About Me

I’m James Kirkland, Principal Account Solutions Architect at Red Hat, based in the Atlanta area. I’m a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) with expertise spanning enterprise Linux, IoT solutions, and emerging AI/ML technologies on OpenShift.

I co-authored Linux Troubleshooting for System Administrators and Power Users (Prentice Hall, 2006) and have been a key member of the Eclipse IoT working group since 2014.

What I Write About

This blog covers technical deep-dives on:

  • Supply Chain Security - SBOM tools, vulnerability scanning, attestation, and policy enforcement
  • Software Architecture - Design decisions, trade-offs, and real-world implementation patterns
  • Container & Kubernetes Security - OpenShift, Red Hat ecosystem tooling, and cloud-native architectures
  • Infrastructure Automation - CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, and reproducible builds
  • IoT & Edge Computing - Enterprise-scale IoT implementations and edge infrastructure

Background

I work extensively with Red Hat’s enterprise stack (RHEL, OpenShift, Ansible) and open source supply chain security tools. The content here is informed by production deployments, vendor evaluations, and real-world enterprise implementations.

My recent work includes AI/ML applications on OpenShift AI and building secure, compliant supply chain pipelines for enterprise customers.

Why “Kubelet Speaking”?

The kubelet is the primary node agent in Kubernetes—it watches for work and makes it happen. This blog is about making things happen: practical guidance for architects who need to ship secure, compliant systems in the real world.

Connect

Current Series

Supply Chain Security for Architects (5-part series):

  1. SBOM Tools for Architects - Generation, scanning, and storage
  2. Vulnerability Scanning - Coming soon
  3. Signing & Attestation - Coming soon
  4. Policy Enforcement - Coming soon
  5. Incident Response - Coming soon

This blog is built with Hugo and hosted on Cloudflare Pages.