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César Andrés Lizárraga

Senior/Staff Infrastructure Engineer | Software Architect
St. Louis, MO | calizarr@gmail.com
github: http://github.com/calizarr
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/calizarr

Professional Summary

Strategic and hands-on Senior Infrastructure Engineer with over 15 years of experience in cloud-native architecture, Kubernetes orchestration, and large-scale software development. Proven expertise in leading cross-functional teams to deliver high-availability systems, including architecting platforms that secured multimillion-dollar contracts. Adept at bridging the gap between low-level hardware (IoT/Embedded) and high-level cloud infrastructure to drive innovation and operational excellence.

Technical Skills

Infrastructure & DevOps: Kubernetes (K8s), ArgoCD, Argo Workflows, OpenTofu/Terraform, Ansible, Cilium eBPF, Talos Linux, Proxmox, Bare-metal.
Languages & Frameworks: Golang (Learned on the job), Python (Django, FastAPI), Scala (Learned on the job), BASH, SQL, Java.
Cloud Platforms: AWS (EC2, S3, DynamoDB, IAM, Route53, GuardDuty, WAF), DigitalOcean.
Databases & Data Platforms: PostgreSQL, AWS RDS, SQLite, DynamoDB, Ray, MLFlow.
Observability & Reliability: Prometheus, Grafana, Linkerd, ELK Stack, Incident Response, Postmortem Leadership, PiHole/Unbound.
Security & Compliance: AWS WAF, AWS GuardDuty, SSL/TLS Encryption-in-transit, OSS Review Toolkit (ORT), SOC2 Compliance, Dependency Vulnerability Remediation.
Hardware & IoT: Raspberry Pi (4b, Pico 2W), Arduino, Logic Analyzers, I2C/SPI/UART troubleshooting, field canopy sensors, SMD harvesting/organization
Developer Tools: Git, Tekton, Jenkins, Travis CI, GNU Emacs, IntelliJ IDEA.

Relevant Experience

CIBO Technologies | St. Louis, MO

Senior Software Engineer (Infrastructure) | March 2021 – October 31, 2025

Architected and standardized core infrastructure for API-driven microservices backed by PostgreSQL, increasing platform reliability, reducing disaster recovery RTO through high-availability guardrails, and optimizing developer self-service.
Developed custom Kubernetes Admission Webhooks in Golang to automate complex lifecycle operations, reducing manual configuration errors by approximately 75%.
Led SOC2 Compliance and AWS Architecture reviews, ensuring enterprise-grade security and hardening the security posture of public-facing domains.
Orchestrated full-stack vulnerability remediation using the OSS Review Toolkit (ORT), navigating complex dependency trees in Scala and TypeScript to resolve critical security flaws while implementing “fuzzy pinning” strategies to prevent future regressions.
Scaled R&D capabilities by deploying Ray and MLFlow clusters, approximately accelerating model training times by 30% and deployment times by 50% for the Data Science and Computer Vision teams as well as reducing our budget by eliminating unused, existing EC2 instances with GPUs.
Contributed to upstream open-source projects to resolve critical bugs, eliminating the long-term maintenance overhead of internal private forks.

Interim Lead of Infrastructure

April 2020 – March 2021

Directed strategic roadmap development for a growing 4-person infrastructure team, aligning technical debt reduction with 12-month business milestones.
Managed cross-departmental security coordination and mentored junior engineers, improving team velocity by approximately 50% during a critical leadership transition.

Engagement Engineering Lead (Project Lead)

July 2017 – April 2020

Architected a custom distributed application suite that secured a multimillion-dollar partnership, utilizing PostgreSQL for complex data modeling and schema design.
Optimized client research workflows by eliminating structural bottlenecks using high-level product and architectural design, reducing scientist workflow time from months to days and data processing time from weeks to hours.
Engineered scalable microservices in Scala and Python, successfully supporting 100+ concurrent users running c omputational and data intensive workflows from prototype through global deployment.

Nanaya | St. Louis, MO

Co-founder / Infrastructure & Software Engineer | July 2014 – Present

Managed technical operations for a global platform with 300,000+ users, ensuring 99.9% uptime through proactive PostgreSQL query optimization while facilitating communication between developers and R&D teams.
Migrated legacy infrastructure to a container-based model, which reduced deployment overhead by 50% and significantly improved developer iteration speed.
Refined production-level algorithms and data pipelines, improving algorithm speed by 60% and accuracy by 20% for the core application.

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center | St. Louis, MO

Senior Computational Scientist | December 2014 – July 2017

Developed and commercialized PheNode, a field canopy sensor system (Arduino/Raspberry Pi) utilizing distributed Linux systems for automated data collection.
Automated high-throughput image capture across 180 Raspberry Pis using Ansible, creating dense 3D reconstructions with sub-centimeter accuracy ($+/-0.5cm$).
Coordinated data analytics for global research labs, optimizing computational resource allocation for high-throughput sequencing and imaging pipelines.

Technical Projects

Alvoiarko Homelab (Advanced K8s & Networking)

Maintains a 4-node bare-metal Kubernetes cluster (Talos/Proxmox) to test production-grade deployments using Cilium eBPF and OpenTofu.
Operates critical services like Reconya and ConvertX, utilizing a full CI/CD lifecycle via ArgoCD and Tekton.

PhenoPiSight (IoT/Computer Vision)

Developed a distributed greenhouse phenotyping platform that streamlined the image transfer and 3D reconstruction pipeline for high-throughput analysis.

Education & Languages

B.A. Mathematics (Probability and Statistics) Washington University in St. Louis
Languages: English (Fluent), Spanish (Fluent), Italian (Intermediate).

Publications

Joseph Ballenger, Samuel Kenney, Jared Gordon, Leonardo Chavez, Joseph G. Duenwald, Katherine M. Murphy, Leonardo W. Lima, Cesar Lizarraga, Malia A. Gehan. Raspberry Pi–powered temperature monitoring of growth chamber microclimates. https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.70022 (2025)
Agnew Erica , Ziegler Greg , Lee Scott , Lizárraga César , Fahlgren Noah , Baxter Ivan , Mockler Todd C. , Shakoor Nadia. Longitudinal genome-wide association study reveals early QTL that predict biomass accumulation under cold stress in sorghum. Frontiers in Plant Science Volume 15 - 2024 DOI=10.3389/fpls.2024.1278802 ISSN=1664-462X
Nadia Shakoor, Erica Agnew, Greg Ziegler, Scott Lee, César Lizárraga, Noah Fahlgren, Ivan Baxter, Todd C. Mockler. Genomewide association study reveals transient loci underlying the genetic architecture of biomass accumulation under cold stress in Sorghum. bioRxiv 760025; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/760025 (2019)
Erica Agnew, Adam Bray, Eric Floro, Nate Ellis, John Gierer, César Lizárraga, Darren O’Brien, Madeline Wiechert, Todd C. Mockler, Nadia Shakoor, Christopher N. Topp. Whole‐Plant Manual and Image‐Based Phenotyping in Controlled Environments. Plant Biology 2(1):1-21. https://doi.org/10.1002/cppb.20044 (2017)
He Huang, Malia A. Gehan, Sarah E. Huss, Sophie Alvarez, Cesar Lizarraga, Ellen L. Gruebbling, John Gierer, Michael J. Naldrett, Rebecca K. Bindbeutel, Bradley S. Evans, Todd C. Mockler, Dmitri A. Nusinow. Cross‐species complementation reveals conserved functions for EARLY FLOWERING 3 between monocots and dicots. Plant Direct 1:4 https://doi.org/10.1002/pld3.18 (2017)
Gehan MA, Fahlgren N, Abbasi A, Berry JC, Callen ST, Chavez L, Doust AN, Feldman MJ, Gilbert KB, Hodge JG, Hoyer JS, Lin A, Liu S, Lizárraga C, Lorence A, Miller M, Platon E, Tessman M, Sax T. PlantCV v2: Image analysis software for high-throughput plant phenotyping. PeerJ. 2017 Dec 1;5:e4088. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4088. PMID: 29209576; PMCID: PMC5713628.
Laura Rayhel, B.A., Copper Aitken-Palmer, D.V.M., Ph.D., Priscilla Joyner, B.Sc., B.V.M.S., Carolyn Cray, Ph.D., César Andrés Lizárraga, B.A., Betty Ackerman, M.T. (A.S.C.P.), and Chris Crowe, B.S. Hematology and biochemistry in captive white-naped cranes (Grus VIPIO). Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine 46(4):747-754. http://dx.doi.org/10.1638/2015-0027.1 (2015)

Professional Presentations (Posters)

Skyler Mitchell, Stuart Marshall, Stephanie Turnipseed, Luke Burnham, César Lizárraga, Jared Streich, Rob Alba, and Todd C. Mockler (2015) “Effect of drought treatments on transpiration rate and stomatal density in Brachypodium distachyon.” Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and Missouri Botanical Gardens Joint Fall Symposium, St. Louis, MO, October 2015
César A. Lizárraga, Henry D. Priest, Noah Fahlgren, Rob Alba, and Todd C. Mockler. Bioinformatics Pipelines for Purple False Brome (Brachypodium distachyon) Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, MO. (2015)
Cesar Lizarraga, Stuart Marshall, Bradley Flynn, Nadia Shakoor and Todd C. Mockler. PhenoPiSight: Fixed Camera Greenhouse-based Phenotyping Platform. (2016)