Hi, I'm Chris Norton Jr
I Build Solutions
Solutions engineer bridging customers and code, specializing in cloud architecture, API & CRM integrations, and intelligent automation. I turn business requirements into working, production-ready solutions.
Salesforce
HubSpot
Braze
Zapier
Make
N8N
Klaviyo
AWS SES
Mailchimp
Analytics
Wordpress
Liquid
HTML
CSS
Figma
Built across every layer
Pick a discipline and explore the solutions behind it.
The person behind the code
I'm Christopher Norton, a solutions engineer who lives at the intersection of technical depth and customer outcomes. I got my B.S. in Engineering and since then I've been obsessed with building things that actually work at scale. Whether it's a cloud architecture, an embedded hardware solution, or a fully automated funnel, I start with the problem someone actually has and work backward to the stack. When I'm not shipping code I'm probably deep in an anime arc, tinkering with electronics, or traveling with family.
Education & Certifications
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Latest Thinking
Strategic perspectives on solution architecture, integrations, cloud infrastructure, and the craft of turning technical complexity into business results.
Understanding Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): How It Works, Its Variants, and How to Prevent It
A practical guide to cross-site scripting: how XSS attacks work, how reflected, stored and DOM-based variants differ, what they cost a business, and the layered controls development teams should put in place to prevent them.
Latest Insights
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I Automated My Doomscrolling. First, I Changed the Locks.
TL;DR • Doomscroll is my AWS bot that job hunts for me every morning. • It deploys with zero stored passwords and a hard cap on its own power. • It failed seven times. AWS's audit log revealed the fix.
You Shall Not Park: How I Built a Smart Parking Garage on a Chip
TL;DR I built the brain of a two floor, 16 spot parking garage on an FPGA (a chip you can rewire with code). It checks for payment or a permit, decides if the gate opens, and points every driver to the closest open spot on the right floor. When I rewatched the demo, I also caught a bug that would cost a real garage money. The fix is one line. Finding it is the actual skill.
From JWT Hand-Rolled to Federal-Grade: Refactoring the OAOS Auth Layer with Keycloak and OpenFGA
TL;DR The project backend inherited a manual JWT-minting auth system wired to a database that no longer existed. We ripped it out and rebuilt it as a Keycloak + OpenFGA gateway; proper authentication, fine-grained authorization, compliance-ready from the ground up. This post covers the architecture decisions, the refactor, and the debugging gauntlet that stood between us and a green system.
Building a Firmware CI/CD Pipeline from Scratch — Phase 1: The Foundation
TL;DR: Most embedded teams still ship firmware by hand , a developer builds locally, flashes a board, pokes around, and calls it tested. This series documents building a complete automated firmware pipeline from nothing: reproducible builds, GitHub Actions, Python hardware test scripts, and eventually a self-hosted runner with a physical dev board wired directly into the CI system.
Every Antenna Type Explained - And Why Choosing the Wrong One Can Tank Your Entire Product
From dipole to phased array, every antenna type serves a different engineering purpose. Learn what separates them - and why the wrong choice can derail your product launch.
Power Pulse: How We Built an IoT Home Energy Monitoring System
We built Power Pulse - a non-invasive home energy monitoring system using ESP32, AWS, and React Native. Here's how it works and why we built it.
Engineering write-ups · Deep dives · Guides · Case studies