Andy Potanin, Network Protocols Developer in Durham, United States
Andy Potanin

Network Protocols Developer in Durham, United States

Member since February 9, 2018
Andy is a businessman who understands the fundamentals of business and who knows how to code. Overall, he's very experienced in nearly all aspects of contemporary web development, deployment, DevOps, and the elements of building a solid stack that can scale. Early on in his career, he was a very early adopter of Docker and Node.js and has a strong development background with the WordPress API.
Andy is now available for hire

Portfolio

Experience

Location

Durham, United States

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Google Compute Engine (GCE), Docker, SFTP, SSH, Atom

The most amazing...

...thing I've created was a container-driven hosting platform focused on CI and workflow that allows developers to deliver quicker and more efficiently.

Employment

  • Senior DevOps Engineer

    2018 - PRESENT
    Blackboard (via Toptal)
    • Automated Dockerized microservice deployments to Azure Service Fabric.
    • Automated microservice deployments and infrastructure updates using Octopus Deploy.
    • Automated HA (multi-region) service and infrastructure deployments.
    • Modularized deployment scripts and modules for reuse.
    • Provisioned multiple Azure resources, including Key Vaults, CosmosDB, ServiceBus, EventHub, and others.
    Technologies: Docker, Windows PowerShell, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy, Azure Service Fabric, Azure, Terraform
  • CEO | Partner

    2011 - 2020
    Usability Dynamics
    • Worked with a team of brilliant engineers, project managers, designers, and copywriters to deliver top-notch technology services.
    • Led by example by always learning and staying on top of emerging technology trends while mentoring and developing team members.
    • Enhanced and managed the distributed product release flow by automating the testing, tagging, packaging, and releasing of public plugins and modules and libraries.
    • Handled the business development efforts in the B2B space by defining the organizational mission and business objectives.
    Technologies: PaaS, Cloud Computing, DevOps
  • Senior Technical Manager

    2014 - 2017
    Usability Dynamics
    • Migrated 140 client applications from single-node deployments to containerized horizontally scalable clusters on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
    • Engineered various deployment strategies on AWS, GCE, and Azure.
    • Trained team members on stateless application development patterns and continuous integration (CI) patterns.
    • Gained a great deal of experience with Docker while building a proprietary Docker-based hosting platform.
    • Implemented container-based continuous deployment (CD) and development and workflow principles.
    • Published 13 public packages and 17 more private packages; more information can be found at Npmjs.com/~andy.potanin.
    • Published over 40 Docker images. (more information can be found at Hub.docker.com/u/andypotanin/).
    • Oversaw the development of multiple Node.js-based web services.
    Technologies: NGINX, HAProxy, RabbitMQ, CircleCI, Elasticsearch, CoreOS, Docker, Node.js, Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
  • Full-stack Senior Developer

    2012 - 2014
    Usability Dynamics
    • Developed a WordPress hosting infrastructure based on Docker; oversaw the development of WP-Property, WP-Invoice, WP-CRM, and WP-Stateless.
    • Leveraged a variety of technologies (Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ, and Percona) and deployments on numerous long-term projects.
    • Published and participated in over 400 repositories.
    • Made over 7,000 codebase contributions and revisions; more information can be found at the link: Github.com/andypotanin.
    • Reached the top 11% in 2017 on Stack Overflow; can be seen using the link, Stackoverflow.com/users/104247/andy.
    • Oversaw the development of WordPress products with over 630,000 downloads; more information can be found at Profiles.wordpress.org/andypotanin/#content-plugins.
    Technologies: VMware vCenter, Linux, MySQL, HHVM, PHP, WordPress, GitFlow, GitHub, Varnish
  • Systems Engineer | Applications Developer

    2010 - 2012
    Northrop Grumman | TASC
    • Oversaw the development of a web-based ERP system customized for the unique business process of the technical engineering and assistance team (TE&AT) with an objective to support the US Marine Corps logistics forces.
    • Supported the Marine Corps' mission as a member of a 25-person team.
    • Improved daily operations by leveraging various technologies.
    • Created methods for analyzing and quantifying team member performance.
    Technologies: Linux, MySQL, PHP, WordPress
  • Information Technology Chief

    2005 - 2010
    United States Marine Corps
    • Led a group of eight-to-eleven IT personnel in the day-to-day operations.
    • Coordinated and scheduled IT training sessions which were tailored specifically for the individual at hand.
    • Conducted performance evaluations and recommendations for promotion.
    • Implemented a SharePoint powered asset and task tracking system for section cohesion.
    • Delegated and supervised a monthly average of 42.5 individual tasks and projects within IT.
    • Managed an inventory valued over $1.2 million—achieving a 100% compliance in a field supply and maintenance analysis office (FSMAO) inspection.
    Technologies: Linux, Security, WiFi, SharePoint, Windows Server 2003, Cisco Networking

Experience

  • Rabbit.ci Container Platform on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

    A robust PaaS for a Node.js, WordPress, and PHP application deployment that is focused on the GitHub workflow. The platform was created to be a hosting solution that puts the workflow first, making it one of the first hosting platforms that can handle the entire CI process.

    This platform predates Kubernetes but is very similar in many ways. However, many things that Kubernetes does not provide, our platform handles very well, most notably a native caching and proxying layer.

    The platform is a self-healing network of CoreOS machines that are moving production and staging containers around the data center with zero-downtime due to a status-aware state-of-the-art proxy, powered by a tightly coupled HAProxy, Varnish, and Node.js proxy layer.

    Containers are provisioned automatically when new GitHub branches are created and retired when a branch is removed. Developers can SSH or SFTP into any running environment using their GitHub credentials.

    The stack provisions CloudFront distributions for each application and handles invalidation requests automatically. Meanwhile, the data layer is handled by client-specific Percona clusters with a Memcached-based object-caching.

  • BoxMLS Infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

    A San Francisco-based company that is changing the real estate scene, BoxMLS runs a highly distributed network of Node.js microservices with a rock-solid continuous integration process. Millions of records are stored in an optimized Elasticsearch cluster with tasks and jobs being distributed via RabbitMQ.

    BoxMLS service monitors a number of multiple listing services (MLS) for data changes, normalizes and standardizes real estate data, and can send change notifications to subscribers even faster than MLS serverless.

  • WP-Stateless WordPress Plugin for Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-stateless/

    A WordPress plugin that helps make WordPress sites operate more like proper "twelve-factor" applications by moving media assets to Google Cloud Storage Bucket, used as a backing service, allowing for WordPress sites to be migrated and scaled horizontally without having to migrate the media files. The integration is entirely seamless with WordPress being unaware that the actual files are stored on a remote bucket.

    · Wordpress.org/plugins/wp-stateless
    · Github.com/wpCloud/wp-stateless

  • Git Docker
    https://github.com/wpCloud/git-docker

    A CLI utility that allows developers to easily provision a Docker container for any locally cloned Git directory simply by running "git docker start" from the directory root. The utility automatically abstracts the Docker-run arguments to start a container immediately with the Git directory being volume-mounted to the container which allows the developer to continue doing their work with all the necessary services running inside of their container.

    Developers could override default container settings by modifying simplified options in the Git config file. Although this method was very useful and reliable, we later depreciated it in lieu of our more robust GitHub-driven Rabbit CI Container Platform.

  • Docker Blackbox

    This was one of our first experiments with Docker that actually ran Docker inside Docker; we did this to compartmentalize the client environments so that they could then be migrated and redeployed as a single package, with Docker containers being packaged inside the main Docker image.

    I wanted to mention it because it's worth mentioning failures and things that didn't end up working out but that you learned a lot from.

  • UDX Product Updates API

    A hosted Node.js service that builds WordPress plugins and themes on each GitHub commit for specified branches, assuming the tests have been passed.

    This allows users of distributed WordPress products to enable pre-release updates that are handled by the native WordPress update functionality.

    The API emulates the WordPress.org responses by letting WordPress treat each GitHub commit as an updated version of the distributed product.

  • Red Door Company Infrastructure
    https://reddoorcompany.com

    A cutting-edge brokerage based out of Durham, NC has a native-feeling React.js front-end powered by the WordPress API. The application platform runs in a distributed Docker cluster and is backed by a Percona Cluster for the data layer, augmented by Elasticsearch.

    The application consumes MLS changes in real-time, analyzes each listing's data, and constantly generates unique landing pages to deliver market updates to the web faster than any competitor.

Skills

  • Languages

    PHP, Bash Script, PHP 5, JavaScript, Markdown, Less, CSS, HTML5, Go
  • Frameworks

    Express.js, Windows PowerShell, Knockout (Knockout.js), AngularJS, PHPUnit
  • Libraries/APIs

    Google Cloud API, Google Geocoding API, RequireJS, Lodash, jQuery, jQuery Plugins, WordPress REST API, GitHub API, WordPress API, Node.js, Slack API, Stripe API, Backbone.js, Authorize.net, PayPal API, Google Maps API
  • Tools

    Git, Varnish, CircleCI, WP-CLI, NPM, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Amazon CloudFront CDN, Mocha, Docker Swarm, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), NGINX, RabbitMQ, Composer, PageSpeed, Atom, GitHub, Jenkins, Azure Key Vault, PHP-FPM, VaultPress, Google Analytics, Let's Encrypt, AWS CloudFormation, Ansible, Makefile, Grunt, Gulp, Terraform
  • Paradigms

    REST API Architecture, DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment, Automated Testing, Agile Software Development, Unit Testing, API Architecture, Management
  • Platforms

    WordPress, Docker, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), CoreOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure Service Fabric, Kubernetes, Debian Linux, Apache2, Azure, Ubuntu, Ubuntu 14.04, Linux, SharePoint, Windows Server 2003, SharePoint 2013, Percona, Amazon EC2, Heroku
  • Storage

    MySQL, Elasticsearch, JSON, Azure Active Directory, MySQL Clustering, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Azure SQL, Google Cloud SQL, Datadog, JSON/XML Schemas, Memcached, Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft Exchange Server, Azure Blobs, MySQL Server, MariaDB, Redis, MongoDB
  • Industry Expertise

    Network Security, Security
  • Other

    Octopus Deploy, Load Balancers, Proxy Servers, RETS, IDX, IDX Integration, RESTful Web Services, Network Protocols, Unix/Linux Virtualization, WordPress Plugins, Security Clearance, Build & Release Engineering, Caching, Amazon Route 53, WordPress Themes, HAProxy, GitFlow, Google, Infrastructure Monitoring, JavaScript Libraries, SaaS, WebSockets, Google Cloud Functions, SSH, Private NPM Modules, HHVM, PaaS, SFTP, Cloud Computing, Cisco Networking, WiFi, VMware vCenter, Azure Service Bus, TCP/IP, TCP, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business, Procurement, Acquisitions, IT, IoT Security

Education

  • Master's Degree in General Business Administration and Management (MBA)
    2017 - 2019
    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Chapel Hill, NC, USA
  • Master's Degree in Business Administration and Management, Procurement, and Acquisitions (MBA)
    2010 - 2012
    Webster University - Camp Lejeune, NC, USA
  • Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology Management and Security
    2005 - 2010
    Campbell University - Camp Lejeune, NC, USA

Certifications

  • Security+
    AUGUST 2009 - PRESENT
    CompTIA
  • Network+
    JULY 2008 - PRESENT
    CompTIA

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