Nate Sturtz
I design, build, and run things in production that serve real people, from bare-metal servers to indie web apps. Based in Des Moines, IA.
About
I'm a hands-on systems builder, equally comfortable racking servers and shipping web apps. Five-plus years of self-taught Linux administration, deep home-lab engineering, and customer-facing technical support.
I've administered Ubuntu, Debian, and OpenBSD in team environments, handled physical datacenter work (rack deployments, cabling, and IDF build out), and built networking with VLANs, DNS, pfSense, and OPNsense. On the software side I write automation scripts, run LAMP/LEMP stacks, and containerize with Docker.
My project ScratchUpload grew organically to serve over 4 million images for 1,900+ active users. Building and scaling it has taught me more about real-world ops and networking than any course ever could.
ScratchUpload was also recently awarded a $10,000 grant from Bunny.net. Read more here ↗
Skills
Infrastructure
Networking
Dev & Scripting
Projects
ScratchUpload
scratchupload.org ↗A production image CDN built for the DID/OSDD community, integrated with Pluralkit and Simply Plural. Handles avatar and image hosting at scale with a focus on reliability and WCAG AA accessibility. Running on globally distributed infrastructure I built and manage, with over 4 million images served to over 2 thousand active users.
ProjectGlass
A client-side JavaScript search engine focused on speed and accessibility. Built as a fast, private, and lightweight self-hostable alternative to big-tech search integrations.
This Site
Vanilla HTML and Tailwind CSS, served via Node.js/Express, containerized with Docker.
Home Lab
10+ services running across bare-metal and virtualized hosts. Bash automation scripts for network management, monitoring, and service orchestration. It's the proving ground behind everything else I build.
Writing
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Contact
Best reached by email. Happy to chat about infrastructure, self-hosting, or anything else.