Thong Do

Open to Forward Deployed Engineer · Principal Architect · Principal SDE roles

Thong Do

Principal Architect · Forward Deployed Engineer

I embed with customer engineering teams and take agentic GenAI and platform modernization from whiteboard to production.

Senior Solutions Architect, AWS · Orange County, CA · Remote or hybrid in Southern California

Portrait of Thong Do
years building production systems
17+
concurrent viewers on a live sports API
6.5M+
data workflows modernized with zero downtime
100+
engineers led on customer engagements
15+

About

For 17+ years I have built distributed systems that have to work on the first try: live sports streams for millions of concurrent viewers, checkout flows that carry real revenue, and now production GenAI on Amazon Bedrock.

At AWS I work the way a forward deployed engineer does. I sit with the customer's team, find the real problem behind the request, prototype in days, and harden it into something their engineers can own. I still write the code, design the architecture, and lead teams of 15+ engineers through delivery.

How I work

  1. Understand the real problem

    Start with the people doing the work. Map the data, the painpoints, and what success looks like in numbers.

  2. Prototype in days

    Ship a thin working slice against real data early, so decisions are made on evidence instead of slides.

  3. Harden for production

    Evaluation, guardrails, security review, observability, cost controls and infrastructure as code before anything goes live.

  4. Hand over cleanly

    Docs, runbooks, and pairing until the customer's engineers can run, change and extend it without me.

Selected work

Experience

  1. 2026 – Present

    Senior Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services, Solutions Architecture

    Lead an initiative of architects and engineers across enterprise customer engagements.

  2. 2022 – 2026

    Senior Cloud Delivery Architect, Amazon Web Services, Professional Services

    Technical lead for agentic GenAI and modernization engagements with enterprise customers.

  3. 2021 – 2022

    Cloud Delivery Architect, Amazon Web Services, Professional Services

    Architected the API layer for live sports streaming at 6.5M+ concurrent viewers.

  4. 2019 – 2021

    Integration Architect (AppDev), Amazon Web Services, Professional Services

    Lead architect on serverless live-to-VOD, OTT and live-caption systems for media customers.

  5. 2018 – 2019

    Senior Software Engineer, Vibrant New Media

    Built live-clipping, encoding and content-protection services on AWS Media Services.

  6. 2016 – 2018

    Technology Leader, City Beauty

    Led the e-commerce platform; serverless checkout that lifted revenue by about 18%.

  7. 2013 – 2016

    Software Engineer, California State University, Fullerton

    Built and ran internal university applications and systems.

  8. 2015 – 2016

    Software Engineer, Calolo

    AI virtual college coach startup, built on the side.

  9. 2007 – 2013

    IT Specialist, California State University, Fullerton

    University IT systems and support.

Full resume →

Skills

Agentic GenAI
Amazon Bedrock · Agents and tool use · RAG · Evaluation and guardrails · Prompt engineering · LiteLLM
Cloud and architecture
AWS · Serverless · Distributed systems · API design · Event-driven design · Security
Modernization and data
Legacy to cloud migration · Airflow / MWAA · Glue · Redshift · DynamoDB · PostgreSQL · Redis
Infrastructure and delivery
Terraform · CDK · CloudFormation · Kubernetes · Docker · GitHub Actions
Observability
Datadog · Grafana · ELK · New Relic
Programming languages
Python · TypeScript · Go
Media and streaming
Live and VOD pipelines · AWS Elemental · CloudFront at scale
Spoken languages
English · Vietnamese

Certifications

Let’s talk

Hiring for a forward deployed, principal architect or principal engineer role? Email thong@thongdo.com or message me on LinkedIn.