Linux Systems Administrator (cloud computing)

May 2018 - may 2019

Lockheed Martin

contracted through JW Affinity IT

A member of the cloud computing team, I’ve needed to adapt to customer needs, security requirements, and other government mandates for rollouts, including timely and zero downtime rolling updates to our cloud computing infrastructure. All while maintaining compliance with regulated data and closed/restricted networks. Manage rolling updates to closed sections by utilizing docker instances to grab and propagate those updates. Maintain the security and integrity of the cloud computing platforms in place. Develop and maintain the automated rolling updates of our undercloud with ansible. Create and maintain continuing maintenance scripts with ansible. Create/update/maintain VM images for our openstack cloud customer deployments.

Medical break/recovery from surgery Apr 2016 ~ Jan 2018

Sys Admin/Devops

Sep 2015– Apr 2016

Openstax/Rice University

As part of the Devops Team for Openstax, our team was in charge of monitoring and maintaining the infrastructure, writing automated deployment tools for current and new applications, as well as ensuring the security of sensitive student data. Administration of ruby based web applications as well as the backend servers, databases, and the failover mechanisms. Ensure the sanity and interconnectivity of the AWS production environments, as well as handle scaling as needed. Monitor and troubleshoot the applications for obvious errors and ensure functionality of code deployment within a tiered deployment structure. Provide immediate support for emergency situations, both hardware, load, and software related, providing needed feedback to the developers as needed. Write automation tools for all menial/tedious tasks that were easily automated. Administer LDAP users and ensure proper ACL’s where needed. Provided on-call support at nights / weekends and worked in evening and night shift when required.

Software QA Analyst

Aug 2013 – Sep 2015

cPanel.net

After working as a Linux Administrator/Analyst, I was moved to be able to better ensure the software quality prior to it reaching the customers, internally this was considered the highest linux analyst position, dealing directly with the developers. This involved testing nightly builds, integrated builds, final builds prior to release of the product. Part of my time on this team I was assigned to the internal development and operations team in charge of internal tools and security of said tools against malicious internal agents. File bug reports for any new or incomplete bug fixes. Ensure that submitted fixes are valid and create no new issues. Test overall functionality of products. Expand into new products and fields as needed by departments. Write automated tests and expand functionality of automated tests to meet department requirements. Work as a team to accomplish goals and deadlines. Help Create and expand data driven testing framework. Test and review proposed changes to infrastructure. Test and review upgrade changes from puppet version 2 to the latest stable puppet version 3. Automating the provisioning of internal EPEL mirror, including puppetizing. Build needed RPMs for moving critical infrastructure to CentOS 6.

Linux Analyst II

Sep 2012 – Aug 2013

cPanel.net

Part of the customer facing second tier, I was renowned for amazing quick fixes, and innovative troubleshooting skills, and well known for rarely having to escalate anything further. When escalated, it typically required review at the developer level to determine where a bug in the software itself might be. Analyze technical issues with cPanel products as well as faults with the OS configuration or the hardware. Submit bug reports detailing any faults in cPanel products. Provide customer guidance regarding operation of cPanel products. Discover and repair misconfigurations and other issues created by customers, or third party systems administrators. Analyze customer servers to provide guidance for their systems administrators.

Level II Systems Administrator

Sep 2009 – Aug 2012

Hostgator.com

As a higher tier administrator for Hostgator, I was in charge of training and helping the lower tiers to try to prevent escalations as needed, and to confirm whether an issue really should be escalated or not. From DDoS mitigation to complete custom setups, to disaster recovery with regards to compromised systems, I was in charge of handling all issues that would crop up that were deemed higher level issues and required more investigations and greater care. Personally vetted by 3 of Hostgators top admins and supervisors for the position based on skill, quality of work, and care taken with incidents sent my way. Analyze hardware for potential faults and communicate with the datacenter for minimal downtime and fast resolutions. Analyze network and service attacks and issues and provide stop gap as well as permanent solutions as deemed needed. Diagnose all levels of service and application faults to discover and rectify discovered issues. Discover and repair detrimental changes made by third parties without any previous knowledge. Support all levels and layers of production servers from hardware, to kernel, to OS/network, to service, up to final application interface, as needed.