Frequently asked questions
Common questions about working with David.
If your question isn't here, book a 15-minute call and ask.
- Who is David Plappert?
- David Plappert is a Fractional AWS Reliability Lead based in Peoria, Illinois. He holds US Patent 11,146,689 in cloud architecture, has won the AWS City on a Cloud Innovation Award twice (2016 and 2018), and has 20 years of AWS experience since EC2 beta in 2006. He works with Fortune 100 and mid-market companies whose revenue depends on AWS uptime.
- What is a Fractional AWS Reliability Lead?
- A Fractional AWS Reliability Lead is a senior AWS architect who works part-time inside a client organization, providing production reliability oversight, architecture review, vendor-shipped infrastructure gatekeeping, and senior escalation coverage. It is the senior IC role companies need but cannot justify hiring full-time.
- How much does David charge?
- Engagements are scoped and priced per client based on the specifics of the work. Pricing is discussed during the initial 15-minute conversation once the engagement shape is clear. Most engagements fall into one of four shapes — Fractional Reliability Lead retainer, AWS Production Audit project, Vendor Technical Oversight project, or Strategic Cloud Advisory light retainer.
- What companies does David work with?
- David works with Fortune 100 and mid-market companies running revenue-critical AWS systems. Past clients include state-based healthcare insurance exchanges (DCHBX, Massachusetts Health Connector, CoverME, DC Department of Behavioral Health) and current work spans Fortune 100 industrial sector engagements. He does not take on junior implementation labor, full-time on-site engagements, or pre-revenue startups.
- Does David work remotely?
- Yes. All current and past engagements have been remote. David is based in Peoria, Illinois, and works with clients globally.
- What is the AWS City on a Cloud Award?
- The AWS City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is an annual Amazon Web Services award recognizing innovative cloud solutions, primarily in government and public sector work. David received the award in 2016 and 2018 during his tenure at IdeaCrew for work on state-based healthcare insurance exchanges.
- What is David's US Patent for?
- US Patent 11,146,689 covers cloud architecture, issued October 12, 2021. It can be reviewed at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11146689.
- How do I hire David?
- Book a 15-minute discovery call at https://davidplappert.com/book. The Calendly form will ask for your company name, the AWS problem you're hoping to solve, and a few other quick details. If the call confirms fit, David follows up within 48 hours with a written one-page scope and proposal.
- Can David do AWS cost optimization?
- Yes. The AWS Production Audit service includes a full cloud cost analysis. Typical findings show a meaningful portion of AWS spend is recoverable waste — under-utilized capacity, ungoverned NAT Gateway placement, unoptimized storage tiers, and orphaned resources. The audit produces a prioritized remediation roadmap with effort estimates.
- What AWS services does David specialize in?
- David's AWS specialization spans Lambda, EKS, ECS, S3, CloudFront, RDS, DynamoDB, API Gateway, EventBridge, Step Functions, and the full serverless ecosystem. His production scale credentials include healthcare exchange systems on AWS serverless processing over $500 million per year in payments, video streaming platforms with 99.9% uptime, and current work on a high-revenue commerce platform shipping monthly vendor-built CDK releases.
- Does David work with vendor-shipped AWS systems?
- Yes — vendor technical oversight is one of David's specialty engagements. When a vendor builds your AWS infrastructure on a monthly release cadence and you need senior buy-side gatekeeping to ensure each release is production-ready, that's the engagement David specializes in. He currently provides this for a Fortune 100 client on an eight-figure annual vendor contract.
- Where can I see David's writing or speaking?
- David's case studies are published at https://davidplappert.com/case-studies. Long-form articles and LinkedIn posts are at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidplappert.
- What's the difference between an AWS consultant and a Fractional AWS Reliability Lead?
- A typical AWS consultant is engaged for implementation labor — building or migrating systems on a project basis. A Fractional AWS Reliability Lead is engaged as embedded senior IC ownership of production — gatekeeping vendor-shipped releases, owning observability, holding on-call escalation, and applying senior architectural judgment to ongoing operations. The role is more like a part-time Principal Engineer than a project consultant.
- What does a typical engagement timeline look like?
- Most engagements move from initial conversation to written scope within 48 hours, scope signoff within 5-7 days, and start within two weeks. Retainer engagements typically run on three-month renewable terms. Fixed-scope projects (audits, vendor oversight) have defined start and end dates. Strategic advisory retainers begin month-to-month and convert to longer terms once value is established.
- Does David provide on-call coverage?
- Yes, for ongoing retainer engagements at sufficient commitment levels. David currently holds sole 24x7 on-call coverage for a Fortune 100 vendor-shipped AWS production platform. Fractional engagements include defined on-call coverage scope as part of the retainer; project engagements typically do not.
- Can David work with our existing AWS team?
- Yes. The role is designed to embed alongside existing engineering teams, not replace them. David typically operates as the senior architectural voice on AWS-specific topics — production reliability, vendor evaluation, cost architecture, observability strategy — while internal team members continue ownership of application development and product engineering.
- What's David's approach to AWS cost optimization?
- Cost optimization through architectural correction, not vendor-level discount hunting. The most expensive AWS bills are typically driven by architectural decisions that produce ongoing waste: ungoverned NAT Gateway placement, oversized RDS instances, orphaned Lambda functions, unoptimized data egress paths, missing lifecycle policies on S3. David's AWS Production Audit identifies these systematically with effort-weighted prioritization. Vendor-level discount tactics (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances) are downstream of getting the architecture right.
- Does David work with regulated industries?
- Yes. David's career-defining work was on state-based healthcare insurance exchanges processing $500M+/year in payments — HIPAA-compliant, SOC 2-certified, federal-deadline-bound. Regulated environments (healthcare, payments, financial services, government) are a specialty. David led SOC 2 certification and annual audit processes for state exchange clients during his tenure at IdeaCrew.
- How is this different from hiring an AWS Premier Partner firm?
- AWS Premier Partner firms staff junior-to-mid engineers under senior account leads. The engagement is firm-fronted. A Fractional AWS Reliability Lead engagement is one named senior IC — David — embedded directly with your team. Trade-offs: a partner firm has more capacity and named methodology; a fractional senior IC has deeper engagement quality and accountability. Both have valid use cases. Many companies use partner firms for project implementation and fractional senior IC for ongoing production oversight.
- What if my AWS environment is complex or unusual?
- That's typically the engagement pattern. Standard AWS environments rarely need senior IC consulting. Unusual environments — vendor-shipped infrastructure, multi-account labyrinths, regulatory constraints, sole on-call structures, healthcare/payments specifics — are where the role earns its rate. The initial discovery call exists precisely to assess whether the unusual aspects match David's specialty.
- Will David sign an NDA before our discovery call?
- If your initial conversation needs to cover proprietary architecture or business information beyond what's public, yes. The standard mutual NDA template most companies use is fine. Email the document after booking and David will return signed before the call. For most discovery conversations, an NDA isn't necessary — the conversation stays at the engagement-shape level rather than the architectural-detail level until scope is defined.
- What's the engagement minimum commitment?
- Retainer engagements have a three-month minimum to allow for proper context-building and meaningful production impact. Fixed-scope projects (audits, vendor oversight projects) are bounded by their deliverable timeline. Strategic advisory retainers can begin month-to-month. There is no hourly engagement model — the work is structured around outcomes and ongoing accountability, not billable hours.
- Can David scale to multiple engagements simultaneously?
- David maintains a concurrent engagement load that protects engagement quality. Most retainer commitments occupy meaningful weekly bandwidth; fixed-scope projects are sequenced. Discovery calls help match capacity to engagement intensity. If timing is constrained, David will say so directly during the discovery call.