PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Cloud Solutions Architect

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Produced a complete top to bottom PCI - DSS compliant architecture for deploying cloud infrastructure for the 4th largest bank in the United States.
• Worked with teams across the organization to socialize and engage various stakeholders to adopt cloud and Digital Transformation.
• Defined PCI-DSS, SOCKS, PII, etc. compliance and policy owners and roles for the organization Confidential large, and engaged Microsoft and AWS account teams to review and validate them with their owners.
• Designed and implemented Multi-Region and Multi-Provider network architectures, DR plans, Infrastructure-as-Code tooling, DevOps workflows, Trans-Atlantic connectivity between US and EU datacenters & cloud provider regions utilizing multiple redundant vendors.
• Created the Confidential Cloud Strategy and provided financials which prompted the CEO of Confidential to name my CIO “King of Cloud” which allowed us to take charge from our parent organization, and resulted in a “Cloud-First” directive from the executive team for all new projects since 2018.
• Performed PoC work to demonstrate and train the organization on Containers, Container Management, Docker, LXD, LXC, Provider CaaS (ECS/App Engine/Container Engine/Magnum), Kubernetes (and Kube as a Service), datacenter connectivity, network SOA model, cost optimization, DDoS and resiliency loss mitigation, and Multi-Region/Multi-Cloud/Provider Agnostic management, migration, and meeting regulatory requirements.
• Embedded into various teams as a member to perform development/deployment/operationalization duties to ease adoption, evangelize optimal solutions, and prevent projects from getting stuck in the process of adopting new technologies and methodologies.
• Advised the members of the Cloud Architecture Working Group one on one to get them up to speed in assessing cloud project proposals, identify required technologies and how to properly implement them, and inform them of any nuances or caveats related to items under their purview.
• Assisted the Confidential Enterprise Architecture group in getting up to speed on cloud technologies, obtaining official regulatory requirements for technology approvals, creating a service catalog, documenting approved use cases, tracking technical debt and negative outcomes for future resolution, as well as an extensive amount of one-on-one and group training sessions for members of business lines and technology teams.
• Built out and defined rules and governance around sandbox, PoC, and Innovation Lab environments for the organization.
• Designed and built out the Confidential Greenhouse Innovation Center private cloud environment in Atlanta, GA.

Cloud Solutions Architect

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Designed, architected, produced POCs, and deployed various “Nextgen” projects.
• Hired, trained, and supervised staff for cloud deployments, operations management, cost optimization, and standards and best practices implementation.
• Leveraged resources from external vendors and internal project and development teams to realize functionality, performance, and stability improvements across all business units.
• Designed and implemented CI/CD processes and provided guidance and code changes to improve the functionality and manageability of internally developed application stacks to include automating container builders and container management by environment.
• Analyzed and documented issues found with various code, architecture, and infrastructure projects and engaged product owners, business units, vendors, and security and compliance teams for cataloguing and remediation.
• Produced project plans, supervised management, guided executive staff, and engaged vendors and junior level personnel on all aspects of an AWS EC2 Container Service Docker infrastructure while migrating away from Openshift Enterprise on EC2.
• Created and demonstrated alternative deployment architecture in less than 2 months singlehandedly that cut CAPEX by 50% and OPEX by nearly 70% versus the existing plan that took almost 2 years and millions of dollars in vendor spend to implement.
• Created an internal “Cloud Team” to build and manage AWS and on-premises Openstack cloud platforms, identifying individual strengths of existing team members and augmenting them, while augmenting with new personnel as needed.
• Produced high and low level task lists and worked directly with PMO to establish goals and traceable metrics.
• Trained corporate architecture, networking, and development teams on the rules of the road, led security and auditing teams to define and implement process controls and auditing/compliance measures.
• Performed custom infrastructure development where necessary, assisted assumed top level DevOps control of all new projects, and produced automated repeatable architecture deployments using proven enterprise grade methodologies, utilities, and best practices.
• Deployed Openshift environments for production and non-production environments.
• Provided engineering support for various Openshift issues including diagnosing issues with network overlays, instrumenting container monitoring strategy, migrating from EFK to alternative logging systems, implementing metering and task “pod” scheduling metrics, and replacing expired SSL certificates.
• Repaired and replaced dead Openshift components, and completed resolution of over 80 Red Hat support tickets regarding Openshift deployments.
• Registered as a Red Hat Developer Network member and proposed multiple improvements to the product including a network driver to use Docker bridge networking in lieu of the unnecessary overlay topology on AWS overlay.

Cloud Solutions Architect

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Designed and Implemented AWS cloud platform solutions for multiple private and government entities spanning operations across the globe.
• Operated as an “Engineering Storm Trooper” for advanced technical, architectural, and complex engineering issues on multiple projects.
• Contributed high level client technical support, architecture change proposals, and published comprehensive SOW documentation.
• Conceived and circulated detailed architecture and planning documents for client integrations and migrations.
• Assisted internal and client technical teams with best practices, compliance, architecture, and performance items as needed daily.
• Created and configured Autoscaling Groups, Directory Systems (AD/389 Server,) Redshift/RDS/Vendor Database Clusters, Web Servers, API Gateways (CA & Varnish,) ELK Stack, TIBCO, All Linux Variants, Application Servers, VPC Networks, VPN Tunnels, UTM/Routing Appliances (FortiGate/FortiWeb/WAF/Sophos/Cisco,) Certificate Authorities, SSL, Keytool, Java EE, etc.
• Provided support and training references to peers for Linux, Chef, Cloudfront, Cloudformation, and other technologies regularly.
• Won the Openstack Innovation Center’s Big Bounties for Big Ideas Contest sponsored by Intel Confidential the Openstack Austin Summit.
• Joined Cloud Academy and started the AWS certifications path. Obtained the AWS SysOps Administrator Associate certification. Completing all associate level certifications by EOY.
• Amazon container service, LXC, LXD, and Docker w/Kubernetes deployment, maintenance, architecture, and development.
• ELK stack architecture design, implementation, configuration auditing, and tuning. Instructed overseas teams on how to interact with these in a meaningful way.

Cloud Scaling Architect

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Participated in the Openstack Tailgaters community project team providing solutions, code, guidance, and documentation as needed.
• Served as an official Cisco representative in the Open Source community for cloud scaling and benchmarking efforts. Completed Cisco internal open source certifications.
• Identified architectural, physical, and software defined problems with Cisco cloud deployments.
• Prepared summit talk that was accepted as an alternate Confidential the Openstack Summit in Tokyo, Japan.
• Created the “Mythos - Supernatural Testing for Cloud” project and hosted on Launchpad and Github.
• Tested large scale Openstack deployments to define SLAs, determine BOM requirements, and identify system and service improvements which were submitted to Cisco and Red Hat cloud teams for resolution.
• Used off the shelf open source components to build a cloud scale testing platform using Vagrant, Linux, Puppet, NMap, Siege, Bombardment, perl-gd, Chart 2.x, PSSH, Apache, and various shell functions.
• Wrote BASH scripts to create, configure, deploy, and manage the Medusa scale testing platform.
• Created “Odin” chain loader for Openstack Rally tests to allow tests to run sequentially without human intervention and maximize testing windows.
• Worked side by side with engineers and developers form Cisco, Red Hat, Intel, Rackspace, Canonical, Dreamhost, and many, many others to plan, coordinate, develop, deploy, and report on various testing systems and methodologies for Cisco.
• Completed internal social media and open source contributor training programs for sharing projects with the community Confidential large.
• Collaborated with Red Hat, Canonical, and Mirantis performance teams to develop testing methodologies and quantify differentiating product offerings.
• Operated and tested Cisco and various vendor NFV deployment architectures.

Cloud POC Consulting

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Produced architecture reference documentation for multiple cloud hosting providers and multiple regions.
• Created and configured private cloud implementations on IBM Softlayer and AWS infrastructures and linked to client private infrastructure.
• Analyzed and client application stacks and modified deployment mechansisms allowing them to run on multiple cloud hosting providers.
• Implemented Chef configuration management for core and cloud resources.
• Augmented existing data center services to support deployment operations and decrease capital expenditures.
• Assisted IBM vendor with ICO, Heat, IWR, Chef, and RDO Openstack implementations and troubleshooting.
• Supervised personnel and provided action items across the company to facilitate cloud data center deployments and the adoption of new technologies.
• Integrated and operated with IBM and VMWare NFV environments (although technically NSX is not a full NFV solution.)

Technical Architect

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Provided detailed complex engineering documentation and implementation guidelines for Openstack Data Center, Central office, and Network Technology Center.
• Served as a local subject matter expert to teams on all facets of Openstack, AWS, and general cloud terminology, components, reference architectures, implementation requirements, and governance.
• Collaborated with external teams and technical resources to dictate sizing and topology requirements for hosted services and management components, network design considerations, vendor component, and development project goals and statuses, and published my findings.
• Designed Openstack reference architectures to meet customer and internal business unit requirements in accordance with best practices.
• Served as a team mentor providing education, guidance, and documentation to coworkers and subordinates. I was widely regarded as a cloud-guru, and my guidance and opinions were highly sought after within the organization.
• Defined sizing and infrastructure requirements and developed capacity planning strategies for deployment to 9 different sites and designs over a period of 6 months.
• Guided top tier contracted Openstack technology experts and vendors on design and implementation details to ensure that the end product meets our requirement.
• Active member of multiple internal scrum teams for deployment, general cloud architecture, design, Openstack specific items, and CI/CD relelase management and testing frameworks.
• Created AWS mock environments and utilized EC2 methodologies frequently as training and reference materials. Identified divirgences and parallels between these offerings.
• Performed POC deployments for all major Openstack vendors and current releases. Evaluated multiple variants including Canonical Ubuntu Cloud (MaaS+Juju) and Hyperscale, Mirantis, Rackspace, Community, Stackforge, HP Helion, RDO, Piston, and others.
• Pioneered Confidential &T use of LXC for control plane functions, TripleO undercloud/overcloud deployments, the Ironic hypervisor, Non-blocking service architecture, and Distributed Control Plane Openstack component architecture to support multi-regional deployments and administration without Nova Compute Cells.
• Actively contributed to and maintained Confidential &T Github, Stackforge, and internal Chef code repositories.
• Produced bill of materials, architecture, and design documents, and supervised construction of 16 lab and 4 production site phase 1 deployments. My name is on around the architecture documentation for upwards of 300 Openstack deployments now.
• Created cloud training programs which were adopted for use by 20,000 employees.
• Completed internal social media and open source contributor training programs for sharing projects with the community Confidential large.
• Deployed, evaluated, and documented various NFV solutions to include Opendaylight, Juniper, and vendor-specific solutions.