Valley Center, Kansas · Wichita metro

Nathan Collins

Software engineer who builds the tools that remove manual work — and the platform they run on. Six years at a large aerospace manufacturer — intern, then developer, then lead developer on a customer eCommerce site, now testing lead on an ERP program. At home I run a self-hosted platform where AI agents build, test and operate the software alongside me, and a small web-design shop on top of it.

The résumé covers the day job. This site covers the rest.

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97%runtime cut on a batch email process

13 yearsof legacy ASP.NET migrated to .NET 6

~30%manual testing effort removed with scripted automation

18containers, a six-check CI pipeline and round-the-clock monitoring at home, for $150–300 a month

32 secondsa deduplication pass that used to run six-plus hours without finishing

2 monthsunattended, with the family still using it and no data lost

What I do

Ship software people depend on

Customer-facing eCommerce, internal line-of-business apps, integrations with the systems a manufacturer actually runs on. Requirements through delivery, including the unglamorous parts: data migrations, legacy framework upgrades, and the release that cannot go wrong.

Remove the manual step

The thread through everything since I was a welder: find the repetitive process, and build the thing that removes it. Lately that means scripted automation against ERP systems, and agents that generate and execute the work under review.

Operate a real platform

A hypervisor host, containers by role, zero-trust access, CI/CD with gated promotion and automatic rollback, monitoring, patching and backups that page me when they fail. Built at home because that is where I get to own every layer.

Work with AI agents as a practice

Written guardrails agents must follow, a single board carrying state between sessions, several sessions running in parallel, and a review path where proposed changes are gated on green CI and a recorded verdict. In 2026 that is the skill worth demonstrating rather than claiming.

Skills

Engineering: C# / .NET (Core, MVC, Blazor, ASP.NET, Web API), REST APIs and webhooks, Python, JavaScript, React, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle
Automation & AI: Power Platform, SAP GUI scripting, agent workflows, MCP tooling, document ingestion and summarization, local model execution
Delivery: Agile facilitation, backlog ownership, user stories and acceptance criteria, mentoring, leading contractors, testing strategy across a large program
Testing: Azure DevOps test management, business scenario design, pytest, Playwright, API contract tests
Platform & ops: Linux, Docker, virtualization and containers, CI/CD pipelines, Cloudflare (Workers, Tunnel, Access), Azure, AWS, monitoring and alerting
The human detail: Certified welder, 2012. It is where the "build the tool that removes the manual step" instinct comes from.

The full tour

The detailed version is behind a key: six project deep-dives with real, dated numbers, a month-by-month build timeline, how I work with AI agents, the platform's architecture, and a one-page résumé. Nothing in it is confidential — the key just keeps it out of search results and away from casual scanners.

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Elsewhere

I run Collins Web Co, a small web-design shop for local businesses, and The Kings Decide, a live world governed by AI Kings running on my own GPU — both built and hosted on the same platform, which is why they appear here as projects rather than distractions.