Jesse Rhoads
Phone: 352-258-3716, E-Mail: JesseRhoads@gmail.com
Online version of this resume available at http://www.jesserhoads.net/resume.html.
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesserhoads/

• Accomplished Site Reliability Engineering & Operations Professional, specializing in Proof of Concept Testing, Observability, and Automation. Experience motivating, navigating, and coordinating across remote teams. Strong passion for all things open source. Master troubleshooter with a quality analysis mindset, and distinct attention to details. Always learning, and takes pride in both mentoring others and being mentored by others; believes the sharing of knowledge is a powerful key to success.

• Over two decades as a trusted resource for Systems & Infrastructure Engineering teams of all sizes.
• Takes a hands-on approach to perfecting and battle-testing solutions "at scale" from Startup to Enterprise.
• Comfortable with DevOps / Agile Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Methodologies, and Source control management (SCM).
• Enjoys Engineering Load, Regression, Integration and Acceptance Testing based on both specifications and intuition.
• Confident in performing Server / Infrastructure Planning, Installation, and Maintenance on Ubuntu, RedHat/CentOS, and other distributions.
• Familiar with several Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Software Configuration Management, Monitoring, and Automation frameworks.

• Site Reliability Engineer IV, PagerDuty
  Remote (Oct 2022 - Present)
  • Engineering enablement on the SRE Service Delivery team: CI with CircleCI and BuildKite, CD with Argo, IaC with Terraform and Atlantis, Templating and Documentation in Backstage, and various other tooling in order to keep code flowing from developers' hands into production.
  • Achievements: Implemented a system for managing Service Level Objectives (SLO) using Nobl9, and curated the training materials for its use. Migrated 2000+ code repositories to a new artifact storage system. Completed a custom lift-and-shift of CI pipeline credentials from Vault to ASM.

• Staff Site Reliability Engineer II, Datto
  Remote / Orlando, FL (Apr 2020 - Oct 2022)
  • Constantly work to improve Observability, Reliability, and Quality of all systems. Extend config management as needed in Salt and Ansible. Participate in incident retrospectives, and perform root cause analysis of failures. Write code to automate operational tasks and reduce toil by the team. Guide new platform architecture into a sustainability mindset by conducting production readiness reviews.
  • Achievements: As the first SRE in the business unit, established SRE best practices in partnership with DevOps. Designed a training class on SRE concepts now given to all new engineering hires on a monthly basis. Built a custom system for MySQL HA with Orchestrator and HAProxy with Consul template and Python. Wrote scripts to emit custom metrics in telegraf, and handled designing dashboards in Grafana.

• SRE, MaxMind
  Remote / Orlando, FL (Mar 2019 - Apr 2020)
  • Plan, Architect, Test, and Automate systems in a software as a service platform using Ansible and Terraform on Google Cloud Platform and baremetal. Orchestrate custom load testing and chaos engineering. Research opportunities for operational improvements. Metrics collection in Prometheus and Grafana. Infrastructure Tools development in Python and Golang. On call rotation.
  • Achievements: Evaluated and deployed a Wazuh IDS to augment security policy enforcement capabilities. Designed a load test engine in Locust.

• Principal DevOps Engineer, Sonobi
  Winter Park, FL (Dec 2016 - Mar 2019)
  • Manage Software Deployment, Testing, Releases, and Platform updates. Wrangling of servers, both physical and cloud (AWS, etc). Support in-house Python and Golang applications throughout their life cycle. Develop tools and utilities to simplify platform management. Lead junior engineers and delegated tasks with guidance and pair programming.
  • Achievements: Automated containerized building and deployment of code to Ubuntu systems using Docker, Jenkins and Aptly. Built a Ceph cluster on commodity hardware to host storage for libvirt/kvm servers. Set up foreman and preseed to automate OS installation.

• Principal Site Reliability Engineer, QE Team, Virtustream, a Dell Technologies Company.
  Remote / Orlando, FL (Mar 2014 - Dec 2016)
  • Built out large-scale prototypes in cloud technology incubation labs. Performed quality and performance engineering, architected solid deployment methods/procedures, and validated infrastructure could operate as designed. Conducted load and functional QA testing of any platform or code changes, and contributed to configuration management in Saltstack and Python. Served as an integral part of the release pipeline, acting as an intermediary between Application Engineering, Automation/Development, and Operations departments in a geographically diverse team. Supported a 2+ Exabyte EMC ATMOS Storage Network distributed across many data centers with tens of thousands of nodes.
  • Achievements: Wrote scripts to collect data from assorted APIs and post useful/critical notifications via instant message (Slack), elevating the visibility of testing issues to increase correction/acceptance velocity. Earned Saltstack Certified Engineer (SSCE) certification. Worked with IXIA to write a python API Interface to automate configuration of Network Impediment hardware.

• Senior Infrastructure Engineer, Korrelate, now a J.D. Power Company.
  Orlando, FL (Mar 2012 - Mar 2014)
  • Responsible for provisioning, installing, configuring, operating, and maintaining all systems and related infrastructure in a systematic manner. Participate in technical research and building proof of concept systems, then benchmarking and evaluating their viability. Contribute to release planning/sizing as a member of the DevOps team. Ensure sprint unit testing passes on the Continuous Integration system for Ruby code using TeamCity. Maintain and scale hosted dedicated servers and cloud servers in AWS.
  • Achievements: Collaborated with the team on a software deployment automation system consisting of Chef and Capistrano to keep development VM's consistent with staging, pre-production, and production environments where possible. Built and migrated several Redis, MongoDB and Greenplum database systems. Centralized monitoring in ZenOSS; wrote scripts to track functionality metrics and alert on abnormalities. Implemented a modular IPTables firewall.

• Senior Systems Engineer UNIX/LINUX, HD Supply.
  Orlando, FL (Oct 2011 - Mar 2012)
  • Perform installation, maintenance and support for Unix and Linux systems as part of a large multi-platform enterprise IT infrastructure. Research new technologies. System engineering, server deployment, and software roll-out. Configuration, debugging and troubleshooting complex issues, involving vendors as necessary. High-level root cause analysis of service interruptions, ensuring they are resolved with corrective/preventative actions. Provide mentoring and training for System Engineers.
  • Achievements: Documented and scripted some tedious tasks to automate processes and improve efficiency.

• Senior Implementation Engineer - QA & Infrastructure Team, Highwinds Network Group.
  Winter Park, FL (Feb 2008 - Oct 2011)
  • System and Network Administration on the Development and QA Environments. Subnetting, IP/VLAN allocation, Brocade network device configuration, and DHCP/DNS provisioning as needed. Maintain and improve Systems automation using Cobbler and Puppet. Verify Release Notes, and Coordinate release deployment to Production. Also assist Development Department with Bug Validation, Integration Testing, and Documentation. Train new employees on various Infrastructure systems. Act as a key liaison between Development and Operations departments. Moderate user access to Servers & SVN repositories. Conduct server load tests using siege and other custom HTTP Content Delivery verification tools. Perform Tier-3 Customer Support as needed.
  • Achievements: Implemented infrastructure improvements by virtualizing server resources. Built multiple server labs (over 200 VMs) using XenServer virtualization software. Was part of the amazing team that designed, tested, built, and maintained the Highwinds CDN.
    
    
• Computer Service Engineer, Intermed PACS, Inc.
  Alachua, FL (May 2004 - Feb 2008)
  • Maintain and support multiple PACS long-term healthcare storage archives and imaging modalities; administer RedHat Linux, Solaris/Unix servers, and Windows workstations; configure and monitor various network appliances; support DVD Jukeboxes and tape libraries; maintain media inventory and perform data recovery as needed; maintain HL7 Mitra Broker and EMR Databases; manage & configure custom VOIP phone server systems and Zimbra Mail System. On-call 24/7 for network support.
  • Achievements: Learned PACS operation via hands-on administration while contributing Linux innovations and improving system management tools. Built network of VOIP Phone systems to exchange business calls over the Internet.
    
    
• Purchasing Manager, WebMD Practice Services, Inc.
  Alachua, FL (Jul 2003 - Apr 2004)
  • Researched, bid on, and procured critically needed technology products for both internal and customer use; suggested alternatives where possible by creating IT solutions based on technical specifications and experience; built and maintained familiarity with current technology standards and practices. Managed one direct report.
  • Achievements: Increased product availability and decreased costs by improving and cultivating vendor relationships.

• Lead Network Assistant, Gleim Publications, Inc.
  Gainesville, FL (Dec 2000 - Jul 2003)
  • Account creation, system support, and network monitoring on server systems; assisted software development team with implementing test and production environments, including migration of test to production; performed research and ordering of equipment; maintained and improved documentation of networking policies and procedures; installed, updated, and maintained system software; supported network hardware such as switches, hubs, routers, and the phone system; performed backups and restores of essential data; modified Phone and network wiring as necessary; On-call to respond and repair server or network problems.
  • Achievements: Implemented a complete Customer Service System with a software development team. Designed and coded several data systems with PHP and MySQL (LAMP).

• Consultant, Full-time Student.
  Gainesville, FL (Jul 1999 - Dec 2000)
  • Various contract and internship work while in college.

• ISP Service Technician, GDN Networks.
  Gainesville, FL (Jun 1998 - Jul 1999)
  • Administered multiple RedHat Linux servers. Provided end-user customer service and phone support. Set up e-mail and other Internet services for customer use. Maintained the company web site content, shell servers, and dial-up modem pool. Worked with downstream providers to ensure uptime and service quality. Was on-call via pager to respond to and repair service outages.
  • Achievements: Managed growth and worked to both build business and maintain service quality.
    
    

• Saltstack Certified Engineer v2 (SSCE2) #345 ID DA361D9B, April 2016.

• Bachelor of Science, Decision and Information Sciences, University of Florida Warrington College of Business, May 2002.