About Me

Progressive leader in the DevOps / PE space Link to heading

About Me Link to heading

I’m Jason McDonald—a DevOps and Platform Engineering leader with 25+ years of building scalable infrastructure, secure research platforms, and high-performing engineering teams across biotech, academia, healthcare, and government-regulated environments.

I specialize in turning complex technical ecosystems into intuitive, resilient platforms that empower developers, researchers, and data teams to innovate without friction. My work blends hands-on engineering depth with executive strategy, enabling organizations to scale confidently while staying secure and cost-efficient.

My Work & Impact Link to heading

I most recently have served as Associate Director of DevOps and Platform Engineering at Harvard Medical School, where I: Link to heading
  • Scaled the DevOps organization from 5 to 12 engineers, establishing a Platform-as-Product operating model
  • Launched the Secure Research Computing Environment (FISMA/NIST 800-171) that protects sensitive biomedical data
  • Designed and deployed an on-prem AI GPU cluster supporting early-stage LLM and imaging pipelines
  • Led the school-wide migration from CentOS 7 → RHEL 9 nearly a thousand HPC nodes and critical services
  • Delivered major platform upgrades through two CIO transitions while maintaining uninterrupted research operations

Whether the challenge is hybrid cloud enablement, secure HPC workloads, observability, or large-scale modernization, I build platforms that balance developer velocity, security, and operational resilience.

Leadership Philosophy

Great platforms aren’t just technical—they’re cultural.

I lead by: Link to heading
  • Growing teams into highly autonomous, collaborative units
  • Treating platform services as products with real customers
  • Creating clarity through ambiguity and organizational change
  • Building shared ownership through mentoring, visibility, and psychological safety
  • My goal isn’t just to ship infrastructure—it’s to enable people to do the best work of their careers.
What I Do Best Link to heading
  • Platform & Infrastructure Strategy (cloud + on-prem + HPC)
  • Secure computing environments / regulated workloads (FISMA, NIST 800-171)
  • Team leadership & org transformation
  • AI/ML infrastructure & high-throughput compute pipelines
  • Automation-first engineering & IaC
I work at the intersection of modern compute, scientific research, and enterprise-grade reliability. Link to heading