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Adam Hawkins
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Honolulu, HI, United States
Toptal member since August 28, 2018
Bio
Adam’s spent over eight years building products, growing teams, and setting engineering practices. His primary goal in every project is to accelerate the team's delivery and increase quality via SDLC using DevOps principles and practices such as continuous delivery. Technical-wise, his strongest area is back-end services and architecture but has wide-ranging experience moving up the stack to web apps and down the stack into system deployment.
Portfolio
Semaphore CI
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Packer, Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker
Cloud Academy
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Serverless...
Saltside (India)
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Helm, Kubernetes, JavaScript, Bash, Apache Thrift...
Experience
- Continuous Delivery (CD) - 8 years
- Ruby - 8 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 7 years
- DevOps - 5 years
- Docker - 4 years
Work Experience
Technical Writer
2016 - PRESENT
Semaphore CI
- Authored a tutorial on continuous deployment (CD) with Docker.
- Wrote tutorials on infrastructure automation with Ansible.
- Created a tutorial on continuous deployment (CD) with AWS.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Packer, Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker
Instructor and Technical Writer
2016 - PRESENT
Cloud Academy
- Created several video courses: Introduction to Kubernetes, Introduction to Docker, AWS Best Practices, and Serverless Survey.
- Hosted webinars on DevOps and containers.
- Wrote blog posts on DevOps, Kubernetes, and Docker.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Serverless, Kubernetes, Docker
SRE Team Lead
2015 - 2017
Saltside (India)
- Interviewed, hired, and trained engineers for a new engineering office in Bangalore.
- Taught TDD, system design, architecture, distributed system basics, and telemetry basics to a new group of engineers.
- Migrated from home-grown container orchestration to Helm-based deployments.
- Integrated ChatOps for on-demand topic branch review environments.
- Dropped the monthly AWS cost by 30% using a variety of cost cutting and tracking measures.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Helm, Kubernetes, JavaScript, Bash, Apache Thrift, Docker, Ruby
Platform Team Lead
2013 - 2015
Saltside (Sweden)
- Built and launched a payment collection service.
- Led the architectural rewrite from a monolith to SoA/microservices.
- Led the complete back-end rewrite for product version 2.
- Led the transition from golden images to Docker.
- Created a distributable application sandbox for use by mobile, web, and QE team members.
- Designed and set practices for real-time contract validation and system design guidelines.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache Thrift, Docker, JavaScript, Ruby
Lead Developer
2011 - 2014
Radium CRM
- Built, test, and developed an MVP using Ruby on Rails.
- Separated the architecture into front-end and back-end tiers.
- Built an initial Ember.js prototype application.
- Participated in customer calls and helped develop product requirements.
Technologies: Ember.js, PostgreSQL, Heroku, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
Project History
Who's Hiring?
An app that converts Hacker News "Who's Hiring Threads?" into an RSS feed. It is a simple Ruby application covered by tests and deployed to Heroku—nothing fancy, but certainly useful!
Introduction to Ansible (Tutorial)
https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/introduction-to-ansibleLearn about Ansible features and how Ansible fits with Chef and Puppet and see some technical examples of configuration management and workflow automation.
Continuous Deployment with Google Container Engine and Kubernetes (Tutorial)
https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/continuous-deployment-with-google-container-engine-and-kubernetesLearn how to deploy an application to Kubernetes with Google Container Engine and how to set up continuous deployment for it using Semaphore.
Continuous Deployment of Golden Images with Packer and Semaphore (Tutorial)
http://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/continuous-deployment-of-golden-images-with-packer-and-semaphoreLearn how to use Packer to build an AWS AMI (Amazon Machine Image), configure it to run a Docker image, and continuously deploy the application using Semaphore.
Continuous Deployment for Static Sites with Docker, AWS, and Ansible (Tutorial)
https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/continuous-deployment-for-static-sites-with-docker-aws-and-ansibleLeverage the power of Middleman, Docker, AWS, and Ansible to build a continuous deployment system for your static site.
Continuous Deployment with Docker, AWS, and Ansible (Tutorial)
https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/continuous-deployment-with-docker-aws-and-ansibleUse continuous deployment with Docker, Ansible, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk to take a greenfield project from the initial commit all the way to production.
Legacy Rails Q&A Michael Feathers, Adam Hawkins, Andrzej Krzywda (Panel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csiK5GCcjt8A video discussion and panel from Wroclove.rb 2014.
Application Architecture: Boundaries, Object Roles, and Patterns (Talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2w57QBIkU&list=PLoGBNJiQoqRCYNOfsPoxVWChbT5x5D5WP&index=7A talk at Wroclove.rb 2014 on Hexagonal Architecture.
Production Ready Ruby (Talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bpq1PoAzOQ&A talk at RubyConf India 2017 on telemetry and other practices.
Shipping Code at Saltside: Two Years on Docker (Talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcOx21_e6fAA presentation at DevOps Days 2016 in Bangalore discussing what it's like to build and develop an application using Docker with notes on what comes next.
Building Saltside's Helm Chart (Post)
Push Helm’s limits to build preconfigured production/staging charts.
Serverless Survey (Video Course)
https://cloudacademy.com/cloud-computing/survey-of-serverless-across-the-cloud-course/Learn similarities and differences between AWS, GCP, and Azure serverless functions with this Survey of Serverless Across the Cloud course.
Getting Started with AWS: Real World Practices (Video Course)
https://cloudacademy.com/amazon-web-services/getting-started-with-an-amazon-web-services-solution-real-world-practices-course/This video course the AWS landscape and teach what you need to know to build application on AWS. It's effectively a course on AWS best practices for beginning/intermediate AWS users.
Introduction to Kubernetes (Video Course)
https://cloudacademy.com/cloud-computing/introduction-to-kubernetes-course/With containers being a common tool to bundle applications, managing containers is key. Introduction to Kubernetes looks at getting containers under control.
Introduction to Docker (Video Course)
https://cloudacademy.com/cloud-computing/introduction-to-docker-course/This was my first video course. It's an introductory course that leads into deployment options (such as Kubernetes).
TeamCI
My own Sass project for testing team code against shared coding standards; built with Ruby, Docker, and a generous amount of Bash.
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Ruby on Rails API
Tools
Vagrant, AWS CloudFormation, Docker Compose, Packer, Ansible, Cucumber, Terminal, Helm, Puppet, Chef
Languages
Bash, Ruby, JavaScript
Frameworks
Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby on Rails 3, Sinatra, Serverless Framework, Ember.js, Express.js, Apache Thrift
Paradigms
Continuous Delivery (CD), Test-driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration (CI), DevOps, Continuous Deployment, Serverless Architecture, Automation
Platforms
Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, MacOS, Heroku, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
Redis, MongoDB, NoSQL, JSON/XML Schemas, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Memcached
Other
Kubernetes Operations (kOps), Serverless
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