John Edmondson.
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Six Pillars — Cloud Optimization Platform

Co-founded and built a complete cloud optimization platform: Next.js/TypeScript product, multi-tenant B2B SaaS architecture, AWS Marketplace integration, and an atomic design system.

The Six Pillars web app — the product I owned end to end as co-founder.
Client
Six Pillars (Co-Founder)
Role
Co-Founder & Lead Product Engineer
Year
2023 – 2025

Stack

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • AWS
  • WorkOS
  • Storybook

Overview

Six Pillars helps organizations analyze and optimize their cloud resources. As co-founder and product engineer (Dec 2023 – Mar 2025), I owned the product end to end — from architecture and design system to business strategy.

Six Pillars account dashboard — monthly spend, savings opportunities, and account-wide resource metrics at a glance

What I built

  • A complete cloud optimization platform in Next.js/TypeScript with complex state management, responsive UI architecture, and AWS integration
  • An atomic design system with scalable components, translating complex technical processes into intuitive user experiences
  • A multi-tenant system with WorkOS authentication, organization management, and AWS Marketplace integration for secure B2B SaaS with role-based access control
  • Data visualization patterns and dashboards that communicate technical metrics and optimization outcomes to both technical and business stakeholders
  • An end-to-end API integration layer between frontend and optimization backend with token-based authentication middleware

The optimization flow

The heart of the product is a guided six-step optimization flow: analyze the resource, understand the risks, set the parameters, run the optimization, compare the results, and choose backup retention. Each resource gets a full analysis before anything is touched — utilization and cost over time, backup and snapshot health — and every run ends with a before/after comparison of cost, space, and energy usage.

Volume management — every volume in the account with utilization, backups, and optimization potential
Volume management — every volume in the account with utilization, backups, and optimization potential
Resource analysis — utilization and cost trends with a clear verdict: this volume is over-provisioned
Resource analysis — utilization and cost trends with a clear verdict: this volume is over-provisioned
Optimization results — original vs. optimized volume with 25% cost savings, 40% less data on volume, and 30% better energy efficiency
Optimization results — original vs. optimized volume with 25% cost savings, 40% less data on volume, and 30% better energy efficiency

From design to production

The mockups above are the 2024 design pass. The product that shipped kept evolving — by early 2025 it had grown a tighter visual language of its own, running against connected AWS accounts behind WorkOS multi-tenant auth. These are unretouched screenshots of the production build.

The production login — WorkOS-backed auth with Google and GitHub sign-in
The production login — WorkOS-backed auth with Google and GitHub sign-in
Resource inventory in production — live metrics and configurations per resource, with optimization badges
Resource inventory in production — live metrics and configurations per resource, with optimization badges
An optimization recommendation in the product — a 90% cost reduction on load balancer rules, one click away
An optimization recommendation in the product — a 90% cost reduction on load balancer rules, one click away
Before/after report from an optimization run — throughput up, cost and memory down
Before/after report from an optimization run — throughput up, cost and memory down

Architecture

The web app is one half of a larger system: a Go optimization API backed by PostgreSQL does the heavy lifting, Airflow pipelines handle metering and prediction, WorkOS provides authentication and organization management, and AWS supplies both the resources under analysis and the Marketplace billing channel.

System architecture — Next.js frontend, Go optimization API with PostgreSQL, Airflow pipelines, and WorkOS/AWS/Slack integrations

Behind the scenes, Airflow orchestrates the platform's recurring work — account setup, volume analysis, and the ETL that feeds the optimizer:

The platform's Airflow console — account setup, volume analysis, and ETL pipelines on their schedules

The UI is built strictly bottom-up as an atomic design system — the component folders are literally named 00-Atoms, 01-Molecules, and 02-Organisms.

Component architecture — pages composed from organisms, molecules, and atoms, with contexts, hooks, and providers for state

Beyond the code

As co-founder I led product ideation and UX strategy across multiple design iterations, created the AWS Marketplace listing, ran customer demonstrations, and developed five-year milestone plans aligning product vision with market needs.

That work included pitching Six Pillars to potential investors. The deck walks from problem and solution through a live product tour to pricing models and a four-milestone roadmap — the same story the product tells, aimed at a different audience.

Three slides from the investor deck
User persona from the pitch deck — the small-team founder the product was designed for
User persona from the pitch deck — the small-team founder the product was designed for
Pricing models from the investor pitch — three models applied to a sample account's first month of optimization
Pricing models from the investor pitch — three models applied to a sample account's first month of optimization
The four-milestone product roadmap — from single operations to CLI and third-party plugin support
The four-milestone product roadmap — from single operations to CLI and third-party plugin support

View the full investor pitch deck (PDF, 25 slides)

Other projects

2026 – present · Personal project

Top Shot Reloaded — 1v1 Speedball Duel

A phone-first 1v1 paintball duel built solo: deterministic 120 Hz sim, WebGL renderer, lockstep multiplayer, native shells.

  • TypeScript
  • Game Design
  • Design System
  • WebGL

2025 – present · Contract

Bold Reuse — Reuse Logistics Platform

Onboarding, bulk imports, role-based access and the wash-pack-ship workflows a live fulfillment team runs on every day.

  • Full-Stack
  • GraphQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • Operations