Recruiting fellow consultants to help families.Company DescriptionSymmetry Financial Group (SFG) is a leading independent marketing organization (IMO) dedicated to providing life insurance coverage, and other financial products, to families across the country. Based in Swannanoa, NC, SFG offers a competitive product portfolio and valuable resources to support agents in their business endeavors. With a focus on protecting families and ensuring financial security, SFG empowers licensed representatives to customize coverage options and offer competitive prices tailored to individual needs.Role DescriptionThis is a remote role for a Licensed Field Underwriter at Symmetry Financial Group. You will be responsible for assessing client needs, evaluating risk factors, underwriting policies, and providing personalized insurance and retirement solutions. This role involves building relationships with clients, evaluating risk factors, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.We are consultants and brokers who help people protect their families and promote wealth vitality. The pay is all commissions and bonuses (1099, not W2), so we are not really hiring, but more like recruiting. Each person can work part time, full time, switch from one to the other, and even build their own business, if they like. There are some insurance benefits available, and loads of training and mentoring, but it is much more like self-employment. A state life, accident, and health insurance license is needed to get started, but we will help with that. This is not network marketing. SFG has a team that does the marketing for us, to get good leads, so we are only contacting people who requested our services.Qualifications- Commitment to Organizational Health- Growth Mindset- Excellent communication and interpersonal abilities- Good aptitude as a software userDisqualifications- Victim Mindset- Looking for an easy job- Conceited- Needs supervision

Disaster Recovery AssessmentCrafted reports and delivered our findings based on our assessment for a multinational business to gauge the readiness of each location to recover from various disaster scenarios. Worked as a team, and gathered information regarding the existing plans and documentation from each of the business locations. Analyzed and compared with industry best practices, putting ourselves in the shoes of an insurance auditor who does not want to pay claims for business interruptions caused by IT downtime.Python and SaltStack DevelopmentCreated automation for a SaaS 3D rendering business using Python to access five API platforms. Developed salt states to manage the rendering fleet.AWS DevelopmentDeveloped automated deployment for KeyShot Network Rendering clusters within AWS using Python boto3, autoscaling group, and EC2 Image Builder. This allows a render farm to be deployed, as needed, so it does not incur CPU/GPU costs when not in use. The builds include CPU Worker, GPU Worker, Manager for each cluster, and a license server.Python and SaltStack DevelopmentDeveloped, documented, and deployed a Python app, and some other tools, that are now automating the cluster node assignments for a cloud provider. Saved them on hardware and electricity costs, and improved the service uptime. Deployed salt to integrate with the app and to facilitate large-scale administration. Completed this project in complete collaboration with the existing administration to ensure the app was suitable for the purpose and environment, and so they are fully understanding how it operates. Salt Deployment and DevelopmentFor a large customer, with several thousand VMs, provided leadership and development to prepare and deploy SaltStack, including SecOps, as a replacement for Chef Automation. This project included, for example, investigate customer needs, analysis of legacy code base, open salt deployment, and development of salt code.

Senior Staff EngineerSubject Matter Expert: DRaaS, VMC on AWS, SAN, vSAN, Network, NSX, SRM, crash analysis.Mentor colleagues in analytical troubleshooting for the most difficult cases.DRaaS Project EngineeringGlobal Tech Lead for DRaaS with VSR – VMC on AWS. Initiated and lead collaboration including the global VMC on AWS team, the DRaaS product engineering team, and members of the core SRM Tech Support team. Gathered and shared the best practices for DRaaS troubleshooting. This was one of the biggest opportunities for improvement in our global team and has resulted in a 90% reduction in the rate of premature escalations to the DRaaS SRE team. This positive outcome has been maintained. Created the main document for this effort is a KB: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/78941 Created peripheral KBs, Confluence pages, product documentation enhancements, training packages, tool and lab resource improvements, and even drove product enhancements.VMware Technical Support Lead for Core TeamP4 Staff Engineer for core Tech Support, with experience in storage (including Global Tech Lead for VSA), networking, SRM, vSAN, NSX, and vSphere. The toughest cases came to me. Unless absolutely needed, I did not take over, but took this powerful opportunity to mentor my colleagues in moving the case forward. VMware appliances are based on Linux. So, regardless of what services were being provided by the appliance, my Linux expertise was often engaged.Spearheaded Improvements to Engineering Engagement.Lead for Zoom AdoptionVMware was an early adopter of Zoom, and I was the principal conduit between the users and the Zoom product management team for improving the user experience.Escalation Engineer Mentoring ProgramInitiated, developed, and deployed an Escalation Engineer Mentoring Program, as this was widely agreed to be sorely needed. Again, with a great deal of collaboration to develop and approve the content. It carries on to this day.

Support 100s of HP-UX servers located in several geographies

Support 1000s of Linux and HP-UX servers located in several geographies10 years of IT DevOps experience – P5 – lead solution engineer for HP IT operations – Linux and mission-critical servers.Bash ExpertiseUNIX scripting power user since 1996, long since translated to Linux scripting. Bash scripting is both an aptitude and an enjoyment for me. At HP, I built scripts for server builds, for IP pool monitoring, boot disk mirroring, and several others. At VMware, I built scripts for troubleshooting analysis of log bundles. Even at home, I used bash scripts for some projects.