Dakota Szabo developed production-grade ShipIt infrastructure for the Shopify/skypilot repository, focusing on configuration management and DevOps best practices. Dakota implemented a new YAML-based production configuration, enabling reliable production deployments and establishing a clean baseline for future enhancements. By removing obsolete configuration files, Dakota reduced configuration debt and simplified the project structure, which lowered deployment risk and improved onboarding for new contributors. The work leveraged YAML for infrastructure-as-code and Git-driven workflows to streamline maintenance and accelerate feature delivery. Dakota’s contributions enhanced production reliability and maintainability, demonstrating a thoughtful approach to configuration management and infrastructure modernization within a complex deployment environment.