- Over 20 years of experience in DevOps and Systems Administration with a deep understanding of server architecture, networking, and cloud infrastructure.
- Proficient in GCP and AWS architecture and operations, with 8+ years of hands-on experience managing cloud environments.
- Expertise in virtualization with 7+ years of experience using VMware vSphere, including SDK-based automation for VM deployment.
- Skilled in CI/CD pipeline implementation and management using Jenkins for automated builds, testing, and deployments.
- Experienced with configuration management tools such as Salt, Puppet, Chef, and Red Hat Satellite/Spacewalk to ensure consistent environments.
- Designed and implemented monitoring and logging solutions using the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and other tools like Nagios and CloudWatch.
- Comprehensive knowledge of Unix/Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS) and Windows Server administration.
- Extensive programming experience (20+ years) in languages including Python, Java, PHP, Perl, Ruby, SQL, and Bash.
- Strong knowledge of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts applied across multiple languages.
- Adept in the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) using both Agile and Waterfall methodologies.
- Expert in database design, administration, and performance tuning for MySQL, Oracle, and MS SQL Server.
- Versed in using vulnerability and penetration testing tools such as Nessus and Metasploit to identify and remediate security risks.
- Authored comprehensive security policy documents for log management, password policies, and patch management.
- Proven team leader with experience managing, training, and mentoring teams of up to 5 developers and engineers.
- Excellent communication, documentation, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to interface between technical teams and clients.
- Self-starter and strong team builder with excellent analytical skills and a proven ability to learn and implement new technologies quickly.
- Managed and maintained a hybrid infrastructure of 200+ AWS instances and on-premise physical servers for production and development environments.
- Automated software delivery by managing over 200 Jenkins jobs for continuous integration, testing, and deployment using Maven and AWS CodeDeploy.
- Enhanced system security by conducting audits, managing patches, and performing administrative duties on Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, and macOS servers.
- Engineered a centralized log management solution using Graylog to aggregate and process system-wide logs for improved monitoring and troubleshooting.
- Designed the initial architecture and documentation for a new SaaS offering of the Magnet MAX Server product.
- Implemented and administered monitoring solutions (Xymon, Nagios, CloudWatch) and security tools (RKHunter, chkrootkit) to ensure system health and integrity.
- Administered key business and development platforms including Office365, Atlassian Suite (Jira, Confluence), GitHub, and LDAP.
- Established a Pivotal Cloud Foundry environment for development teams to accelerate application deployment and testing.
Provided contract development and DevOps expertise to a diverse portfolio of major Silicon Valley clients, including Apple, Telenav, Symantec, and Yahoo!. Key responsibilities spanned security hardening, infrastructure automation, back-end development, and database optimization across large-scale, mission-critical environments.
- Managed and automated infrastructure for Telenav, performing package and patch management across 2,000+ physical, VMWare, and AWS servers (CentOS, Ubuntu) using tools like SaltStack and Spacewalk.
- Engineered a complete security and compliance overhaul by deploying security tools (Auditd, RKHunter, ClamAV), remediating Nessus vulnerabilities, and writing 10+ key security policy documents.
- Implemented a centralized ELK stack for enterprise-wide log management, creating Kibana dashboards for real-time monitoring and analysis.
- Standardized server configurations at Yahoo! using the internal 'Igor' tool, enabling consistent and automated management of development and production environments.
- Developed a persistent MVC bridge application (Zend 2, PHP, SOAP) for Apple, processing over 100,000 daily inventory transactions between disparate systems.
- Architected and programmed complex ETL scripts (Perl, PHP) to migrate and transform large datasets across diverse database systems including Vertica, Oracle, MS SQL Server, and MySQL.
- Contributed to the development of a new Single Sign-On (SSO) product for Symantec, focusing on back-end logic, cryptographic components, and facilitating communication between global teams.
- Upgraded a legacy LAMP stack application at Yahoo! by refactoring it into a modern framework and integrating it with external services like BugZilla and ServiceNow.
- Executed a complete database redesign and optimization for a core internal tool at Yahoo!, enforcing referential integrity, eliminating redundant tables, and dramatically improving query performance by analyzing slow query logs.
- Championed code quality by writing extensive unit tests for new and legacy codebases, achieving 96% code coverage for a critical SSO module at Symantec.
- Established a Jenkins CI/CD environment to automate the integration and testing of a complex PHP codebase.
- Created comprehensive technical documentation, system diagrams, and maintenance procedures using Confluence, PHPDoc, and other tools to support development and operations teams across multiple engagements.
Google Inc. is perhaps the most widely recognized Internet and Software development company in the world. Working in the Business Applications department, which develops software for internal company business needs, I lead the development which was based on the LAMP stack. Over the course of this project, we implemented upgrades to both the back end framework, and the JavaScript front end framework, to comply with Google's higher standards. As well, we created several new modules to assist users in performing their duties, normalized the database schema, set up standardized roll out systems from development, to user acceptance, to production environments, documented all the various components, procedures and the code itself, set up monitoring tools to alert us on problems within the system, both software and hardware, and implemented continuous development principles like unit testing using Jenkins.
Responsibilities:
- Lead a team of 3 developers, along with Google project managers, in enhancing an existing internal application, using modern Agile software development principles and tools.
- Standardized and documented the development pipeline, including using code storage and system monitoring applications.
- Completely revamped the existing application by using the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern, using REST services for improved portability between the mobile and web-based applications
- Improved the MySQL Database design to a normalized table structure. Documented the new schema structure and proposed various organizational and performance related solutions.
- Set up and documented a Jenkins Continuous integration server to perform various code analysis, produce documentation, and monitor the live system.
- Set up integrations with other Google technologies, including integrating with a web-based Java Authentication system
Alikelist Inc. is a start-up, developing a social networking website that aggregates other social networks, to produce local business recommendations for its members, Using Facebook, Twitter and others, this sites provides a way for members to see what businesses and services others in their social networks have 'liked', in an easy to understand and use fashion. Businesses can also access their listings, communicate with potential customers, and offer 'deals' to them. As well, 'deals' are aggregated from other services, like ValPak and Restaurants.com.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the development of the AlikeList Mobile site, for iPhone by developing design schematics, requirements, user interface diagrams, and use case scenarios.
- Wrote technical planning documents and implemented the Facebook and Twitter authentication and data import systems.
- Continued to upgrade the application from procedural coding to using the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern.
- Worked on the evolving MySQL Database design, by outlining and implementing structural and performance enhancements within the normalized table structure.
Completed the Computer Technology Specialist Program at Camosun College. This involved 3 years study in programming (mostly C++ and Java), and systems design. This included 9 months of co-op work terms, split into three 3 month periods. I completed two work terms at the Ministry of Forests in Victoria at the TASB division as a webmaster responsible for maintaining and upgrading the Ministry's web-based documentation. My final work term was spent working at BC Tel Interactive for 3 months, which then became a full-time position.