Meet Your Cloud Architect

About 3 Hops Tech

3 Hops Tech helps teams design, secure, and operate cloud infrastructure with confidence — across AWS and Azure.

Who I Am

I'm Shane Schlabach, a cloud architect and engineer with over 12 years of hands-on experience designing, deploying, and managing production environments in AWS and Azure. I started out on a help desk and worked my way up through systems administration and infrastructure roles before finding what I actually wanted to do: building and running cloud environments that just work.

I specialize in cloud architecture and migrations — helping businesses move to the cloud or optimize existing environments, focusing on building secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions tailored to each client's unique needs.

Automation is at the center of how I work. I build CI/CD pipelines across Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Bitbucket Pipelines. I containerize and orchestrate workloads to cut manual deployment steps down to a single, repeatable process. Every environment I touch gets deployed as code — Terraform or Bicep — so infrastructure changes are reviewed, versioned, and reproducible instead of living in someone's memory. If a deployment still involves someone clicking through a wizard at 11pm, I haven't finished my job yet.

I also manage cloud infrastructure directly for clients — handling day-to-day operations, security, optimization, deployments, upgrades, and troubleshooting.

My focus is on solutions that balance security, cost, and long-term sustainability. No unnecessary complexity — just solid infrastructure that scales with your business. Whether you're migrating to the cloud, building from scratch, or need ongoing management and optimization, I bring clarity and confidence to your cloud strategy.

When I'm not deep in a Terraform plan, you'll usually find me at the beach with my wife and son, cheering him on at a baseball or hockey game, or watching the Cleveland Guardians — hopefully alert-free, because the job was done right the first time.

Certifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional AWS Security Certified AWS Networking Certified AWS SysOps Certified Microsoft Azure Certified Terraform Certified
  • AWS Solutions Architect – Professional
  • Azure Solutions Architect
  • HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
  • AWS Certified Security – Specialty
  • AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
  • AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

Contact

Tell me what you're building and what you need help with — ping me anytime!