Alexander Fortin
Verified Expert in Engineering
Linux Administration Developer
Brescia, Province of Brescia, Italy
Toptal member since September 17, 2018
Alexander has been following the evolution of sysadmin best practices for the last 20+ years, reducing repetitive tasks and leveraging automation in order to focus on the most interesting engineering challenges. He has been automating cloud infrastructures since the inception of AWS EC2, and he's passionate about all things Python.
Portfolio
Experience
- Linux Administration - 20 years
- Python - 19 years
- AWS Cloud Architecture - 9 years
- DevOps - 7 years
- Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) - 5 years
- Ansible - 5 years
- Serverless - 3 years
- Terraform - 2 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
IPython, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Git, Linux, MacOS, Go
The most amazing...
...project I've worked on is Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/) which included developing plugins and Vagrant integration.
Work Experience
Senior System Engineer
Bonial International GmbH
- Introduced CI pipeline and style guide for Puppet development (tests, code reviews).
- Performed multiple upgrades of Puppet, from version 2 to 3 to 4.
- Grew the operations team, assisted HR in the hiring process, and onboarded new colleagues.
- Developed an internal tool to automate Terraform usage with multiple accounts.
- Consolidated manual procedures into automated ones using automation tools like Fabric (Python).
Senior System Engineer
Spreaker
- Managed cloud infrastructure stability and scalability.
- Replaced Bash scripts with Puppet to manage the infrastructure.
- Deployed monitoring/visibility solutions like Graphite, Zenoss Core, statsd, and ELK.
- Supervised major upgrade of mid-sized PostgreSQL instances to leverage newly introduced streaming replication.
- Codified common tasks into automation tools like Fabric (Python).
System Engineer, Co-Founder
Devsum
- Architected, designed, expanded, deployed, and monitored systems and networks infrastructures.
- Supported cloud solution architectural and management decisions.
- Selected and decided on technical strategies and new technologies to adopt and support sales/marketing decision making.
- Searched for new leads and developed new business relationships.
- Assisted clients in technological planning.
System Engineer
Studio Synthesis Srl
- Architected, designed, deployed, and monitored cloud infrastructures (both public and private) to run business intelligence services.
- Monitored and troubleshot local physical systems and networks.
- Monitored and managed on-site physical systems and networks for customers.
- Contributed to development of PHP modules for vTiger CRM open source software.
- Implemented and monitored backups.
Linux System Administrator
Informed Technology Pty Ltd
- Managed and monitored the overall behavior of the internal network.
- Managed different kinds of backups solutions.
- Performed services migrations between different OSes.
- Provided phone and email support for corporate customers.
- Troubleshot Linux servers issues on site (e.g. networking, firewalls misconfigurations).
Experience
SSL Notify Me
https://github.com/shaftoe/sslnotifymeBesides a couple of services not fully manageable via APIs without human interaction, e.g. ACM and SES verifications, every other component of the application is deployed (and updated) using Terraform.
Home Assistant
https://www.home-assistant.io/Education
Diploma Di Scuola Media Superiore in Scientific and humanistic high school
Liceo Scientifico Moretti - Gardone V.T. (Italy)
Certifications
Puppet certification
Pearson VUE
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Fabric, Node.js, Vuex, Vue, OpenLDAP
Tools
Boto 3, Puppet, Terraform, Git, ELK (Elastic Stack), Jenkins, Ansible, NGINX, Boto, IPython, Vagrant, PHP-FPM, RabbitMQ, Zenoss, Logstash, Kibana, Apache, OpenSSH, Stunnel, Iptables, Sendmail, TrueCrypt, Vtiger CRM, Apache HTTP Server, Asterisk, Monit, Munin, OpenVPN, BackupPC, Ganeti, Apache Tomcat, Gerrit, Duplicity, SaltStack
Languages
Python, Go, JavaScript, Bash, TypeScript, Ruby
Paradigms
DevOps, Jamstack, Agile, Automation, Samba
Platforms
Linux, JVM, MacOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Sensu, Solaris, Windows Server, Pentaho, FreeBSD, Rackspace Cloud, Debian, Docker, Icinga, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
Storage
Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Sphinx Search Engine, Datadog, LAMP Server, PostgreSQL, Redis, MySQL
Other
Serverless, AWS Cloud Architecture, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Linux Administration, Core, Libraries, Graphite, StatsD, LDAP, RSync, Bacula, Cyrus, BIND, Linux Servers, Firewalls, PBX, Box Backup, Networks, Design
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring