Aaron Deacon Email & Phone Number

Watchfield, Gb

Watchfield, Gb

🚀 Principal Engineer | DevOps Leader | Agile Advocate 🚀Results-driven Principal Engineer with a strong focus on spearheading DevOps initiatives and ensuring successful project delivery. My passion for innovation and commitment to Agile methodologies drive me to lead teams through transformative processes.🔧 DevOps Leadership & Product Transformation:I initiate and implement impactful DevOps strategies, introducing cutting-edge tools to enhance delivery team efficiency. Playing a key role in the company's transition to DevOps, I champion Agile and product-focused development.🎯 Key Responsibilities:- Primary technical liaison for internal and external stakeholders.- Guide a diverse team for high-quality product delivery.- Drive strategic improvements for team efficiency.- Uphold stringent standards for top-tier deliverables.- Take charge of project delivery from a technical standpoint.- Offer valuable technical perspectives across all development aspects.- Inspire a unified vision in all team endeavors.- Facilitate an unhindered work environment, ensuring psychological safety and project success.- Uphold security standards, collaborating with the security team for product and platform assurance.🌟 Significant Achievements (Last Year):- Collaborated on implementing a cutting-edge automation stack, including Terraform Enterprise, Ansible Automation Platform, GitLab Enterprise, Packer, and Vault.- Successfully overhauled our tooling infrastructure with Jira Data Center and Confluence, introducing transformative operational approaches.- Led the migration of our largest customer estate to a secure private cloud platform, emphasising an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach

As a Technical Architect within the esteemed Technical Architecture Group, I play a pivotal role in shaping our technical strategy, staying attuned to customer trends and requirements, and driving innovation both internally and in our solutions.At the forefront of my responsibilities is leading the charge on automation at Prolinx, propelling us towards the ambitious goals of achieving full Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and embracing GitOps practices. Spearheading a dynamic tooling team, we are revolutionizing Prolinx's service delivery paradigm. My role encompasses the entire process — from initial discovery through the design of innovative pipelines, to meticulous configuration and testing, culminating in seamless production deployment.Key elements of the tooling initiative I champion include:- RedHat Openshift- Terraform Enterprise- Ansible (Leveraged via Ansible Automation Platform)- Packer- Gitlab (Facilitating GitOps)- Comprehensive CI/CD solutions (Leveraged through Gitlab)In this transformative journey, I am not just a participant; I am a trailblazer, driving the evolution of our automation practices to new heights. Together with my dedicated team, we are redefining how Prolinx delivers services, ensuring efficiency, scalability, and innovation remain at the core of our technological endeavors.

In my role at Infoserv, I led two strategic streams, each contributing significantly to the company's growth and service expansion.Infoserv Internal Systems:As the Principal Infrastructure Consultant, I held a senior management position, actively participating in pivotal decisions and discussions shaping Infoserv's expansion into new areas. My primary focus was to establish internal infrastructure and systems supporting the company's pivot toward service-oriented work. Given the nature of our clients, stringent security measures were paramount, aligning with NCSC best practices. Notably, this initiative involved building infrastructure from scratch as there were no existing systems or corporate devices. Key achievements include:- Building and securing an M365 tenant to host UK Official information.- Configuring and deploying corporate MacBooks for all Infoserv staff using Jamf Pro (MDM).- Deploying Crowdstrike Falcon across all devices.- Designing an AWS tenant to host a secure VPN service and software development tooling for multiple customers.Customer-Centric Outcome-Based Work:The second facet of my role involved direct collaboration with a customer, delivering outcome-based solutions. This included:- Scope, design, and testing of a multi-tenant, multi-security tier logging solution utilizing MicroK8s and the ELK stack, supporting 50+ end systems.- Deploying the aforementioned architecture into AWS and on-premises systems using automation tools to minimize deployment time post-launch.- Automating a golden image pipeline for software testers requiring various operating system versions at different patch levels.In both streams, my efforts aimed at achieving operational excellence, security compliance, and streamlined processes, contributing significantly to Infoserv's success in navigating new service territories and delivering impactful solutions for our clients.

In 2021, I was promoted to Senior Infrastructure Engineer, augmenting my existing responsibilities. These now include:• Allocating dedicated time to innovative projects, crafting new solutions for potential services.• Contributing to the technical architecture roadmap to support the Technical Architecture Group.• Serving as a technical contact for approach and engineering queries from team members.• Collaborating with the Senior Engineer Group to enhance processes, procedures, automation, and technology.Key projects in this role encompassed:• Investigating, designing, and building a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution for accredited networks, enabling secure traversal between different networks.• Deploying neural network and sandboxing products as part of SASE, providing tenants with day-zero protection.

Responsibilities & Achievements Included:- Design secure accreditable systems and networks based on statement of requirements from within the business and from external customers.- Implement the technical solution within the timescales we are given whilst documenting the implementation ready for the 1st and 2nd level support teams to take over main BAU support once complete- Provide 3rd line support on incidents, problems and changes when escalated from our 2nd line team- Make sure all designs are documented in High Level and Low Level formats- To innovate and present new ideas to the team for existing and new platforms- Plan major changes to customer platforms whilst causing minimal or no impact at all- Key Competencies - Juniper SRX - FortiGate Firewall - FortiMail - Cisco Nexus - Cisco IOS - Pulse Secure VPN - VMWare vSphere and ESXi - FortiManager (Centralized Management Tool for FortiGates) - 3CX Phone System - Windows Server (AD, DNS, SCCM etc.)

· During my time as 2nd Line Technician I have had the following key responsibilities –- Prioritizing, Investigating, resolving and escalating incidents and meeting customer SLA’s- Follow procedures to carry out tasks and to update support documentation- I have configured multiple instances of Solarwinds monitoring. This includes - Configuring server monitoring Configuring application monitoring  Configuring alerting and reporting- Managing monthly software updates for Windows servers & desktops and patching for VMWare vCenter and ESXi - Planning, Building, Testing and Deploying software packages for customer systems. This also includes distributing the package automatically through SCCM- Managing multiple virtual environments (ESXi & vCenter)- Ensuring the availability of the contracted services and managed systems are maintained to the business and customer requirements- The rollout of procedural changes to the customer’s infrastructures that are in accordance with the Change Management processKey Competencies- BMC Remedy (Service Management Tool)- Windows Server 2008, 2012 (R2)- Windows 7/8.1- Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager o Networking Fundamentals- Juniper SRX Firewall- VMWare ESXi and vCenter- Solarwinds NPM & SAM

Shrivenham

As Service Desk Shift Supervisor I manage a 3 person shift over two days and two nights a week. This includes making sure all 1st line tasks are completed, assisting the shift with 1st line incidents, carrying out 2nd line tasks myself, investigate 2nd line incidents, investigating & analysing the impact of incidents out of hours to determine what should be carried out.I work with -- System Centre Configuration Manager 2003/2012- System Centre Operations Manager 2007/2012- BMC Remedy 7/8- EPo 4.5 & 3.6- WSUS- Active Directory- Office 2003/2007/2010 & 2013- Juniper SA/SRX Remote Access- Solarwinds- HP E-Series Switches- Cisco Switches

- Take Service Desk Calls- Resolve 1st Line Problems- Investigate Incidents to help 2nd Line