I am currently working as a Technology Principal, AWS Architect & Line Manager at Version 1. I am an experienced lead engineer with people, process, and delivery management expertise. I have deep knowledge across a wide range of automation, applications and operating systems and work with both Windows and Linux. I specialise in virtualisation technologies, cloud deployments, and system performance engineering. As a senior engineer have a track record of identifying trends and developing appropriate response actions. As a technical lead I have extensive experience producing knowledge and training materials across a range of formats and delivering the content to a wide range of technical and business audiences from C-level to technology user level. I have a proven capability of working cross-functionally with product management, development, an customer success teams to ensure that business, customer and support requirements are included in project planning and delivered to required timelines.
Links
| Pluralsight Profile | Microsoft Transcript |
Skills Summary
| DevOps & Development Tools | AWS Specific | Certifications & Other Skills | Platforms and Operatings Systems |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes, Helm | Control Tower & Organizations | MCSA Windows 2016 | AWS |
| Python, bash, PowerShell | CDK & CloudFormation | MCSA Windows 2008 | Azure |
| Terraform | IAM Identity Center & 3rd Party SSO | MCSE Window Server 2003 | Hyper-V |
| Ansible | CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline | UACA - Ubiquiti AirMax Certified Administrator | VMware |
| Jira, Bitbucket, GitHub, Azure DevOps, GitLab | Route53, Routing, ELB, Network Firewall | Switching & Routing | Nutanix |
| MS-SQL, PostgreSQL | Transit Gateways & AWS Client VPN | Wireless Network Design & Implementation | Windows Server 2003-2022 |
| Prometheus, Grafana, InfluxDB | EC2, S3, DynamoDB | VoIP | Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) |
| GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins | EKS and Fargate | Active Directory | Ubuntu |
| Python Boto3 | Microsoft Exchange | Amazon Linux | |
| AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) & Private CA (PCA) | PKI/Certificates |
Experience & Achievements
February 2024 - Present | AWS Architect & Line Manager | Version 1 |
Responsibilities
- Line management of a team of 4 engineers directly reporting to me
- Full range of Career Path Development (CPD) stages from Associate DevOps Engineer to AWS Architect
- Mentoring and coaching of a number of engineers across the organisation
- Ranging from newly joined Associate Engineers to Senior Engineers looking to move between teams and practices
- Pre-sales consultations with customers
- Providing technical guidance and expertise to customers on AWS solutions
- Project Architect and Platform Engineer for AWS projects
Projects
Public Sector Customer - Platform Solution Development
This engagement includes ongoing platform support and solution design and development for a Public Sector customer. The project covers a wide range of common AWS services and other common DevOps tools.
January 2023 - January 2024 | Senior Consulting Engineer & Line Manager | Version 1 |
Responsibilities
- Line management of a team of 4 engineers directly reporting to me
- Full range of Career Path Development (CPD) stages from Associate DevOps Engineer to AWS Architect
- Project/Delivery Technical Team Lead for AWS projects
- Responsible for project delivery and team management
- Responsible for project estimation and scheduling
- Responsible for project technical design and implementation
Projects
Leading European Financial Services Provider - Multi-Cloud Landing Zone Design
This engagement was a design and architecture project to update and expand the customer’s existing cloud infrastructure as a response to EU DORA regulations. This included expanding their existing small scale AWS Landing Zone to accommodate all application development, testing and production workloads. They also required connectivity and interoperability between AWS and their Azure and on-premises environments. The design called for a complete restructuring of their AWS network architecture to accommodate the new requirements including deployment of Palo Alto Next-Generation (NGFW) firewalls and configuring VPN connectivity to Azure and on-premises. The design also required including AWS Transit Gateway (TGW) to provide connectivity between all accounts and regions, AWS Backup to provide centralised backup and restore capability, and AWS Disaster Recovery (DRS) to provide point in time recovery in line with required RPO and RTO objectives.
Multinational Financial Crime Detection Solution Provider - AWS Landing Zone Deployment
The team was tasked to provision an AWS Multi-Account Landing Zone (MALZ) and complete migration of 24 development, testing, and end customer environment AWS accounts to the new landing zone by the end of Q2 2023 (starting in mid-March 2023). The solution included AWS Control Tower to deploy and manage policies, multi-region hub and spoke networking including AWS Network Firewall based inspection and centralised shared services all defined in Terraform. The project enabled the customer to migrate their environment from their previous shared environment and take control of the policies and changes impacting their environments and services..
- Team lead for AWS workstream delivery of customer project as the primary workstream of a multicloud solution including AWS, Azure, VMware Cloud and Oracle
- Delivering AWS Control Tower managed Multi-Account Landing Zone (MALZ) Organization in preparation for customer migration to the new platform
- Infrastructure spanning 10+ AWS regions including cross-regional networking
- Migrated customer development/engineering, test & training, and production workloads to Landing Zone
- 24 accounts migrated
- 2800+ EC2 instances migrated
- 3400+ EBS volumes migrated
- Zero down time for end customer services during migration
- Provided AWS platform for VMware and Oracle workstreams
- Technologies used:
- Terraform
- AWS CloudFormation
- AWS Control Tower
- Service Control Policies (SCP)
- Transit Gateway (TGW)
- Private VPC Endpoints (VPCe)
- AWS Client VPN
- CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline
- Systems Manager (SSM)
- AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and Private CA (PCA)
Internal Innovation Team
- Delivered initial offering of a new Kubernetes deployment accelerator product offering targeting AWS EKS
- Deployed using Terraform and Bitbucket Pipelines
- Leveraging Terraform, Helm
- Including AWS ELB integration and ArgoCD
- Identified process improvement and team growth opportunities within an internal innovation team
- In collaboration with management introduced a new team lead opportunity for developing potential lead engineers
- Technologies used:
- Terraform
- Kubernetes, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- Helm
- EC2 and AWS Fargate
- ArgoCD
- Bitbucket Pipelines
Academy Coaching
- As tech lead for Automation Logic Academy, oversaw team assigned projects and provided technical guidance and mentoring resulting in a 100% graduation rate for the assigned cohort of students.
January 2023 - January 2023 | Principal Engineer - DevOps | Stryker |
Continuation of the Staff DevOps Engineer role at Vocera following the acquisition of Vocera by Stryker.
Left for a new opportunity soon after the finalisation of the acquisition.
November 2021 - January 2023 | Staff DevOps Engineer | Vocera |
Key Achievements
- Delivered enhanced data driven insight on customer systems into in-house built remote support tooling
- Drove team wide process improvements in documentation to enhance available training and standard operating procedures (SOP) resources
- Lead role in team restructuring in support of new team management
- Led adoption of DevOps and TechOps workloads from an acquired entity into existing team
- Scoping Azure for future inclusion in multi-cloud architecture
Responsibilities
- Team Scrum Master responsible for estimation, scheduling and delivery across sprints and program increments
- Lead engineer for ongoing delivery and maintenance of several system projects including partnerships with development and customer facing teams
- Delivering Infrastructure as code (IaC) enhancements and improvements on AWS hosted systems through Python based AWS CDK and Ansible to provision new features and environments
- Managing development test resources hosted in Azure
- Senior engineer providing technical leadership, guidance, and mentoring to team members
January 2021 - November 2021 | Staff Technical Support Engineer | Vocera |
Key Achievements
- Lead technical consultant for product deployments in AWS and Azure
- Determined project requirements and contributed to strategy for DevOps team
- Delivered a project to security harden Vocera Enterprise Platform deployments
- Engaged with management, development, and deployment teams to identify and deliver all requirements
- Delivered in depth, enhanced training and knowledge articles on working with and supporting Microsoft Hyper-V based deployments
- Scoped Support requirement for new deployments delivered on Nutanix Prism/AHV and delivered supporting training and knowledge materials
Responsibilities
- Lead support engineer for the Vocera Integration product suite including Vocera Enterprise Platform
- Cross functional team engagement with Product Management, Development, DevOps, Sales, Implementation and Support teams
April 2020 - January 2021 | Senior Technical Support Engineer | Microsoft |
Key Achievements
- EMEA region support lead for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Windows support of Linux environments
- Created and delivered Windows Subsystem for Linux training to global Windows Performance Support teams.
- Key contributor to a project to onboard a new team to supporting Windows Performance
- Part of the lead EMEA team for transferring Windows Shell support topics to Windows Performance team
Responsibilities
- Debugging Windows performance issues for Microsoft Commercial global customer base using Windows Debugger (WinDbg), Windows Performance Toolkit and SysInternals tools
- Supporting customers using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) v1 and v2
- Primary Performance engineer for UK Government customers
April 2018 - April 2020 | Senior Technical Support Engineer | Vocera |
Key Achievements
- Led design and strategy of a 4-tier certification program appropriate for all Support product lanes
- Delivered associate certification for Integrations products support lane on time and to specification
- Analysed historical and recent case history to identify trends and develop strategies to improve Support response
- Successfully introduced Support Out-Of-Box release management process to Integrations and Platform product lanes
Responsibilities
- Lead support engineer for the Vocera Integration product suite including Vocera Engage
- Work closely with product management and development teams to identify and scope enhancements and fixes for future product releases across complete integration product suite
- Identifying and developing workaround patch scripts using PowerShell and Bash managed in BitBucket version control
- Escalation support and management
April 2016 - April 2018 | Technical Support Engineer 4 | Vocera |
Key Achievements
- Delivered subject matter expert presentations to company wide audiences, including C-level
- Developed PowerShell based install scripts for Vocera Clinical Workflow Engine
- Created training materials for internal and customer audiences
- Worked with management to develop, schedule and deliver the creation of a new support team for Vocera Voice and Messaging products based in Indiana, USA.
Responsibilities
- Lead support engineer for Vocera Clinical Workflow Engine and Care Team Sync
- Senior support engineer for Vocera Voice and supporting systems
- Provide escalation support for server performance, server sizing, networking and speech recognition
May 2014 - April 2016 | Technical Support Engineer 3 | Vocera |
Key Achievements
- Named Support Engineer for several of Vocera’s largest customers across UK, Middle East and US
- Developed knowledge material across a range of Vocera applications and supporting systems
June 2010 - May 2014 | Senior IS Support Engineer | Downe House |
Key Achievements
- Designed and implemented Remote Desktop Services deployment
- Exchange 2003-2010 migration
- System Center 2007 to 2012 migration
- Complete network VLAN/subnet redesign and deployment
- Design and implementation of multi-WAN connectivity to multiple remote facilities across UK and France
August 2008 - June 2010 | IS Support Engineer | Downe House |
Education
- Loughborough University, UK, BSc (Hons) 2:1 - Chemistry & Sport Science
Further Training
| Pluralsight: Terraform - Getting Started | Pluralsight: Ansible Fundamentals |
| Pluralsight: Kubernetes for Developers | Pluralsight: Go Fundamentals |
| Pluralsight: Getting Started with Kubernetes | Pluralsight: Kubernetes Package Management with Helm |
| Pluralsight: Agile Fundamentals | Pluralsight: Getting Started with Prometheus |
| Pluralsight: Docker & Kubernetes: The Big Picture | Udemy: Docker: A Project-Based Approach to Learning |
| Udemy: Beginning Project Management | Udemy: Ansible Essentials: Simplicity in Automation |
| Cisco: ICND1 | Cisco: ICND2 |
Personal Interests
| Running | Cycling |
| Computing & Technology | Hiking |