Jon Still Email & Phone Number

Santa Clara, California, Us

London, Gb

As the Technical Design Authority for networking at BidFX I was responsible for the architecture, design and implementation of BidFX’s green-field network infrastructure. My work enabled BidFX to make significant progress towards separating their trading and corporate infrastructure from that of their former parent company, with four datacentres and a global WAN built and operating in 16 months during a global pandemic, ensuring BidFX were able to meet the separation schedule of the new parent company.Key Achievements:• Designed and implemented a green-field network consisting of four global datacentres (New York, London, Singapore, Tokyo) in hosted facilities. Each DC was built as a L3 routed fabric with EVPN/VXLAN overlays used to segregate traffic in VRFs.• Built a global WAN of point-to-point links from multiple providers with routing optimised for lowest latency. Routed IPSEC VPNs on Cisco ASR routers were used to encrypt all traffic across the WAN.• Produced documentation including high- and low-level design diagrams, through to rack diagrams and cabling schedules to allow hosting providers to rack and cable equipment.• Built configuration tools in Ansible and Python to ensure consistency between DCs and to provide mechanisms to ease on-boarding of third party cross-connects. These tools automated the deployment of complete configurations to both Juniper and Arista devices. A virtual lab was used to test these tools prior to equipment install.• Developed configuration standards for device security based on CIS benchmarks; these were enforced through tools described above.• Deployed Internet connectivity at all sites using multiple transit ISPs. Onboarded BidFX as an LIR with RIPE and purchased sufficient public IPv4 netblocks for BidFX’s global needs.• Deployed cloud connectivity to Google Cloud Platform through Equinix Fabric in all four DCs.• Worked with over forty third-party organisations to deploy cross-connects between BidFX’s DCs and theirs.

Great Neck, New York, Us

I led the Infrastructure team at FlexTrade in London and was responsible for a team of five infrastructure and network engineers. I oversaw the operation of the company's hosted SaaS trading platform, including availability, security, capacity management, change management and service management.Key Achievements:• Led a review of FlexTrade’s UK and EMEA DCs which identified multiple areas for improvement.• Managed the team through a period of intense change that included moving to a global working pattern, migrating to a new incident management system and working closer with FlexTrade’s Infrastructure teams in the Americas and Asia-Pacific.• Assisted the team with both BAU and project work as workload and deadlines dictated.

As a Technical Architect within Blue Chip’s Architecture & Automation team, I acted as the TDA for networking within Blue Chip’s Software-Defined Data Centre program.My work supported the platform from its initial conception through to go-live. I worked with technical and non-technical stakeholders (including the board of directors) to define platform requirements. I took responsibility for the design of my individual technical domain while reviewing and signing-off on other areas of the design to ensure a fully integrated system.I led the implementation and testing of the platform as a whole. I created standardised network design patterns for customers and automated their deployment using Ansible. Post-implementation I contributed to handover documentation and training of BAU support teams. Finally, I assisted these teams to bring on-board the first customers.Since the conclusion of the initial parts of the program, I evaluated a variety of different technologies to determine which could be added to our portfolio of services to offer to customers. This has been largely focused on opportunities based around hybrid cloud and managed container orchestration services using Kubernetes.Key Achievements:• Led the evaluation, selection and design of a software-defined network (SDN) fabric to support the Blue Chip SDDC platform. This included developing specific selection criteria and technical requirements from the business’ desired outcomes.• As TDA, produced Low-Level Design (including all physical/logical topology diagrams) and the creation of device configuration standards for management and security and associated configuration templates.• Took ownership of the implementation of all aspects of the SDDC platform. I was responsible for supervising other technical architects and staff from across the various technical teams.• Developed Ansible roles, playbooks and modules in Python to create customer network infrastructure according to design patterns.

As a principal member of the Network & Security team, my main job responsibilities were to:• Design and implement significant new functionality within Blue Chip’s networks.• Work with major customers to design and implement new network solutions.• Act as a mentor to junior team members.• Assist the team leader, particularly with recruitment and interviewing of new hire candidates.• Act as an escalation point for major incidents.Key Achievements:• Rearchitected and deployed substantial changes to Blue Chip’s Internet services to deploy new DDoS-protection service. This project included completely re-working existing BGP policies and migrating customer prefixes from existing Internet service. The work allowed us to provide both our customers and internal infrastructure with protection against volumetric DDoS attacks.• Contributed to network design and implementation of major PCI-DSS-compliant environment for a banking customer. I designed and implemented changes to the existing network across core network, firewall and load balancer technologies to support new applications and new customers. I also developed F5 LTM iRules to handle custom load balancing requirements and provided advice around TLS configuration to improve the customer’s external application security.• Provided as-hoc customer consultancy around AWS networking infrastructure including VPCs, routing, security groups and VPNs to on-premise infrastructure hosted at Blue Chip. This allowed customers to deploy their applications effectively into a hybrid cloud environment, with different application components split between Blue Chip’s DCs and AWS.

Bryanston, Johannesburg, Za

As a senior professional services consultant and engineer for this Cisco Gold Partner I was responsible for the low-level design, implementation, testing and documentation of solutions for public and private sector customers. I also had input into high-level design of customer solutions where my expertise was required.Key Achievements:• Led the low-level design, staging, implementation and SAT testing of new Cisco UCS/Nexus-based datacentre infrastructure. Based around Cisco UCS B200 servers and Nexus 5672UP switches it allowed the client to replace their end-of-life HP server and Cisco 6509 switching environment, ensuring continued support and availability of their entire server estate.• Responsible for the high- and low-level design of a 30-site DMVPN-based multitenant WAN environment for a system integrator’s end client. Multiple VRFs and mGRE tunnels were used to segregate traffic from different tenants and EIGRP was used for routing both in the underlay network and within each VRF. The network allowed the end customer to consolidate a number of separate networks into a single WAN, allowing for a substantial reduction in their OPEX costs.• Greenfield design and deployment of a multi-tenant campus network for a new NHS hospital, based around Cisco 6880-X core switches, multi-context ASA firewalls and ISE (Identity Services Engine) 802.1x authentication. The network allowed the multiple NHS trusts on the site to share core infrastructure while still maintaining separate routing and security domains to ensure security of patient data.• Data centre and core network implementations for numerous clients including NHS trusts, local government, and service and manufacturing private sector customers.• BGP policy design for a European manufacturing client with MPLS VPNs from multiple providers. This allowed the client to use different MPLS network providers in different parts of the world while ensuring end-to-end propagation of routes.

Newark, California, Us

Responsible for all aspects of RMS’ global network, including design and architecture for datacenter networks and security. Provided guidance/mentoring to junior members of the team and stood in for the Network Manager as and when required.Key Achievements:• Design and implementation of expansion to existing datacenter using Cisco Nexus 5000/2000, 3750X and ACE load balancer products. VRFs were used to separate different environments and enforce the security design of the network.• Creation of network best practice document detailing configuration standards for security, routing and services on RMS’ routers, switches and firewalls.• Documented the existing London and Zurich networks from scratch and identified/proposed solutions for multiple single points of failure and other shortcomings in the network design.• Implemented new multi-homed Internet connection for the London office with dual service providers.

London, Gb

Responsible for all aspects (LAN, WAN, Security, Voice, Storage & Wireless) of FTSE’s networks globally including overall strategy and architecture through to implementation and routine administration. This included FTSE’s real-time index calculation platforms and required significant documentation and adherence to change control procedures.Key Achievements:• Design and implementation of infrastructure to support new real-time calculation system based around Cisco 6509s, FWSMs and Check Point SPLAT devices. Worked with data vendors to integrate market data feeds into the platform.• IT project lead for design, planning and implementation of regional office networks. Migrated offices in Hong Kong and New York to new premises, implemented new MPLS VPN-based connectivity and VoIP telephony based on CUCM with local SRST gateways. Redeveloped this standard design for a smaller user-base to deploy a new office in Milan. Worked with facilities team, local fit-out team and service providers to deploy datacenter & telco infrastructure.• Design, planning and implementation of global Check Point upgrade to NGX R65. Procured and staged all hardware and coordinated phased deployment during change windows with local IT support staff. Tested and documented all aspects of the project and completed handover and knowledge transfer to other staff members.

London, Gb

Support and development of FTSE’s business-critical UNIX/Linux-based IT services, including real-time and end-of-day index calculation systems. The work encompassed project work and business-as-usual support as well as being responsible for all aspects of FTSE’s Check Point firewall infrastructure.Key Achievements:• Audit of firewall rulebase to ensure ongoing security and resilience of the company’s infrastructure. Removal of outdated or overly permissive rules and removal of orphaned objects.• Planning and migration of Internet Edge/DMZ infrastructure (routers, switches, firewalls and servers) to FTSE’s new offices at Canary Wharf. Ensured that critical services remained available during the migration.• Developed internal DNS server infrastructure using BIND 9 on RedHat Enterprise Linux. Completed DNS record audit to remove outdated/erroneous records.

London, Gb

Support and development of FTSE’s business-critical UNIX/Linux-based IT services, including real-time and end-of-day index calculation systems. The work encompassed project work and business-as-usual support as well as being responsible for all aspects of FTSE’s Check Point firewall infrastructure.

Development and support of the Quizid shared two-factor authentication service.Key Achievements:• IPSec VPN interoperability testing (Check Point NG and FreeS/WAN).• Development of basic PKI key management software in C.• Pre-sales technical integration advice for potential customers and business partners.

Contract position providing tactical support for issues with the society’s Internet Banking service.

Contract position to introduce high availability facilities into Linux servers at this small ISP.

San Jose, Ca, Us

Implemented, tested and documented customer solutions of Cisco Network Management and security products.