Dan Pearce Email and Phone Number

As Head of Platform Engineering I’m responsible for the end-to-end health of the shared infrastructure and platform built to power Guardian Direct’s products and services. Working collaboratively with technology teams, I drive operations and automation to accelerate product delivery, and ensure consistent and stable services. I ensure that the technologies employed across environments including security, DevOps, and data engineering are correctly operated through a mixture of in-house and third party services, to provide a resilient, secure, and highly available platform for our products and services to run on, and that the overall strategy for platform delivery is defined, approved, and implemented.As Head of Platform Engineering I’m responsible for the end-to-end health of the shared infrastructure and platform built to power Guardian Direct’s products and services. Working collaboratively with technology teams, I drive operations and automation to accelerate product delivery, and ensure consistent and stable services. I ensure that the technologies employed across environments including security, DevOps, and data engineering are correctly operated through a mixture of in-house and third party services, to provide a resilient, secure, and highly available platform for our products and services to run on, and that the overall strategy for platform delivery is defined, approved, and implemented.

Successful Lead, designed, and executed the Guardian Direct "NextGen" platform from vision through to implementation. Harnessing DevOps principles, IaC, Serverless Cloud (AWS Fargate), and SaaS technologies (GitHub, DataDog, PagerDuty, Okta), the NextGen platform has increased developer productivity exponentially.

Strategic leader bridging macro vision to execution. Focusing specifically on implementing a DevOps culture, consulting with strategic ventures, and the development of new products. Focus areas include; AWS, Lambda (Serverless API Design), Terraform, Golang, NodeJS, Docker, ReactJS, Redux, Gitlab, Continuous Delivery, and Architecture / Design.

At 31G, our mission is to empower businesses to deliver high-quality software faster and more reliably. We believe that a well-crafted DevOps strategy can not only streamline operations but also foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.

I am responsible for the design and implementation of immutable cloud infrastructure products that leverage AWS and promote continuous delivery (CD). I focus heavily on automation and have extensive experience with AWS managed services, Vagrant, Packer, Jenkins, Docker, and Docker-Compose. I specialize in DevOps cultural transformations through education and correct tool selection.

I led a highly innovative team with a focus on Continuous Delivery (CD) and DevOps. We utilized many cutting edge technologies (many open-source) and were successful in introducing tools, processes, and cultural changes (required for DevOps to succeed) that allowed Cayan (formerly Merchant Warehouse) to deliver software faster and more robustly. These tools, processes, and cultural changes were delivered in short time-frames and were achievable by harnessing a start-up mentality, fostering constant cross-team communication, and selecting the correct tools for the job.As of January (2015) I transitioned from a Platform Architecture / Team Lead role to a pure Productivity Architecture role focusing on improvements to the CD pipeline foundation previously developed by myself and my former platform engineering team.The technologies utilized during my tenure included:• Azure Pack (Microsoft’s private cloud solution)• Go (Thoughtworks)• Server 2012 R2 (Administration) / Hyper-V• CentOS 6.4• Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)• App Controller• Chef• Vagrant• Jenkins & Artifactory• Powershell, Ruby, BashMajor successful projects included:• Creation of multiple instances of engineering development clouds• CD tooling (Go - Thoughtworks)• Configuration of multiple geographically separated data-centers• Implementation and adoption of Blue / Green deployments• Migration from static server configurations to an immutable server (chef based) approach

As Director of Engineering I was responsible for leading up to 8 engineers to rapidly delivery high quality SaaS technology products through the management of multiple software engineering teams, development of software architecture that will support scale, and research and development projects. My responsibilities included:• Designing, prototyping, and successfully delivering a full color medical statement engine capable of supporting layout / content modifications in short periods• Code reviewing change-sets and the implementation of code review checklists and procedures Crucible (Atlassian).• Mentoring engineers (specifically with concerns to the benefits of best practices)• The architecture of new features and improving the robustness of the legacy code base• Contributing to sprints, new feature development, and priority tasks whenever possible• Prototyping R&D concepts • Converting both engineering teams to a fully agile SDLC• Rapidly improving inter-department communication and accountability through the use of the Atlassian tool JIRA and Confluence. Additionally custom JIRA workflows and ongoing JIRA administration was performed with a focus always on continuous improvement• Implementing standardized recipes to promote verbose documentation and the ability to eliminate wasted effort caused by repeatedly solving the same, or similar, solutions over time.• Managing one of the fastest lock-box implementations of our lock-box vendors history• Improving the engineering team's focus and communication through the use of daily stand-ups and retrospectives (weekly analysis of current process)Technologies Utilized (but not limited to):• Atlassian Administration (JIRA, Crucible, Confluence, Bamboo, Greenhopper)• PHPUnit• jQuery, Ember.js (Client MVC)• Rake• Smarty (Template Engine), Twitter Bootstrap• LAMP, CakePHP, Propel, ASOworx MVC

I was responsible for working closely with the Vice President of Technology and my responsibilities included the following:• Co-designed and wrote the Dingo Database ORM. Dingo was built on the trusted Zend dB framework as a lightweight replacement for the Doctrine 2 ORM• Manage and design software system architecture• Manage iteration task/resource allocation• Advocate for junior engineer mentoring• Designed an automated insurance quoting system with a friendly user interface (replacement for a command line driven system).• Co-wrote the company's coding standards and enforced the majority through the use of PHPCS, PHPMD, PHPCPD• Implemented automated build systems for code compilation, standards enforcement, and auto-deployment

I was responsible for social network customization and professional services / support engagements including:• Consulting• Client Product Training• Business IT solutions design

• Web based vehicle tracking software design and implementation.• Design and development of wireless in-vehicle reporting firmware.• Design and development of mobile-web based vehicle data entry firmware.

• Development of digital signal processing algorithms for the hearing aid market.• Study: "An adaptive directional microphone for open canal fittings"​. Results presented at American Academy of Audiology (AAA) 2008, Blamey PJ, Fiket HJ, Pearce DJ, Miller C.

• Designer of the Auto Calibration Algorithm: The Auto-Calibration software module can be used by hearing aid manufacturers to automatically calibrate hearing aids in a production environment.• Testing of PC based, and hearing aid (Hardware based), software modules.• Audio test material creation.

• Pioneered the original Dual Perception System, a device that allows both audiologists and engineers to take a binaural recording from the ears of a subject's eardrum• Bilateral Recordings in Hearing Aids (feat. Dual Perception), presented at American Academy of Audiology (AAA) 2005, Blamey PJ, Fiket HJ, Pearce D, Saunders E. American Academy of Audiology• Fashioned audio material used in sound booth testing of new telephony algorithms targeted at the Bluetooth headset market• Assembled the equipment necessary to showcase the features of an adaptive directional microphone for a promotional video• Compiled bi-weekly detailed technical reports for software testing

• Production of status reports of factory hardware to update a maintenance database containing factory equipment.• Verified computer aided design (CAD) schematics to ensure accuracy of equipment within the factory.