Leading small teams through successful client engagements

After making significant optimizations to our AWS account in my previous role, I was given the task of creating a new department that could focus more on our cloud hosting offering to take it even further. This narrowed my tasks greatly and allowed me to focus more on our cloud hosting than I could previously, drastically reducing our bill despite our ever growing client base.In addition to hiring a team to assist with these tasks, and managing a team backlog to keep us on target, I was also able to assist with implementing some much needed automation for development. Utilizing a combination of Docker, Hyper-V, and Vagrant, we were able to automate many of the build procedures and testing needed to ensure clean builds are committed into our source control.

As the DevOps Architect for OPIE Software, my job had a wide range of responsibilities, but my main focuses were on maximizing the efficiency of our cloud hosted offering and building systems to assist development needs.On the cloud hosting side, this meant utilizing various AWS tools and services to manage and maintain our account. The figures returned by these monitoring tools were then plugged into custom excel sheets I created to track our spending and find ways to maximize savings and efficiency.Our internal machines were mainly driven by Hyper-V, so my job mainly consisted of provisioning of new VMs, managing the updates and backups for existing VMs, and upgrading hardware on the host machines when needed. whenever possible, these processes and procedures were automated before they were documented to ensure reliability and consistency.

At 352, I assisted in launching new websites, supported existing infrastructures both internally and externally, and helped contribute to the company culture. 352 was constantly testing new technologies to ensure that we were always using the right tool for the job. A large part of my job was ensuring that the developers always had the servers and infrastructure they needed to test these new technologies.Because of this constant testing and adapting we transitioned from our old model of developing ASP.net web sites with Microsoft SQL Server to producing Node JS sites with MongoDB. At the same time, we transitioned from developing on Windows machines to using Macs. This transition helped to broaden our minds and our toolkits and helped us produce the best possible sites and applications for our clients.

After my move to Florida, SuperLogics asked me to stay on as a remote Web Administrator. This position involved designing new computer and server buids and setting them up on the website. I also maintained the current product listings on our site by removing older systems that were no longer in production, updating specs when current builds changes, and fixing any errors in the listings.I also helped to build and implement a few new features on the site such as the image viewer component and some back end reporting features. These features were built in ASP.net and javascript.

At Superlogics, my work consisted of building servers, panel PCs, and SBCs to customer's specifications. If an operating system was ordered, we would install and configure the specified OS to the clients specifications. Many of our systems involved custom configurations, so sometimes metalwork was needed to craft custom parts. Due to the wide range of computers we built, a thorough knowledge of hardware was necessary as clients would often order hardware that was not compatible.

At OpenAccess, We provided web hosting, email, internet access (including DSL, WIFI, and fiber optic) and colocation. We mainly served Washington state as a small local company with less than five employees, but some clients were as far away as Puerto Rico. When the 2010 Olympics were hosted in Vancouver, we were chosen to provide the backup fiber connection and I assisted with the setup.As a network technician at OpenAccess I worked with customers over the phone and in person to set up new internet connections or hosting accounts, and worked to resolve issues in a timely manner. This included everything from wireless access point configurations to vlan setups. I also helped to maintain the infrastructure and wiring in our datacenter for client colocation.

In the CIS lab I mainly worked by myself. The position consisted of cloning hard drives to prepare for classes, testing out labs and activities for the up-coming classes, and preforming regular network and computer maintenance. I also maintained a separate network of about 10 servers for the CIS security class which consisted of Windows and Linux systems which would have various vulnerabilities to test exploits.

The I.T. Professionals of Tomorrow put on a free help desk at Whatcom Community College for the staff and students. Working this position consisted of troubleshooting whatever problems the staff or students could bring in. Most of the problems were software based however hardware problems were brought in as well. When I graduated WCC I was no longer a student, and could therefore not continue this position.