jssmithjosh.dev

Josh Smith · Northern Ireland

Cloud-focused
IT Technician

Software engineering graduate, currently working as an IT Technician. I build on AWS in my own time — serverless applications, static sites served from the edge, and the identity and access plumbing that sits behind both.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, working toward the Solutions Architect Associate with a target of December 2026. Looking for a cloud or infrastructure role.

GET smithjosh.dev
→Route 53DNS — apex and www
→CloudFrontTLS termination, edge cache
→S3static origin, one HTML file

You're inside the demo. This page is served by the architecture it describes — no build step, no framework, no server to patch.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) · in progress, targeting Dec 2026
About

Who's behind the domain.

Cloud is the part I kept coming back to

I'm Josh — a software engineering graduate from Queen's University Belfast who ended up pointed squarely at infrastructure. I write code, but what I enjoy is the layer underneath it: how a request actually gets served, where the state lives, who's allowed to touch what.

My placement year at The Cedar Foundation was where that clicked. Supporting 100+ staff across multiple sites taught me that the interesting problems aren't the tickets — they're the patterns behind them. Automating onboarding with PowerShell was more satisfying than closing fifty password resets, and administering Azure AD and Microsoft 365 gave me a first real feel for identity as infrastructure.

Since then I've been building on AWS in earnest: a serverless application I ran in production for a paying client, this site, and the certification path from Cloud Practitioner toward Solutions Architect. I'd rather understand one platform properly than name-drop five.

Projects

Things that exist and run, not just repos.

Built and shipped

Wedding RSVP Management System

Client work
  • Lambda
  • DynamoDB
  • API Gateway
  • S3
  • CloudFront
  • IAM
  • Node.js

A serverless RSVP platform built for a real client wedding: a guest-facing portal with conditional form logic and validation, and an admin dashboard with live response statistics and CSV export. I designed the whole architecture — Lambda for backend logic, DynamoDB for persistence, API Gateway for the REST layer, S3 and CloudFront for delivery over HTTPS.

The interesting work was in the seams rather than the features: debugging Lambda-to-API-Gateway integration, getting IAM roles scoped correctly, and sorting out CORS for cross-origin requests properly rather than opening it up. Putting CloudFront in front measurably improved reliability on mobile connections.

Scope
Sole developer — architecture, build, deploy
Cost
Under £2/month, pay-per-request throughout
Status
Ran in production through event, decommissioned afterwards

smithjosh.dev — this site

Infrastructure
  • S3
  • CloudFront
  • Route 53
  • ACM
  • HTML/CSS

A deliberately small piece of infrastructure, run properly. A single HTML file in a private S3 bucket, distributed by CloudFront with an ACM certificate covering both the apex domain and www, DNS managed in Route 53. Deploys are an S3 upload and a CloudFront invalidation.

It's a modest stack, but it covers the things that actually bite people: certificate validation, apex-domain aliasing, cache invalidation, and bucket policy that doesn't leave the origin publicly readable.

Scope
DNS, TLS, CDN, origin, deploy process
Cost
Under £3/month including the domain
Status
You're looking at it

Buddy — Pet Care Management App

Final year project
  • React
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • MongoDB
  • Firebase
  • Tailwind

A full-stack application for tracking pet health, activity and care routines, with authentication, per-pet profiles and data visualisation. I led three features end to end: an activity tracker with an achievement system, a weight tracker with goal-setting, and a pet-friendly locations finder using interactive maps and a weather API — including the Express and MongoDB endpoints behind each, with auth middleware and validation.

Scope
Three features, front end through API
Note
GDPR-compliant data handling by design
Experience

Where the hours have gone.

Experience

IT Technician

Selective Travel Management · Fully remote · Nov 2025 – Present

Support & operations

  • First- and second-line support for a distributed, remote-first user base across Windows, Microsoft 365 and endpoint issues
  • Account lifecycle management — provisioning, permissions, MFA enrolment and offboarding
  • Ticket ownership through to resolution, with escalation and documentation as standard
  • Studying toward the AWS Solutions Architect Associate alongside the role

IT Placement Student

The Cedar Foundation · Jul 2023 – Jul 2024

Support & administration

  • Technical support for 100+ staff across multiple sites — hardware, software and connectivity
  • Administered Azure AD and Microsoft 365: user accounts, licensing and security groups
  • Account provisioning, password resets and offboarding aligned to data protection policy

Automation & process

  • PowerShell scripting that cut manual onboarding effort by roughly 40%
  • Wrote IT policies, disaster recovery procedures and SOPs aligned to GDPR
  • Maintained service desk records and knowledge base against SLA targets

Infrastructure

  • Deployment and configuration of Windows laptops, printers, mobile devices and peripherals
  • Worked with external vendors on network troubleshooting and improvements
Skills

Weighted toward what I use, not what I've heard of.

Technical skills

AWS

  • Lambda & API Gateway
  • S3 & CloudFront
  • DynamoDB
  • Route 53 & ACM
  • IAM roles and policies
  • EC2 fundamentals
  • CloudWatch logs

Identity & endpoints

  • Microsoft Entra ID / Azure AD
  • Microsoft 365 admin
  • Active Directory & Group Policy
  • MFA and access control
  • GDPR & data protection

Networking & ops

  • DNS, TCP/IP, DHCP
  • TLS certificates
  • VPN configuration
  • Network troubleshooting
  • Linux fundamentals

Scripting

  • PowerShell
  • JavaScript & Node.js
  • REST API design
  • SQL & NoSQL
  • Git & GitHub

Learning

Currently working through these — listed as study in progress, not as skills I'd claim yet.

  • AWS Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) · target Dec 2026
  • Terraform
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Python

Message me on LinkedIn

If you want to talk about something here — how it was built, what broke, what I'd do differently — LinkedIn is the best way to reach me.

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/joshsmith2003
Based inNorthern Ireland