Portrait of Matt Haave

Matt Haave

Infrastructure · Automation · Systems

Omaha metro, Nebraska · open to remote

I build and operate systems, and I care most about the part where they keep running without anyone watching. Twenty years around technology and the people who use it; the last stretch spent going deep on infrastructure.

What I do

I design, build, and run a private compute environment end to end — self-healing services, scheduled automation, monitoring that tells me when something is wrong, encrypted backups, and locally-hosted AI models. It spans several machines and it stays up on its own.

Before that, and alongside it, I built the internal tools people actually use day to day: intranet spaces, CRM pages, and small utilities that remove repeated manual work. The hard part of an internal tool is rarely the technology — it's understanding the work well enough that nobody needs training to use it.

How I work

A claim you can't execute is a guess. Everything I build has a test that tries to break it, and nothing counts as working until that test passes. I reboot the machine rather than assume the service comes back.

I use AI models as a force multiplier and say so plainly. They collapse the distance between not understanding something and having a working version to test. They don't decide what to build, and they don't carry the responsibility when the result is wrong — that part stays mine.

Working with

  • Linux
  • Containers
  • systemd
  • Mesh networking
  • Monitoring & alerting
  • Encrypted backups
  • Bash & Python
  • Self-hosted LLMs
  • Hardware & imaging
  • Microsoft 365 / SharePoint
  • Web (HTML/CSS)

Selected work

A private environment that runs itself

ongoing

Several machines operating as one system: services that restart themselves when they fail, scheduled jobs that keep running whether or not anyone is watching, and alerting that reaches my phone when something needs a human. Measured by how rarely I have to touch it.

Encrypted backup and restore, end to end

ongoing

Automated encrypted backups with offsite copies, and — the part most backup setups skip — restores that get tested. A backup nobody has restored from is a rumour, not a backup.

Continuous integrity checking

ongoing

Scheduled verification that the machines are in the state I left them in, with anything unexpected surfaced rather than logged and forgotten. Built after learning the hard way that a check which can't fail is not a check.

Hardware-key authentication across the estate

2026

Phishing-resistant hardware-key sign-in standardised across services, so access depends on something physically in hand rather than a password that can be replayed.

Locally-hosted AI inference

ongoing

Language models running on my own hardware, so the capability works with no external service in the loop and nothing leaving the network.

Internal tools people actually use

ongoing

Dashboards, generators, and small utilities that remove repeated manual work. The measure I care about is whether anyone needed training.

Documents

Professional references are available on request — I'll send them over, and give my referees a heads-up that you'll be in touch.

Roles I'm looking for

  • Infrastructure Engineer
  • Site Reliability Engineer
  • Systems Engineer
  • Platform Engineer
  • DevOps Engineer
  • Automation Engineer
  • Internal Tools Engineer
  • IT Operations Engineer
  • Technical Support Engineer (escalation)
  • Solutions Engineer

Background

Infrastructure & automation — independent

2026 – present

Designing and operating a multi-machine private environment: automated backups, monitoring, self-healing services, and local AI inference.

Lighting quotations specialist

2026 – present

Technical quoting for the lighting industry. Built internal pages and tools on my own initiative for the team I work with.

Content & marketing specialist — nonprofit health data organisation

2022 – 2026

Ran the internal intranet and CRM spaces a whole staff relied on. Translated complex technical capability into language people could act on.

Creative services & real-time desk — regional broadcast

2015 – 2021

Live production and content under deadline.

B.S., Broadcasting & Communications — University of Nebraska at Omaha

magna cum laude

Plus a decade of direct support and hardware repair work.

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