AWS consulting for critical systems · Albuquerque, NM
Cloud infrastructure for systems that can’t go down.
I’m Thomas Duquemin — an independent AWS consultant. I help teams running critical systems build cloud infrastructure that’s simple enough to understand, reliable enough to trust, and documented well enough to run without me.
How I think
Most infrastructure is more complicated than the job needs it to be.
There’s nothing wrong with an architecture that touches twenty AWS services — if the problem genuinely calls for it. Most of the time it doesn’t. A smaller, simpler design usually does the same job, costs less, and is far easier for your team to reason about when something breaks at 2 a.m.
So that’s where I start: the simplest thing that works, not the most impressive thing I could build. I won’t recommend a service you don’t need, and I won’t sell you an engagement you don’t need either. If a short conversation solves your problem, we’ll just have a short conversation.
Engagements
Three ways to work together.
Each one is scoped and priced up front, so you know what you’re getting and what it costs before we start. Most clients begin with the assessment.
01
Infrastructure Assessment
Two weeks. One honest map of what you are running and what to do about it.
$8,500
fixed fee · 2 weeks
Details →
02
Build Engagement
Terraform migrations, disaster recovery, pipeline rebuilds. Scoped, fixed-price, handed over as yours.
from $30,000
fixed price per scope · 6 to 12 weeks
Details →
03
Advisory Retainer
A senior AWS architect on call for your team, without the senior AWS architect payroll.
$3,500 / month
quarterly commitment · ongoing
Details →
Selected work
Some of the work.
Wildfire forecasting
36 hrs → under 30 min
Forecast time, before and after the rebuild.
A wildfire-risk forecasting company ran its dead-fuel-moisture model as a single monolithic notebook. One forecast took the better part of two days. I rebuilt it as an event-driven, serverless pipeline. The same forecast now finishes in under half an hour.
Read the case study →
Flight logistics
Off the click-trail, onto code
A flight-logistics company’s CloudFormation had grown so piecemeal it was effectively click-ops. I moved them onto Terraform and ephemeral environments, and built their multi-region disaster recovery.
Read more →
Government & defense
Systems that have to be right
Infrastructure and data pipelines for government and defense programs, including U.S. Army predictive maintenance and national-security research. Different domain, same discipline.
Read more →
Cost reduction
The unglamorous wins
Mapped DNS resolver patterns across 20 AWS accounts, found the redundancy, and refactored it into a shared model. Roughly $60K a year quietly recovered, and a simpler network left behind.
Read more →
How I work
What working together actually looks like.
- 01
You work with me — start to finish
No account managers, no junior engineers staffed to fill a bench. You get the person who does the work, for the whole engagement.
- 02
Calm beats heroic
Production infrastructure is stressful enough. I diagnose before I touch anything, keep you posted in plain language, and don’t add drama to a problem that already has plenty.
- 03
Everything leaves as code, and as yours
Your infrastructure ends the engagement as reviewable Terraform your team owns. I bring a library of modules built over years of this work, so you’re not paying me to reinvent a VPC — and nothing important lives only in my head.
- 04
I tend to do more than the brief
If I spot something adjacent that’s going to bite you later, I’ll tell you — and often just fix it. The brief is where the work starts, not a fence around it.
About
“I’d rather build infrastructure than be the only person who understands it.”
I studied physics at Texas A&M and started out in national-security research. I found I’d rather build and run real systems than study them — so I moved into cloud engineering, helped build a data and cloud consulting firm from the ground up, and went independent as Epsilon Limited Solutions in 2024. Most people call me Duke, short for Duquemin.
Today I take on a small number of engagements at a time, focused on infrastructure for critical systems, and I architect cloud environments across more than 100 AWS accounts. I’m AWS-certified as a Solutions Architect and a Data Engineer, based in Albuquerque, and I work with clients across the Southwest and nationally.
One honest note to end on: I’m not the best cloud engineer alive, and I won’t pretend to be. What I am is steady, genuinely interested in the craft, and straight with you. I’ll tell you what I’d do, what I wouldn’t, and when you don’t actually need me.
Thomas Duquemin
Principal · Epsilon Limited Solutions LLC
Get in touch
Looking me up? Let’s actually talk.
Maybe you’ve got a specific problem. Maybe you just want a second opinion on what you’re running. Either way, this goes straight to me — no pitch, no funnel, no discovery-call gauntlet.