AI and Cloud Engineer, Washington, DC

Proof it's never too late to reinvent.

25+ years building networks that can't go down. Now I'm applying that engineering judgment to AI, and showing you how to do it too.

Read my story Read the blog

Jean Nicolas smiling on a balcony above the ocean and palm trees

CCIE 1998Routing and Switching, Cisco's expert-level certification

300+ VPCsmoved to AWS Transit Gateway

99.999%network uptime maintained

Multiclouddeployments across AWS, Azure, GCP and OCI

TS/SCIIntelligence Community, DOJ, State Department

10+ AIprojects: enterprise grade AI builds

Who I help

For the curious ones

Mid-career professionals

Scared of AI? I was too.

Worried it'll replace your job, or overwhelmed by tool #47? I started as a skeptic. I'll show you the concepts underneath, so you can stop being afraid and start building.

Read the daily blog

Leaders and teams

Is this AI tool enterprise-ready?

Most AI tools aren't built for production. I evaluate them the way I evaluate infrastructure: data protection, security, scale and lock-in.

See my checklist

Network and cloud engineers

From CLI to agents.

You already think in protocols, routing and failover. That's exactly how agentic AI works. I teach the bridge from network engineering to AI engineering.

See what I've built

Jean Nicolas in a Washington Nationals cap, leaning on a balcony rail in front of city high-rises

My story

Everyone carries a distinct genius.

I firmly believe everyone carries a distinct genius. We can accomplish anything we set our minds to. Born in Boston with French as my first language, navigating early technical spaces while mastering English taught me that initial friction is never a limitation; it is simply where momentum begins.

I turned that conviction into execution: earning a computer engineering degree from UMass Amherst in 1995, joining Cisco’s TAC in 1997, and achieving the CCIE in 1998. Walking into rooms of diverse skills and professions, I focused on building a level of technical depth and undeniable competence that stood entirely on its own merits.

Friction is never a limitation. It's where momentum begins.

The real shift came from mastering systems to empowering people. Becoming a Cisco Certified Instructor proved that teaching multiplies mastery. It sharpened my own understanding tenfold, earning me the lasting moniker "the professor," while proving that anyone can master complex architecture when given the right structure and confidence.

Today, I am applying that exact formula to frontier AI engineering, learning and building in public. Reinvention isn't reserved for your twenties; it belongs to anyone with relentless curiosity. When you commit your mind to the craft, growth has no ceiling.

See the full career path

The Lab Method

How I learn anything in 12 weeks

The same method took me from failing physics to CCIE, and from AI skeptic to AI builder.

Isolate

Build a small lab that tests one protocol, one concept, one variable. Understand how it behaves alone.

Integrate

Add complexity one layer at a time. Never dive into the deep end all at once.

Repeat for 12 weeks

Real competence takes about three months of steady, daily work. Routine beats motivation. Labs beat theory.

Teach it

Explain it to someone less technical. Their questions expose your gaps. Teaching is learning 10x.

Before you adopt any AI tool

Flashy demos are easy. Production is hard. I've watched a platform admit it could barely support 1,000 users, and another export only the frontend so your backend stays locked in their system. Ask these four questions first.

Data protectionIs your data actually protected, or shared with model providers?
Security by designBuilt into the architecture, or bolted on later?
ScalabilityWill it hold up under real load, past the demo?
Code ownershipCan you export and run the whole stack, or are you locked in?

AI builds

I'm an AI engineer, not an ML engineer

I don't train models. I put existing LLMs and agent frameworks to work on real problems, and I judge them like infrastructure.

Project 1, featured

StoryTime: an AI children's book app

A multi-agent app that writes and storyboards illustrated children's stories. An orchestrator coordinates agents for the story, the scenes and the art, built with LangGraph and LangChain and traced end to end in LangFuse.

I designed it like a network: Architectural Decision Records for the state machine, agent routing and data flow, so every choice has a reason on paper.

LangGraphLangChainLangFusePythonADRs

   [ reader prompt ]
          │
          ▼
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │  orchestrator   │  the quarterback
  └──┬─────┬─────┬──┘
     ▼     ▼     ▼
   story scenes  art      the players
   agent agent  agent
     └─────┼─────┘
           ▼
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │ review / HITL   │
  └────────┬────────┘
           ▼
   [ illustrated book ]

   traces in LangFuse

Project 2

LinkedIn writer

An AI assistant that drafts LinkedIn posts in a consistent personal voice, so ideas turn into posts in minutes.

Project 3

Agentic RAG

Retrieval-augmented generation with an agent in the loop: it decides what to look up, pulls from your own documents, and grounds every answer in those sources instead of the model's memory.

Project 4, a fun one

MyFinalsCup: 2026 World Cup tracker

Tracks the 2026 FIFA World Cup games and bracket. It grew to several hundred users and taught me two things a classroom can't: ship a live product real people use, and never underestimate marketing and timing.

Visit myfinalscup.com

Claude Certified Architect: Foundations

CCA-F portfolio: agents built to be trusted

Five builds from my live CCA-F cohort. Each one focuses on what makes an agent safe in production: tools, guardrails, orchestration and a clean handoff to a human.

Multi-agent

P2B Pro: procurement automation

An employee files a purchase request, five AI agents research, price and compare vendors, an admin makes the final call, and the purchase order goes out automatically. A budget-guard hook routes large orders to finance.

Claude Agent SDKHooksReactFastAPI

Support agent

ShopFast customer support

Resolves orders, refunds and delays on its own, and hands off to a person exactly when policy says it must. An A/B test showed hook-enforced rules beat prompt-only rules.

MCPPreToolUse hooksSkills

CI/CD

Inkwell: AI merge gate

An AI reviewer runs on every pull request, posts its findings, and blocks the merge when it finds something serious. Secret files are off limits to the reviewer.

GitHub ActionsClaude Code

Orchestration

Multi-agent research system

Ask a complex question and get a cited report that shows where sources disagree and what could not be found. Parallel subagents, each with its own tool permissions.

SubagentsCitationsTests

Extraction

Stacked invoice extractor

Drop in a messy order document and get validated invoices, saved records, branded PDFs and customer emails with no manual steps. Tax is computed in code, not by the model.

Tool useJSON schemasn8n

Also built

MCP servers and subagents

A custom MCP server with Slack notifications, an Airtable MCP support agent built two ways, a router with specialist subagents, and schema-enforced JSON with bounded retries.

Credentials

28 years of certifications, still learning

CCA-F

2026, in progress

Claude Certified Architect: Foundations

AWS AI

2025

AWS Certified AI Practitioner

OCI

2025

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations

AWS DVA

2024

AWS Certified Developer Associate

AZ-900

2024

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

AWS SAA

2024

AWS Solutions Architect Associate

CCSI

2008

Cisco Certified Systems Instructor

CCIE

1998

Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, R&S

Career

Every hop on the route

From Cisco's support lab to multi-cloud networks for the federal government.

jean@dc:~$ traceroute career 11 hops, now back to 1997

11Now

AI and Cloud Engineer

Outskill Fellowship, Claude Certified Architect cohort

Applying LLMs and agentic frameworks to real infrastructure and business problems.

102023 to now

Cloud Network Engineer, Team Lead

Woven Solutions, Reston, VA

Leading cloud infrastructure for government agencies across four clouds.

92019 to 2023

Network Engineer

Technica Corp, FBI

Designed a 10-Gig L3VPN ISP architecture: MPLS, MP-BGP, TE.

82017 to 2019

JRSS Transport Engineer

Leidos, DISA / DoD

Migrated military bases to the Joint Regional Security Stacks.

72011 to 2017

Network Consulting Engineer

Cisco Systems, Department of Justice

Began federal work; obtained TS/SCI. OTV and VSS projects.

62010 to 2011

Datacenter Consultant / SME

Hewlett-Packard / Next Step Learning

HP BladeSystem expert, training sales teams in the US and abroad.

52009 to 2010

Network Operations Lead

1Velocity Network, NV (acquired by Towerstream)

Ran a millimeter-wave carrier network with BGP peering to three ISPs.

42008 to 2009

Project Manager and Instructor

Network Learning Inc / CCBootcamp, NV

50-site VoIP project saving the client millions a year. Taught CCNA through CCIE worldwide.

32003 to 2008

Routing and Switching Consultant

Top Grade Technologies, TX

Network design for small and mid-sized companies: VoIP, routing, security.

21999 to 2003

Lead Network Engineer, Service Provider BU

Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA

Supported AT&T, Cisco's largest customer. MPLS VPN, TE, Multicast, IPv6 with AT&T, UUNET and AOL.

11997 to 1999

Network Engineer, TAC / NOC

Cisco Systems, RTP, NC

Routing Protocol Team. Led the NOC; trained and mentored other engineers.

What I build today

Infrastructure that isn't allowed to fail

300+ VPCs

Transit Gateway migration

Led the move from VPC peering and transit VPCs to AWS Transit Gateway.

AWS and Azure

Cloud firewalls

Cisco Firepower Threat Defense virtual firewalls, deployed natively in both clouds.

99.999%

Automated failover

Multi-ISP, multi-cloud failover with IP SLA. SD-WAN is next.

Hybrid

On-prem to cloud

AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute and site-to-site VPN.

GCP as code

Building GCP with Terraform

Building Google Cloud environments with Terraform, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), so every network is versioned, reviewed and repeatable.

4 clouds, 1 network

Multicloud connectivity

Connecting AWS, GCP, Azure and OCI into one routed, secured network so workloads can talk across providers.

Cloud: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud (GCP), Oracle Cloud (OCI)
Networking: BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, IS-IS, MPLS, L3VPN/L2VPN, MP-BGP, TE, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, ExpressRoute, IP SLA, DNS, load balancing
Security: Cisco Firepower (FTD/FMC), Palo Alto, Splunk SIEM, IAM, encryption, Zero Trust
Automation: Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, Python, AWS Lambda, Git and GitHub Actions
AI: Claude, Claude Code, AWS Kiro, Bedrock, Gemini, LangGraph, LangChain, LangFuse, MCP, RAG, n8n
Languages: English, French, Haitian Creole

Read, watch, learn

It's time to stop being afraid of AI

YouTube, coming soon

Short takes and how-tos

The concepts underneath AI tools, explained in plain language. Practical, not academic.

LinkedIn, weekly

The AI journey, live

Weekly notes from the Claude Architect cohort: real assignments, real struggles, real breakthroughs.

Follow on LinkedIn

Speaking and teaching

"The professor" in the room

Years as a Cisco instructor training engineers, sales teams and executives worldwide. Available for talks and workshops.

Invite me to speak

What I write about: AI confessions of a skeptic, career reinvention, learning in the age of AI, leveraging AI at work and personal AI use cases.

Jean Nicolas smiling in a Boston Red Sox cap

Beyond the terminal

Discipline is the whole stack

Running

Over 15 marathons finished. Born and raised in Boston, my goal is to qualify for and run the Boston Marathon.

Strength

Calisthenics, pull-up progressions, kettlebells. Murph Challenge finisher.

Plant-based

Whole-food vegan, tracked with real health data. AI helps plan the meals.

Salsa

Rhythm, balance and a lot of fun on the dance floor.

Real estate

I believe in passive income and own rental properties. Favorite book: Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

Habits

A creature of routine. Atomic Habits is the playbook.

The daily signal

Latest from the blog

One short post every day on AI agent adoption, with sources.

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Work with me

Let's build. Together we'll go further.

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."African proverb

Cloud network architecture, AI readiness for your team, speaking and workshops.

linkedin.com/in/jeangnicolas

jeangnicolas@gmail.com