Values
I am first and foremost a values-driven person and leader. I work
best with, and for, people who share this philosophy:
- Open & Direct Communication
- Equality & Diversity
- Customer First
- Collaborating and Sharing
- Coaching, Teamwork & Mentoring
Strengths
- Detail Oriented & Big Picture Thinker
- Flexible Work Style & Relaxed Communicator
- Broad Expertise across both Business and Technology
I am at my best when I can share things: contributing to &
building communities, operating and managing large infrastructure
environments, pairing with, or leading and mentoring staff, and finding
ways to continually improve through technology and process.
You’ll find me as comfortable with debugging complex problems, from
network flows and packet traces, to hard-to-find distributed systems
issues, as discussing business strategy and organisational structure,
with or without a whiteboard, or helping teams work more effectively
together.
Expertise
I have an extensive technical background across both opensource &
proprietary technologies, a solid business and customer experience, and
the enthusiasm for delivering high quality solutions & services
through technology.
- Distributed Systems (network protocols & algorithms) in Erlang & Elixir
- Internet Networking: IPv4/IPv6 routing, anycast, BGP
and ECMP,
DNS and DNSSEC,
VXLAN
and similar container overlay networks
- Automation & Management of Large Scale Infrastructure (20k+
servers, 7+PB storage)
- Systems Monitoring and Management using Open-source
infrastructure
- Apache CouchDB
Administration & Consulting
- ITILv3 Service Support & Delivery
- FreeBSD & Linux container
infrastructure in AWS, EC2, Oracle & Google Cloud
- Decoupled systems using Message Queues (AMQP, MQTT, RabbitMQ, NATS)
- various DevOps tools, specialising in Ansible on Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud and AWS since 2006
- Continuous Integration and Deployment BuildKite, Jenkins, Google Cloud Build
- large arm64/aarch64 Ampere server expertise
incl IPMI,
iPXE on bare metal
- Peer-to-Peer Streaming media and IETF PPSPP Protocol
Tech Skills
Recruiters love keywords. Here are mine:
- languages: Erlang, Elixir, Perl, Phoenix, Go, GoLang, OCaml, zig,
C
- operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, Debian, RHEL, AWS, EC2,
GCP, OCI
- automation: ansible, puppet, chef, webhooks, bash, scripting, git,
nomad, consul, kubernetes
- databases: couchdb, foundationdb, postgresql, redis
- security: OWASP, Vault, TLS, mTLS, SSL, CA, ECDSA, Ed25519, RSA
- web: nginx, haproxy, traefik, envoy, graphql, REST, phoenix
- network: TCP/IP, IPv6, IPv4, UDP, SCTP, BGP, ECMP, DNS, DNSSEC,
anycast
- hardware: x864_64, arm64, IPMI, Equinix Metal, Oracle Cloud (OCI),
altra
Open Source Interests
For much of the last decade I have been closely involved with Open
Source projects and communities, from the Apache CouchDB project, and the
FreeBSD project, along with the Erlang and Elixir programming language
communities.
I have contributed to a large number of open source projects,
starting way back with Perl in
1999 and more recently to:
- FreeBSD UNIX operating system -
Ports committer
- member of erlang@ team maintaining Erlang, Elixir & RabbitMQ
stacks
- regular talks at conferences & communities
- Erlang and Elixir ecosystem
- getting OTP itself to build on Windows with the free MSVC
compiler
- rebar and erlang.mk build tools
- running the @ViennaBEAMers community
Erlang and Elixir meet up since 2014
- Apache CouchDB Committer
and Project Management Committee member
- Currently learning:
- Go & zig programming languages
- routing & BGP networking
Career History
Founder of SkunkWerks GmbH, Austria
Due to family relocation to Europe, I created a new Austrian-based
company, completing a variety of contracts that continued on from
JSONified.
Building backends for 2 startups, using FreeBSD, Elixir, RabbitMQ,
and Phoenix.
FreeBSD 10 to 12.1-RELEASE migration support for Klara Systems & other
customers.
I have also supported iWantMyName, a domain name reseller,
in stabilising their infrastructure, acting as Technical Lead,
including:
securing environment, passwords, runtime secrets, remove XSS and
related attacks
defend against Denial-of-Service attacks and implement
mitigations
implement CI & CD (Continuous Integration &
Delivery)
migration from Puppet to Ansible to improve ease of sysadmin in a
very small team
stabilise platform with migration from Linux to FreeBSD, and
achieve a significant increase in stability and 10x performance for
larger customers
extensive documentation and training across the dev team
tuning and debugging many Erlang and Elixir applications for
maximum throughput and reliability
Design & Implementation of Peer-to-Peer Streaming Peer
Protocol PPSPP in
[Erlang/OTP]
Development of Linux, OSX & FreeBSD Packages for Apache CouchDB &
customers
Implementing Riemann, CollectD, Graphite stack for
monitoring & metrics for a DB hosting customer
Founder of JSONified Ltd, New Zealand
Providing Data Migration and Open Data implementation &
consulting
- Design & Implementation of Data Migration and Open Data
services
- Provide Apache CouchDB Consulting and Support
- Managed CouchDB Installations (Distributions) across Windows, Mac,
Linux
- Bespoke Training Packages
- Operational Support Documentation
- Development & Debugging
Manager
of Engineering Optimisation & ICT Operations Leadership Team
- Organisation: Spark
Digital New Zealand, ICT Operations
- Dec 2008 - July 2011
Drive cost & efficiency improvements, via operational budget >
2m$, across ICT Operations
- Provide Consulting to Sales and Lines of Business on technology and
outsource bids
- Set Up & Lead team of 20 senior engineers to provide tier 3
support functions
- Develop standards & best practice across IT asset lifecycle from
design, through operate to disposal
- Define and drive Technology Transformation strategy for ICT
Operations
- Sponsor & Run Business Cases to execute the strategy, approx
NZ$6m/year capital budget
- Lead Critical & Visible Client Escalations
- Part of ICT Operations Leadership team for ~ 350 engineers &
$35m annual budget
Transition
Manager & ICT Operations Leadership Team
- Organisation: Spark
Digital New Zealand, ICT Operations
- Dec 2007 - Dec 2008
Manage transitions of new customers & capabilities into
production, across people, processes, tools/technology, and
organisations
- Develop & extend Spark Digital services portfolio, building
services and associated cost/effort models in conjunction with
Consultants and Service Line Managers
- Lead troubled account resolution activities, coordinating resources
& plan, returning account to stability and profitability
- Provided guidance to other groups & teams on ITIL Process
implementations
- Managed transition of largest storage infrastructure (in New
Zealand) into production support
Technology Operations
Manager
- Organisation: Spark
Digital New Zealand, ICT Operations
- Mar 2007 - Dec 2007
Accountable for technical delivery of ITIL-based managed services to
2 clients in Financial & Construction sector
- Manage virtual team of 30 staff, covering 350 servers mixed
linux/unix/windows, 200 network links & business applications, in 2
data centres
- Involved at senior levels of the account, to CIO level as
required
- Transitioned new “KiwiSaver” virtual platform of over 100 VMs in
time for legislative deadline
- Successful Re-sign of both clients with expanded scope of
services
EMEA Storage Services Lead
- Organisation: HP Services, Global Delivery EMEA
- Dec 2002 - Nov 2006
Ensure reliable & cost-effective delivery of backup/restore +
storage services according to ITIL framework
- Domain comprised approximately 20 000 servers and 7 PB of storage
across 300 arrays, using IBM, Symantec, EMC & HP storage arrays and
backup software
- Set up & Manage direct team of 14 staff in 8 countries, Build
& Lead virtual team of approx 200 staff, supporting 7 platinum
customers
- Lead re-alignment & off-shoring projects, including building up
30 people in backup/storage support team in off-shore location
- Define & Implement Global Services for Managed Storage &
Backup, including Service Collateral, External Benchmarking, Pre-sales
and Bid support
- Lead customer workshops to define new storage-related services such
as archiving, tiered backup + storage architectures
- Collaborate with HP Product Divisions on bug fixes, enhancement
requests, and roadmap, including contributing 3 patents
- Drive 20% reduction in maintenance costs per annum, and generate 40%
savings on external contracts after re-alignment and off-shoring
- Lead for Infrastructure Management Services organisation during the
Data Safety Programme to standardise how backup & recovery is
managed across EMEA, facilitating concensus
Technical Project Manager
- Organisation: HP Services, Global Delivery EMEA
- May 2001 - Dec 2002
Develop & Drive 30% monitoring event reduction through
standardisation, across Trade & internal clients
- Be the interface between Operations Bridge, Account Teams, and
Delivery Organisations during setup of Dublin and Barcelona NOC
(Operations Bridge)
- Standardise and consolidate backup environment for 400 servers
across EMEA with standard policies & hardware dramatically improving
reliability of business data recovery
- Implement ITIL-structured Problem Management process including
reporting, metrics, to deliver 2.5x headcount reduction
- Develop training material and deliver sessions for onsite &
off-shore teams for HP backup/recovery technologies
Technical
Writer for Telecommunication Protocols
- Company: Kudos, Grenoble, France
- May 2000 - May 2001
Structure and develop technical documentation for Telecoms
products
- Act as SME For other writers & proof content
- Enhance and support internal document creation environment
- Knowledge of FrameMaker, XML/SGML/PDF formats, Revision Control
Systems e.g. Subversion, CVS
IT Consultant
- Company: Unisys UK, Uxbrige, Greater London, United Kingdom
- September 1999 - May 2000
Provide pre-sales support, and project-based consultancy
- Define automated roll-out for 10 000 users and 500 servers
- Define & Implement Security Policies for Internet Banking
environment
- Plan and execute migration from NetWare to Windows for Telco
IT Consultant
- Company: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
- February 1996 - September 1999
Facilitate, coordinate & implement University IT policy &
strategy
- Design, and implement distributed system in perl for single sign-on
and consumables accounting across campus on OpenVMS, Solaris, Windows,
Netware and Linux
- Consolidate NetWare NDS services and migrate to Windows NT4.0 for
12_000 staff and students
- Implement cross-campus forums for defining technical standards and
integrated workflows
Training & Education
- 1997 : various post-graduate papers in Telecom protocols
- 1996 : B.Com: Business & Information Management, Canterbury
University, New Zealand (Commerce)
- 1994 : B.Sc: Chemistry & Mathematics, Canterbury University, New
Zealand (Science)
- ITIL Masters v2 Certificate: completed December 2006 - Service
Delivery & Service Support
- PMI Seminars : Fundamentals, Risk, Quality, Scheduling & Cost,
Individual Leadership
Technical Certification
- Kepner-Tregoe Problem Analysis
- HP Storage Essentials, HP Open Analytics, HP Tape Technologies
- HP Data Protector Performance Troubleshooting
- HP XP and EVA Disk Array Concepts
- Microsoft MCSE : NT4.0, with some Windows 2000 courses
Spoken Languages &
Citizenship
- triple United Kingdom, Eire & New Zealand citizenship
- English (native)
- French (fluent)
- German (fluent)
Personal Interests
- Folk music instruments incl Whistle, Violin, Accordion, Guitar
- Telemark and Back-country Skiing
- Hiking, Tramping, and Biking
- Travelling and International Cuisine