Work History

• 2023

  (UK government client)

  Senior Site Reliability Engineer

  (June 2023 - December 2023) | (remote)

  
  

  • Led the design and development of a cloud-based solution for a UK government client using Terraform, BASH, Docker and Kubernetes.
• 2021

  (UK government client)

  Senior Site Reliability Engineer

  (January 2021 - September 2023) | (remote)

  
  

  • Designed, built and maintained a cloud-based PaaS system hosting a bespoke application developed for a UK government client using Terraform and Kubernetes.
• 2014

  Gibbsoft Ltd

  Founder

  (February 2014 - January 2021) | Various

  Independent IT contractor specialising in DevOps Consultancy.

  Contracts

  UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

  DevOps Lead Engineer

  (October 2019 - present) | Swindon

  Working with UKRI to architect, build and maintain secure infrastructure on public cloud (AWS). Regularly using Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes/OpenShift.

  Innovate UK

  Lead DevOps Engineer

  (April 2018 - September 2019) | Swindon

  Working with Innovate UK to define, implement, manage and maintain Cloud infrastructure. Working with suppliers and other Stakeholders to ensure fit for service architecture/processes are implemented. Built and configured new server platforms and infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes/OpenShift on AWS.

  Department of Work and Pensions, GOV.UK (DWP)

  Digital Head of Technology Operations

  (December 2017 - April 2018) | Newcastle Upon Tyne

  Building cloud infrastructure on AWS using Terraform and Puppet to host various public facing pension services such as Check Your State Pension and Get Your State Pension.

  Innovate UK

  DevOps Lead Engineer

  (November 2016 - December 2017) | Swindon

  Working with Innovate UK on behalf of M4 Managed Services to define, implement, manage and maintain Cloud infrastructure. Working with suppliers and other Stakeholders to ensure fit for service architecture/processes are implemented. Built and configured new server platforms and infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes/OpenShift on AWS. Identification and development of resources to establish a sustainable internal capability for long term DevOps and hosting needs.

  GOV.UK PAY, GDS

  Senior WebOps Engineer

  (August 2016 - November 2016) | London

  Spent 4 months working within the .GOV.UK Pay team at GDS on behalf of Kainos. As part of the Government-as-a-Platform (GaaP) helped build an enterprise-class payments platform using Terraform, Chef and Ansible with Docker around Jenkins on AWS.

  NHSBSA

  DevOps Consultant

  (January 2016 - July 2016) | Newcastle Upon Tyne

  Spent 7 months (3 months + 3 extensions) with the NHSBSA as DevOps Consultant on behalf of IndigoBlue Consulting. To engender a DevOps culture I formed a scrum team using the client’s own previously siloed resources and led them through the design and implementation of a greenfields CI/CD system based around GitLab­CI, Terraform and Ansible in the Skyscape vCloud.

  UCAS

  Puppet SME

  (April 2015 - October 2015) | Cheltenham

  Spent 6 months (3 months + 1 extension) with UCAS as Puppet SME floating between 8 SCRUM teams. Devised scalable masterless implementation on AWS. Extensive remediation work on estate of over 100 Puppet modules. Wrote a Windows Webfarm custom type/provider in Ruby and Powershell.

  Symantec.cloud

  Cloud Architect

  (February 2014 - April 2015) | Gloucester

  Spent 13 months (6 month + 2 extensions) with Symantec.cloud. Implemented configuration management using Python, and later masterless Puppet in very constrained environments.

• 2012

  NTT Com Security AG

  Senior Linux Engineer, DevOps

  (March 2012 - January 2014) | Theale, Reading, Berkshire, UK

  NTT is the 5th largest IT Services Company in the world.

  
  

  • Writing puppet modules and manifests, both in PE and Puppet open­source.
  • Writing automation scripts in BASH, PERL, Ruby and Python.
  • Linux build and configuration management using Redhat/CentOS with Cobbler and Puppet.
  • Provided a consistent and stable platform for NTT Com Sec’s market leading Managed Security Service working as a strong team player and great communicator within the DevOps team.
  • Project Manager and Technical Lead for a data centre migration with a budget of £1M. Led the design and implementation of a security focused scalable enterprise class physical and virtual infrastructure.
• 2009

  Moreover Technologies Inc

  DevOps Engineer

  (June 2009 - February 2012) | Dayton, Ohio, USA

  Moreover harvest over 2.5 million articles and posts per day. Enterprise clients use the award winning Newsdesk product to gain strategic business intelligence from this enormous up to the minute database of media monitoring.

  
  

  • Headed up the Infrastructure team, building and managing around 400+ physical and virtual Linux servers spread across 4 locations in the USA, UK and in Amazon AWS/EC2 cloud.
  • Designed and implemented a scalable enterprise class VMware vSphere solution with tiered Equallogic SAN storage to drastically reduce data centre footprint and hosting costs while simplifying management. Achieved a p2v ratio of 25:1.
  • Planned, managed and led the migration of Moreover’s New Jersey data centre to Dayton Ohio without any significant downtime.
  • Standardised VM builds on RHEL/CentOS 64-bit Linux installations using Kickstart scripts over PXE (Cobbler).
  • Working closely with the development team in an Agile development environment providing in-house platform and application support which includes supporting Linux, SQL, Java, PERL, Apache, Nagios, Cacti, etc.
• 2008

  Gibbsoft Ltd

  Founder

  (March 2008 - June 2009) | Various

  Independent IT contractor.

  
  

  • VMware ESX, SANs and Linux/Windows Server deployments on behalf of PCI Services Ltd.
  • RHEL5 Clustering/SAN implementations and support on behalf of NCS PLC & Moreover Technologies.
  • Business Continuity Planning consultations to the NHS and various service and manufacturing organisations. Pre-sales virtualisation consultations and implementations on behalf of ITPS Ltd.
• 2003

  IT Professional Services Ltd

  Data Centre Manager

  (January 2003 - February 2008) | Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, UK

  ITPS is a leading North East based IT VAR/solutions house with a well-established client base throughout the UK. The company had 75 staff and turned over around £8.5M. My role enabled me to both further develop my management skills and still remain hands-on.

  
  

  • Developed the Data Centre architecture almost from scratch under very broad objectives from company directors, to a well respected tier-2 (TIA-942) facility spread over 3 geographical locations, housing 200+ servers and for 50+ customers with 5 dedicated engineers.
  • Designed and deployed significant solutions architecture for ITPS and their clients.
  • Greatly improved uptime and service levels for ITPS Data Centre customers by facilitating 24-hour support and introducing automated monitoring and alerting systems.
  • Managed many substantial consultancy projects from inception, through to roll-out and sign-off on schedule and to budget. Some clients include GAC Shipping, the NHS and Swissport.
  • Built a formidable 3rd line support team by training and mentoring junior staff. Held regular performance appraisals, career planning, and training needs analysis.
  • Additionally, I introduced HRM to the organisation adopting a strategic approach to human resource matters company-wide. I held the position of HR Manager as well as Data Centre manager for the latter 2 years of this appointment.
• 2001

  VeriSign Inc

  Engineering Production Manager

  (March 2001 - June 2002) | Doxford International, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, UK

  VeriSign had a market cap of $8 billion and employed over 4000 people in 15 countries. It was the market leader in Internet security services, DNS and electronic commerce over the Internet. Although a managerial position, this role enabled me to stay very much ‘hands-on’. I frequently built and administered systems and developed code/scripts when required.

  
  

  • Increased VeriSign’s commercial presence by leading the Production Team in working with project sponsors and developers on the full software development life cycle of the internationalisation and roll out of many pan-European Internet storefronts.
  • Achieved an SLA uptime of 99.99% by designing, implementing and operating a 24-hour monitoring system of all business critical systems using Deep Matrix IP monitor with C, ASP and MS SQL Server.
  • Secured revenue streams by installing, maintaining and ensuring constant operational and security states of all customer-facing Internet systems including racks.
• 2000

  Domainnames.com

  Projects Manager

  (Oct 2000 - March 2001) | Doxford International, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, UK

  Managed IT projects to completion on time and to budget.

• 1992

  MTC Computer Training & Consultancy

  Senior IT Consultant/Trainer

  (1992 - 2000) | Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, UK

  Delivered many official curriculum courses targeted at System Managers and IT Professionals in corporate IT departments.

• 1986

  MARI

  Software Training Officer

  (1986 - 1992) | Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, UK

  Developed and delivered training courses in SDLC management, C, PASCAL and Unix Shell Scripts.

Education

• 2006

  University of Sunderland

  Post Graduate Diploma, Human Resource Management

  Sunderland, UK
• 2002

  University of Sunderland

  Post Graduate Diploma, Information Technology Management

  Sunderland, UK
• 1999

  University of Sunderland

  Post Graduate Certificate, Management of Information Technology

  Sunderland, UK
• 1994

  University of Sunderland

  Bachelor of Arts, Information Technology

  Sunderland, UK
• 1992

  University of Sunderland

  BTEC HNC (tranferred to BAIT), Information Technology

  Sunderland, UK
• 1989

  South Tyneside Marine and Technical College

  BTEC First Certificate, Computer Studies

  South Shields, UK

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