Professional & Spiritual Portfolio · IT Capstone
AI EngineerLead Systems Architect
Welcome to my Professional Growth Portfolio. I am Ángel Guerra, an AI Engineer and Lead Systems Architect. As I have experienced through my education at Ensign College and my entrepreneurial endeavors at Exzel Consulting, building reliable technological systems and living as a disciple-leader are inherently linked. This portfolio highlights my dedication to combining high-level technical problem solving using Next.js, TypeScript, and AI frameworks with the values that define my life.
Spiritual covenantsTechnical profession— interwoven.
01Spiritual Progression
Just like in the creation of any software application or business where you need to code something before the final project comes to fruition, faith means doing things even though you have to have faith in the will of God. It is through this principle of faith that I overcome challenges while coding algorithms and configuring complicated computer environments.
Establishing the client's trust in the safety and reliability of the digital solutions that I provide is in line with being a man of integrity. Following 3 Nephi 13:19-22, I seek to always keep my "eye single to the glory of God."
Technical skills like programming, system administration, and deployment of artificial intelligence applications are divine gifts bestowed upon me by my Father in Heaven.
A call to treasure up treasures in heaven to help me keep my professional intentions noble and single to the glory of God.
Guidance from the Lord encouraging me to employ my talents and gifts in the service of others.
The doctrine of doing the "little things" is taught here; daily actions such as scripture study and code writing are the little things that lead to greatness, including building a CRM.
"Go and do," Nephi's command, gives me spiritual perspective and patience when facing difficult technical challenges like improving VRAM for local AI models or working through Linux graphic driver problems.
Helps me understand the idea of strands being interwoven, showing me how my spiritual covenants and technical profession are interwoven to create a stronger disciple-leader.
02Professional Growth
Project 1
Built with Next.js, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL; the design includes role-based views and implementation of the phone system in the dashboard for leads tracking and conversion.
I used the concept of "Co-Creation" from the BYU-Idaho Leadership Toolkit before writing any line of code. This means that I was trying to see how the project should look spiritually before creating it physically.
Project 2
I was Systems Administrator and Hardware Technician in the team. My job included the building of the custom hardware (AMD Ryzen 7, RTX 5060 Ti) and setting up Linux Mint OS for maximum VRAM performance for local Hermes AI models.
The main lesson that I learned is the patience that is required during the covenant process because Nephi showed us his example.
Project 3
Created automatic lead generator that finds vulnerabilities and then implements them into the CRM system.
The direct application of Mosiah 2:17. By automating all the processes, I'm helping my colleague Elizabeth Orrego to work on her client relations and sales.
03Analysis of Ethical Dilemma
The Capital One data breach case of 2019 is one of the most shocking ethical dilemmas in the field of IT as it has shown the terrible aftermath of the misuse of administrative privileges. Specifically, the incident has demonstrated that the former AWS systems administrator Paige Thompson managed to use her profound expertise in cloud computing to compromise the system due to a misconfiguration of the open source Web Application Firewall (WAF). Through the Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attack, she was able to escalate her privilege level and steal information from more than 100 million customer records including their social security numbers and bank information.
In response, the company made the firewall secure, reported the crime to the FBI (thus, arrested Thompson), provided free credit monitoring service to the victims, and started an internal investigation to avoid the misconfiguration of the system again. In terms of the ethical aspects, the behavior of the woman was absolutely wrong as it broke the basic code of the professionals working in this field. Although the mistake of the capital One was the misconfiguration of the cloud security settings, the choice of the woman was unethical – she used the vulnerability of the system for her own benefit. As an IT expert, who develops cloud infrastructure and conducts vulnerability research for Exzel Consulting, I have found that the technical skills should always be accompanied by the strict ethical principles.
The technical skills should always be accompanied by the strict ethical principles.
04Reflection
In order to perform the reflective activity of this week, I found a peaceful place where I could think about my temple covenants and how they connect to my current journey as a student, Founder and Systems Architect. Detaching myself from the Linux machines and from the code editors gave my mind the chance to be in a state of deep calmness. While performing this reflection, I thought about Elder David A. Bednar's metaphor of intertwined strands. For many years, I saw the ambitions that I had for my career as something completely different than my spiritual obligations. This time of reflection helped me understand that both spheres of my life are tightly intertwined.
Both spheres of my life are tightly intertwined.
First of all, the great discipline that allows me to properly configure the Next.js environment or to debug a PostgreSQL database is the same great discipline that allows me to keep up my spiritual habits, such as reading scriptures and praying. Besides, my role as a System Architect is not about programming, but rather about stewardship and serving people. When I create an automation of the lead generation process to help my colleague Elizabeth with her work, I apply the principles of Mosiah 2:17 in the corporate world. The temple teaches us about order, purpose and eternal progression. In the same way, as I try to develop Exzel Consulting, I learn about system architecture which has order and purpose. The main idea that I learned is that keeping covenants allows the Holy Ghost to come to my workplace and give me patience, ethical background and clear mind needed to succeed in the IT industry.