agent coding skills and MCP integrations that extend what they can do and speed up delivery across the stack.

Claude CodeCodexGitHub CopilotKiro
Architecture

Agentic Workflow Design

I design how agents fit into real engineering systems, using namespace isolation, token-budgeted context, and bitemporal fact supersession so AI strengthens the platform rather than adding risk to it.

Workflow DesignContext EngineeringGuardrails
03

Experience

// 2013 → present
2022 — 2026 · Rackspace Technology

Director of Azure Engineering

$150M platform · 36K tenants · 5K subscriptions · 13 sites

Held engineering accountability for the core Azure platform underpinning a $150M managed-services business, built on PostgreSQL with Cosmos DB audit logging and an event-driven backbone of Service Bus, Event Hubs, and Azure Functions.

  • Refactored the platform from $56K to $9K/month (84% reduction) while increasing capacity and capability.
  • Cut MTTR from 5 hours to 15 minutes with an AIOps framework using machine-learning event correlation.
  • Architected a multi-layered Zero Trust model spanning WAF, API Management, data isolation, and Entra ID Conditional Access and PIM, with Azure Sentinel SIEM for real-time detection and automated response.
  • Standardized secure delivery (Bicep IaC, GitHub Actions with self-hosted runners, SAST and container scanning), cutting deploys from 48 to 6 minutes.
  • Built the platform's agentic surface: REST APIs, MCP services, agent frameworks, and custom agent coding skills.
  • Team AI champion and trainer; grew the function from one to eight engineers.
  • Perfect record through every annual Azure Expert MSP audit, protecting partner and co-sell revenue.
2015 — 2022 · Rackspace Technology

Senior Azure Architect

Identity & Access Management · Fortune 500

Built out the Identity and Access Management practice on Azure AD, ADFS, and Microsoft Identity Manager, delivering single sign-on and federated identity at scale across cloud and on-premises.

  • Lead Azure architect for major Fortune 500 customers, delivering proofs of concept, custom solutions, and AAD integrations.
  • Primary pre-sales contact across all IAM engagements; ran solution workshops.
  • Delivered IAM and federation webinars reaching 500+ customers per session.
2013 — 2015 · Catapult Systems

Senior Lead Consultant

Austin Practice Lead · Top 5% billable

Local practice lead for the Austin business unit, owning delivery across Azure, Office 365, and federation, managing the full project lifecycle from sales to closure.

  • Consolidated LDAP, AD, and eDirectory onto Azure with sync from 100 to 500,000 accounts, including M&A integration.
  • Designed ADFS solutions: SSO, MFA, claims-based identity, and access control across on-prem and Azure.
8 years · Dell Technologies

Senior Systems Engineer & Architect

Virtualization & Identity Foundation

Lead architect for enterprise virtualization and identity, building Active Directory and high-availability infrastructure at 99.99% uptime. This was the foundation for everything since.

04

Leadership

// people first

The team I built is the part of this work I'm proudest of. I care about it more than any platform I've shipped.

I grew my engineering function from one person to eight. Hiring was only the start. The harder, more important work was building a place where strong engineers could do their best work and want to stay.

I mentor directly rather than manage from an org chart. I have been the escalation point and the person who teaches since my early engineering roles. As my team's AI champion and trainer, I ran the demos, proofs of concept, and hands-on sessions that got everyone comfortable with tools that were changing fast.

I protect my team's focus, give credit generously, and take the heat when something breaks. People do their best work when they feel valued, trusted, and appreciated, so that is the environment I work to create.

01People over org charts
I lead humans, not headcount. Careers, growth, and wellbeing come before process.
02Grow the people, not only the systems
Mentorship and training are core to the role. I bring the team up with me as the work gets harder.
03Trust by default
Autonomy and clear context beat micromanagement. I give the why, then get out of the way.
04Credit out, accountability in
Wins belong to the team. When something fails, it stops with me.
05Lead from the front
I stay close to the work, so my decisions are credible and I never ask the team to do what I would not.
05

Open Source

// I still ship

Borg Apache 2.0

Sole creator & maintainer · PostgreSQL-native agent memory
borgmemory.com ↗

An open-source memory system that gives AI coding agents persistent, organization-level memory across an engineering team. One Postgres — no Qdrant, no Neo4j, no sync daemons.

Works unchanged across Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, and Kiro over the Model Context Protocol, with namespace isolation over a shared knowledge graph so projects stay cleanly separated while context carries across sessions and clients.

Its compilation pipeline returns ranked, token-budgeted context — not raw search results — with bitemporal fact supersession to keep stale decisions out of working memory.

Engineering-task benchmark
Borg · compiled91.3%
Top-10 vector RAG81.0%
No memory6.0%
Task success · 10 of 10 · 78% fewer stale facts
06

Capabilities

// the instrument panel
Engineering Leadership
Global Platform EngineeringFinOps & Cost OptimizationMulti-Site DeliveryTeam Building & MentorshipAI EnablementPre-Sales & Solution ArchitecturePartner / Co-Sell Strategy
Cloud Architecture
Azure IaaS / PaaSKubernetes (AKS)Multi-Tenant ArchitectureHybrid CloudNetworking & VNetSite-to-Site VPNEvent-Driven Architecture
Data & Messaging
PostgreSQLCosmos DBpgvectorAzure Service BusEvent HubsAzure FunctionsLogic Apps
AI & Agentic Systems
Model Context Protocol (MCP)Agent FrameworksCustom Agent Coding SkillsAgentic Workflow DesignAIOpsClaude CodeCodexGitHub CopilotKiro
Identity & Access
Microsoft Entra IDManaged IdentitiesSingle Sign-OnPrivileged Identity ManagementConditional AccessAD Federation ServicesMicrosoft Identity ManagerHybrid & Federated Identity
Security & Governance
Zero Trust ArchitectureAzure Sentinel (SIEM)Web Application FirewallAPI ManagementAzure PolicyAzure Monitor & AlertingContainer SecurityPCI · NIST · SOX
Languages & Frameworks
PythonNode.jsReactPowerShellTypeScript / JavaScriptBicepSQL
DevOps & Code Quality
CI/CD PipelinesInfrastructure as Code (Bicep)GitHub ActionsSelf-Hosted RunnersPre-Commit HooksRuff (Python lint)ESLint (React / Node)PSScriptAnalyzer (PowerShell)SAST & Code SecurityContainer Scanning
Automation & BI
REST API DesignPower AutomatePower BIWorkflow AutomationMicrosoft Partner Center
Education & Certifications
Education
Master of Science, Information Technology Management
Master of Science, Supply Chain Management
University of Wisconsin–Whitewater
Certifications
Microsoft Certified Master (MCM): Directory Services
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE): Core Infrastructure
Currently Focused On
Agentic platform engineering
AI developer tooling & enablement
Cloud cost & reliability at scale
Open to VP & senior engineering leadership roles

Let's build something
enterprises can trust.