Skip to Content
Crafty Penguins
▲ crafty-penguins / about-us
Who we are

How we got here.

Crafty Penguins, established in 1994, is a leader in Linux consulting and server support, driven by a passion for technology and a commitment to excellence. With over two decades of experience, our team offers expert IT solutions to a diverse range of clients.

We tailor our services to meet specific needs, ensuring solutions are effective and aligned with your goals. This client-centric approach, coupled with our in-depth expertise, positions us as not just service providers, but committed IT partners.

The technology changes every few years: cloud, containers, GitOps, microservices, whatever comes next. A good Linux engineer needs to know and love everything about the latest in Linux. That's the kind of engineer we hire and train, the kind who'd be doing it for fun at home anyway.

Crafty Penguins
2,000+
Servers under management
15+
Years of happy clients
24/7
Support
How we work

How we like to work together.

Four habits show up early in how we engage with clients. You'll see them in the first month of working together.

01

We earn your trust.

We treat your project like it's ours. We listen, ask questions, follow through on what we said we'd do, and keep the work transparent, so you can navigate the decisions even if you don't run Linux for a living.

In practice Status updates that say what changed, what's pending, and what's blocked. No mystery meetings. No "circle back next week."
02

We lean into challenges.

We're not afraid to say "we haven't seen that exact thing before, but here's how we'd approach it." We'll bring in other perspectives, learn what needs learning, and tell you the truth when something is harder than it first looked.

In practice We don't pad estimates with comfort buffers. When we don't know, we say so, and we tell you how we'll find out.
03

We look at the bigger picture.

Fixing the immediate fire is easy. Understanding why the fire keeps starting takes context: your team, your customers, your industry, the systems you'll plug into two years from now. We work that wider angle into every recommendation.

In practice Our fixes come with a one-line "and here's why this keeps happening." So the same problem doesn't show up in a different costume next quarter.
04

We constantly improve.

Every engagement, we leave the environment a little better than we found it. Documentation, monitoring, automation, cleanup of accumulated cruft. Small improvements compound until the place no longer feels haunted.

In practice The runbook your team gets at the end of the engagement is a real document, not a placeholder. Often the most valuable artifact we hand over.
Leadership

The people running the work.

A short list with a lot of experience behind it. Combined, the five leaders below have spent over a century in Linux production environments.

Chris Pickett

28 yrs · Linux
President · CFO

28 years of Linux and DevOps experience. The business sense matched with the technical knowledge is why Crafty Penguins can give sound advice on infrastructure decisions, not just execute on them. Specializes in microservice container infrastructures, bare-metal-to-cloud migrations, and custom tooling.

Richard Clark

35 yrs · Linux
VP Engineering · CIO

35 years of systems administration and software engineering in the Linux ecosystem, running Linux in production since the mid-90s. Specializes in DevOps, automation, systems architecture, training, and frugal cleanup of technical debt. CKA and CKAD certified, and a strong proponent of Kubernetes for the elegance and scope of the platform.

Team Leads

Curtis Hildebrand

20+ yrs
Linux Systems Engineer · Team Lead

20 years in Linux deployment and hardening, 6 in DevOps. Specializes in security audits, system stabilization, and infrastructure migrations when growth has outpaced what was originally built.

Kevin Chee

5+ yrs · CKA
Linux Systems Engineer · Team Lead

Certified Kubernetes Administrator with over 5 years in Linux administration across DevOps, containerization, and automation. Continuously evolving the team's automation practice.

Mike Millman

25+ yrs
Linux Systems Engineer · Team Lead

25+ years across development, systems engineering, administration, and testing. Specializes in microservices, cloud operations, containerization, and web technologies. Found Linux in the 90s and never left.

+11
More senior Linux engineers and specialists backing the leadership team. They cover DevOps, security automation, cloud operations, container orchestration, and infrastructure as code. The bench includes Nicole, Nishan, Jordan, Alan, Conner, Shayan, John, Neal, Daniel, and Johnny.

See them at work

Recent engagements, in the clients' own words
Success Story

Not a vendor. An extension of the team.

Unite Communications · Telecom
Success Story

The invisible team behind their clients' uptime.

Elite Digital · Agency
Success Story

When Linux isn't your business, but keeps being your problem.

1WorldSync · Retail Tech
Success Story

Keeping engineers building. Not debugging their environment.

Efficient Computer Company · Hardware
Where we work

North American Linux, delivered remotely.

Headquarters
Canada
Where Crafty Penguins is based, alongside our parent company Kerkhoff Technologies.
Coverage
United States & Canada
Clients across both countries. Remote-first delivery, with on-site engagements when the work requires it.
Start the conversation

Want to talk to us about your Linux?

No high-pressure sales call. Just a conversation with someone who's seen the problem before, and an honest read on whether we're the right partner for it.

Talk to sales Email us