About Me
I'm a seasoned DevOps Engineer with over two decades of experience in IT, systems administration, and cloud infrastructure. I specialize in AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, automation tools, and microservice transformations.
Professional Experience
Staff DevOps Engineer
Koalafi, Inc., Richmond VA
April 2021 - Present
- Sole contributor working on green field initiatives and proof of concepts
- Deployed, maintained and upgraded AWS infrastructure using Terraform
- Used infrastructure as code methods to reduce deployment time, configuration drift, and increase repeatability
- Managed TICK and Grafana stacks for observability of Kubernetes-hosted microservices
- Led migration of monolith services from .NET/Windows to microservices .NET in EKS
- Ran bi-weekly tech team meetings and weekly AWS cost management meetings
- Addressed security risks from 3rd party assessments and mentored junior engineers
Senior DevOps Engineer
AWeber, Inc., Chalfont, PA
October 2017 - April 2021
- Provided operations support for Integrations team applications
- Managed virtual environments and created Chef cookbooks, Puppet manifests
- Migrated services to on-premise Kubernetes
- Built Grafana dashboards for application performance monitoring
- Led containerization efforts for microservices architecture transition
- Utilized GitLab for CI/CD pipeline automation
- Wrote Python services and maintained existing codebase
DevOps Engineering Consultant
Addteq, Inc., Princeton, NJ
January 2017 - September 2018
- Technical lead for clients' automation initiatives
- Architected new environments and deployed Atlassian product line
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines and performed load testing with JMeter
- Deployed Puppet for internal system management
System Consultant
Versatile Technical Services, Inc., Harrisburg, PA
February 2011 - December 2016
- Comcast DevOps Lead: Provided technical support to multiple developer groups
- Implemented Puppet for system state management and Rundeck for automated deployments
- Integrated Jenkins with Rundeck for automated deployments
- Used Splunk and Dynatrace for diagnostics across hundreds of servers
- Built proof-of-concept ChatOps using Slack for deployment triggers
Senior Support Specialist/Systems Administrator
Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA
January 1999 - February 2011
- Provided Tier III support for Windows, Linux, and macOS systems
- VMware systems administration - managed ESX/ESXi servers
- Deployed virtual lab environments and managed VM images
- SharePoint and MS Project server administration
- LANDesk Management Suite administration and Linux systems integration
- Technical Services Manager (2000-2002): Managed 30+ student workers
- Remedy Administrator (1999-2005): Maintained help desk systems and custom applications
Technology Expertise
Cloud & Infrastructure
- AWS (Terraform, EKS)
- Kubernetes
- VMware (ESX, vSphere)
- Infrastructure as Code
DevOps & Automation
- CI/CD (GitLab, Jenkins)
- Configuration Management (Puppet, Chef)
- Containerization (Docker)
- Rundeck, Ansible
Monitoring & Observability
- Grafana, TICK Stack
- Splunk (Certified)
- Dynatrace
- Nagios
Programming & Databases
- Python, PHP
- MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB
- ActiveMQ
- .NET, SQL Server
Operating Systems
- Linux (Ubuntu, RHEL, Oracle)
- Windows Server (2003-2019)
- macOS, Sun Solaris
Networking & Security
- TCP/IP, DHCP, LDAP
- F5 Load Balancers
- WiFi (WEP, WPA)
- Security Assessments
Education
Master of Science in Business Intelligence
Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA
Graduated: December 2008
Bachelor of Science in Management & Information Systems
Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA
Graduated: December 1996
Certifications & Achievements
Oracle Linux Certified
Dell PowerEdge Certified
Splunk Certified
Alpha Iota Delta Honor Society
Community Involvement
Conference Organizer & Community Leader
- Philly DevOpsDays Conference organizer
- Philly PUG (Python User Group) project night host
- Former IT Manager at Prometheus Radio Project (volunteer work)
- Adjunct Instructor at Springfield College (2009-2012)