01 — about
= moon
the dragon
waves
Who I am
I grew up in Markham — one of Canada's most multicultural cities — the son of Tamil parents from Sri Lanka. My first language was Tamil. I picked up English, then French through school. I grew up surrounded by Japanese anime, Chinese New Year, and every cuisine you can imagine. That breadth shaped how I think.
My name, Matheesan, means moon in Tamil — mathee (மதி). I've always felt a pull toward water: I became a lifeguard at 16, led aquatics programs, and won awards through the Life Saving Society. My son was born in the year of the dragon, and named after Varuna — the Hindu lord of storms and waves. The symbols chose us as much as we chose them.
Growing up, I competed — Tamil speaking competitions, badminton, soccer, Tae Kwon Do, swimming. I received a Ministry of Citizenship volunteer award at 17. Competition sharpened me. Engineering became the next arena: complex problems, no obvious answers, no ceiling on how good you can get.
Off the keyboard: I DJ (novice, but passionate), collect experiences over things, eat at Michelin-starred restaurants when I travel, and try to take 2–4 trips a year. Music is always there — discovering new genres, finding sounds I didn't know I needed.
02 — career
What I build
Replicant builds AI agents that handle customer conversations at scale. I'm both an engineer and an internal advocate for AI adoption — helping teams understand, trust, and leverage the technology we build. When you're inside an AI company, you get a very different view of what these systems can and can't do.
Got into ML during my final year at Ryerson/TMU — built a system to consume Twitter data, build graphs, and surface community structures. At CGI I dove into MLOps and emerging tech. The thread since then has been consistent: how do you take AI from a demo to production?
03 — homelab
What I run at home
My homelab is a production-grade infrastructure running on Proxmox, a 22TB NAS,
GPU passthrough, full VLAN segmentation, and a dozen self-hosted services — all
managed behind wildcard SSL on *.matheesan.ca.
It's part curiosity, part skill-building, part just loving that it works.
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, 62GB RAM. Dual network: 1Gbps + 2.5Gbps direct link to NAS. Multiple VMs with VLAN isolation.
RTX A2000 12GB via PCIe passthrough. Powers Jellyfin hardware transcoding, Frigate NVR with YOLOv9m object detection, and Immich ML face recognition.
TerraMaster + OpenMediaVault. Multiple logical volumes for media, personal files, VM backups, and ISOs. 2.5Gbps direct link with jumbo frames.
5 VLANs, GL.iNet Flint 3 router, TP-Link managed switches, Tailscale VPN, AdGuard split DNS, NordVPN gateway for media stack.
Reolink cameras on isolated VLAN 10. Frigate NVR with GPU-accelerated detection, license plate recognition on driveway, face recognition, 4TB storage.
Home Assistant + MQTT broker + Frigate integration. Ecobee, Google Home, Kasa switches, Chromecast. All services HTTPS via Nginx Proxy Manager.
04 — life
Beyond the keyboard
Japan twice, Sri Lanka twice, France, Switzerland, England, Singapore, Malaysia, Colombia, Mexico six times. Vancouver and Montreal regularly. I try to eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant on most trips — food is how I understand a place.
Music is always there — ambient, in the background, on a flight, during a build session. I've started DJing; I'm a novice but the process of discovering new genres and understanding how tracks fit together pulls at the same part of my brain as engineering.
Growing up in Markham meant exposure to every Asian cuisine imaginable from a young age. Tamil home cooking, Japanese ramen, Chinese dim sum, Korean BBQ — all normal. I'll splurge on a great meal. Some experiences are worth the price.
I played badminton, soccer, Tae Kwon Do, and swam growing up. Still try to stay sharp. Board games with good people, video games when the mood hits, and thinking about investing and what the next business idea might be — these are the things that fill the gaps.
05 — portal
Family & friends access
I run Jellyfin, Immich, and other services for people I actually know. If you're here because I gave you access — the portal is below. One login, everything in one place.
Secured via Authentik SSO — you'll need credentials from Matheesan directly.