CYBURDINE // JUSTIN BURDINE // COLLEGE STATION, TX

JustinBurdine

Technologist · Artist · Versatilist

I build systems and the worlds they run in.

Thirty years on the machine side of other people’s work: the render farms behind Oscar-winning visual effects, the automation platforms inside Fortune 500 infrastructure, and a shelf of small tools I build for my own work and then give away. Two tracks, one habit — find the thing nobody wants to maintain, and make it run itself.

30
Years in
12
Screen credits
14
Tools, free
25+
Fortune 500 accounts
Career scrubber 1996–2000 — Render farm, first light

Two tracks

The career never ran in a single line. One track builds infrastructure for other people’s companies; the other builds things because they didn’t exist yet. They keep handing each other tools.

Systems — the enterprise track Signal — the craft track
Origin

BA, Mass Communication — Taylor University. The degree was about telling stories. The job turned out to be building the machines that render them.

1996 — 2000

Render farm, first light

Visual effects · feature film

Designed and operated large-scale render farm infrastructure for production-critical visual effects pipelines. Nine features shipped in five years, back when a frame that failed overnight cost you the morning.

  • Unix
  • HPC
  • Render pipeline
  • VFX
1997 — 2010

Defense, campus, enterprise

Systems architect · infrastructure

Systems architecture and security compliance to Department of Defense standards — server hardening, audit process, secure design. In parallel, primary systems administrator and network architect for a university engineering college: core network services rebuilt, firewall architecture designed from scratch.

  • Linux
  • DoD compliance
  • Network architecture
1998

What Dreams May Come

Visual effects

A painted world that moves. The farm rendered it.

● Academy Award — Best Visual Effects
1999

The Matrix

Visual effects

The one that changed what a shot could be. Same year: Deep Blue Sea. The year after: Mission: Impossible II, Romeo Must Die, Bless the Child.

● Academy Award — Best Visual Effects
2002 — 2007

The trailing credits

The Karate Dog · Superbabies · Ghost Rider

The film chapter closes out. Twelve credits total — the full roll is further down the page.

2010 — 2015

Sr. Systems Architect / Team Lead

Verizon Enterprise Solutions

Large-scale IT design for Fortune 500 customers. Disaster recovery, infrastructure modernization, data center migration — and the start of the executive relationships that outlasted every platform involved.

  • Data center
  • DR
  • Migration
2015 — 2016

Managing Principal

Verizon Enterprise Solutions

Built and led a cloud migration practice from the ground up, managing the engineers delivering it. First time the job was as much about the org chart as the architecture diagram.

  • Cloud practice
  • Hybrid strategy
  • C-level advisory
2016

Firepype

Startup 01 · sunset 2016

Started a company to kill the worst part of publishing media — encoding one file a dozen ways and uploading it everywhere by hand. Firepype automated the pipeline, then grew into live podcast analytics and dynamic ad insertion before we shut it down.

  • Webapp
  • Media pipeline
  • Founder
2016 — 2018

Specialist Solution Architect, Ansible

Red Hat

Delivered enterprise cloud and automation transformation programs across Fortune 500 accounts, hands-on in the workshops that got the adoption moving. Automation stops being a tool here and starts being the practice.

  • Ansible
  • Hybrid cloud
  • Workshops
2018 — 2020

Solution Architect Manager

Red Hat

Built an eight-person Solutions Architecture team covering 25 enterprise accounts across four states. Hired and coached every one of them; owned performance, career development, and technical depth. Influenced seven-figure annual revenue across OpenShift, Ansible, RHEL, and CloudForms.

  • 8 architects
  • 25 accounts
  • 7 figures
2020 — 2022

Senior Manager, Specialist Solution Architects

Red Hat

Scaled a ten-person specialist team across six regional sales pods in the Central U.S., supporting roughly 200 enterprise accounts and influencing eight-figure annual platform revenue. Built the repeatable technical validation process — POCs that end in a decision, not a maybe.

  • 10 specialists
  • ~200 accounts
  • 8 figures
2022 — 2025

Director of Solution Engineering

CIQ

Built the global Solution Engineering organization from inception — hired it, developed it, and pointed it at 70 global enterprise accounts influencing seven-figure annual revenue. Executive technical sponsor on strategic accounts, and the line back into product for what the field actually hit.

  • Org from zero
  • 70 accounts
  • Technical GTM
2025 — present

Sr. Ansible Sales Specialist

Red Hat

Enterprise automation strategy across 25 named Fortune 500 accounts in healthcare, financial services, retail, and software. The current argument: AI in infrastructure needs a deterministic governance layer, and Ansible is a good one. Advising Directors and VPs on responsible AI adoption, and mentoring the SAs who’ll be having this conversation next.

  • Responsible AI
  • Automation strategy
  • 25 F500
Now

Cyburdine Systems

Fourteen tools · free · local-first

A media player, a transcriber, a disk-usage map, a trading bot that shows its work, a Soviet payphone that answers to a Raspberry Pi, and a cyberpunk story I carried for fifteen years until AI finally closed the gap between what I could see and what I could make. All of it runs on your own machine. None of it costs anything.

  • macOS
  • Local AI
  • Open source
  • Hardware

The shelf

“I build tools for my work, and give them away for free.” Desktop apps, browser extensions, developer tools, and one converted payphone — mostly written because nothing else did the job.

DSK-01Released

Midden

Find out what ate your disk.

macOS 14+

DSK-02Released

RE:play

Less player, more play. Open source — built because Apple Music kept answering a click with an ad.

macOS 13+ · Windows 10/11

DSK-03In development

Kaku

A workspace that never phones home.

macOS

DSK-04Released

Periphony 8D

Turn stereo into sound that orbits your head, from real measured ear data.

macOS — Apple Silicon & Intel

DSK-05Released

TransScriber

Transcribe audio and video without sending it anywhere.

macOS 12+ — Apple Silicon

DSK-06Released

name-o-matic

Give duplicate tracks names worth keeping, using local AI.

macOS 12+ — Apple Silicon

EXT-01Released

PagePress

Capture the whole page, not just the visible part. Scrolls, shoots, stitches — no seams.

Chrome · Brave · Firefox

EXT-02Released

Suno MP3 Downloader

Bulk-download your Suno library in one click.

Chrome · Brave

EXT-03Released

Reach

Find the accounts most likely to follow back.

Chrome · Brave

DEV-01Released

tokenator

How hard are you actually pushing AI? Live leaderboard included.

macOS · Linux · Web

WEB-01Released

Signal Engine

An options trading bot that shows its work — seventeen guardrails, and it tells you which rule stopped it.

Web · Python · FastAPI

WEB-02In development

Sales Wingman

See which accounts have gone quiet, and answer them.

Web

WEB-03Coming soon

poster

Generate, schedule and post across every brand you run.

Web

EMB-01In development

Таксофон

A 1969 Soviet payphone that answers to a Raspberry Pi. Drop in a quarter, dial into the weirdness.

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Full catalog at systems.cyburdine.com →

Also in the shop

The work that isn’t software.

ART-01Released

Spirefall: Ghost Code

A cyberpunk world carried for fifteen years without the tools to tell it. Visuals, music, and soundscapes all made in-house.

Animation · Music · Worldbuilding

ART-02Released

Active Greenscreen

A green screen built out of light instead of paint — LEDs on the lens axis, retro-reflective fabric, no spill. From a trade show demo seen twenty years ago.

VFX · DIY · Electronics

ART-03In progress

Motion Capture

A do-it-yourself mocap studio at home, coming together one part at a time.

VFX · DIY · SteamVR

Screen credits

Twelve features, visual effects department. Two of them took the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

2007Ghost RiderVisual effects
2003Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2Visual effects
2002The Karate DogVisual effects
2000Mission: Impossible IIVisual effects
2000Romeo Must DieVisual effects
2000Bless the ChildVisual effects
1999The Matrix● Oscar — Best Visual Effects
1999Deep Blue SeaVisual effects
1998What Dreams May Come● Oscar — Best Visual Effects
1997Air Force OneVisual effects
1997TurbulenceVisual effects
1996MultiplicityVisual effects

Full filmography on IMDb →

Recognition

2×
Academy Award films
∞
President’s Club
∞
Regional Top Gun
BA
Taylor University