About Me
Hi, I'm Clay Levering, an Engineering Leader and Infrastructure Architect based in Los Angeles. For over fifteen years, I've been building backend systems, optimizing databases, and architecting media processing pipelines that handle real scale — not "scale" as a buzzword, but terabytes-of-video-content-monthly scale.
My path into tech wasn't the typical CS degree route. I started as an Electrician's Mate on the USS Kitty-Hawk, where I learned that complex systems don't care about your excuses — they either work or they don't. That mindset stuck. After the Navy, I earned my degree in Business Administration while transitioning into product management, eventually finding my way back to the technical work I'd always gravitated toward.
My Engineering Philosophy
I believe in measurable outcomes over theoretical elegance. Performance metrics, cost optimization, and developer velocity aren't just nice-to-haves — they're how you know your architecture actually works. I've driven initiatives that identified $180K+ in annual AWS savings and while still massively optimizing the applications themselves (in some cases with 99% performance increases). Numbers matter.
Whether I'm tuning your MySQL DB, building video transcoding workflow services, or architecting multi-tenant Laravel applications for Fortune 500 clients, my focus is the same: build systems that scale, maintain teams that ship, and solve problems that impact the bottom line.
What Drives Me
I'm energized by the intersection of infrastructure and product — understanding not just how to build something, but why it matters to the business. There's real satisfaction in taking a choking production app and making it run in milliseconds, or in designing a pipeline that handles hundreds of thousands of transcodes monthly without drama.
Beyond the Terminal
When I'm not neck-deep in CloudWatch logs, you'll find me in the kitchen — I'm an avid cook and my wife is an aspiring professional baker (hi there, Tammy Levering!). Our house basically smells like your favorite brunch spot 🤣.