Ben Mishkin
Verified Expert in Engineering
Cloud Infrastructure Developer
Austin, TX, United States
Toptal member since March 10, 2017
Ben is a seasoned engineering leader with 20 years of experience in cloud infrastructure, operations, DevOps, and SecOps. He specializes in ML/AI and LLMs and holds certifications in AWS and GCP. He has led teams across various industries, including healthcare, social networks, eCommerce, and video games. With computer science, machine learning, and finance expertise, Ben has HIPAA, PCI, and SOC2 compliance experience. He excels in writing code, buildouts, operations, and migrations.
Portfolio
Experience
- Cloud Infrastructure - 15 years
- DevOps - 12 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 12 years
- SecOps - 12 years
- Cloud FinOps - 12 years
- Terraform - 8 years
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - 5 years
- Kubernetes - 5 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Git, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, GitLab CI/CD, Cloud, Argo CD, Ruby
The most amazing...
...project I've delivered from the ground up is a HIPAA-compliant GCP cloud platform entirely in code (Terraform) for a Fortune 20 client.
Work Experience
Head of TechOps and SRE
Inworld AI
- Deployed and managed Argo CD for multiple environments, multi-cloud deployments, and microservice architecture.
- Led technical implementation efforts while also providing leadership in a split of 70% technical work and 30% leadership responsibilities.
- Migrated ML services from one cloud provider to another cloud provider.
- Improved and organized Terraform code and modules, integrating CI/CD with Terragrunt and GitHub Actions.
- Refactored main code deployment from manual monolithic build to GitOps CI/CD.
Senior Director, ML Operations and Platform
Anthem.AI/Elevance Health
- Led both technical implementation and leadership initiatives with a balanced split of 50% each.
- Architected cloud infrastructure, security, tools, and DevOps for a commercializable ML and AI division.
- Recruited and trained 20 infrastructure, DevOps, and security engineers to manage cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and toolsets.
- Scaled a CI/CD deployment platform leveraged by 125 software engineers.
- Coordinated with business, technical, compliance, security, and legal stakeholders to deliver targeted platform requirements.
- Led a 3-year cloud architecture and cloud infrastructure platform buildout for 10+ ML/AI and GenAI projects on AWS and GCP.
Principal Consultant
MFT
- Built an in-house custom accounting and ERP platform.
- Developed a streaming video application and marketplace.
- Improved and managed an employee perks delivery application.
- Refactored a social networking application from PHP to Ruby on Rails.
- Supported a nonprofit home equity insurance program.
Engineering Manager
BigCommerce
- Managed 3rd-party applications and themes team and migrated themes billing to an integrated platform.
- Hired and trained additional managers and five engineers.
- Extended a billing platform to support a 3rd-party resale integration.
- Architected a billing platform with SOA decomposition.
VP of Engineering
Dropcountr
- Worked with the CEO to build a scalability strategy and revamp the client onboarding roadmap.
- Converted a data ingestion ETL to queue-based Sidekiq architecture.
- Rebuilt native mobile apps in React Native targeting iOS and Android platforms.
- Recruited and hired lead front- and back-end developers.
Leader, Technology Operations
Scout RFP
- Managed the AWS infrastructure, DevOps, security, and compliance for 13-person US and Latvia teams.
- Partnered with the VP of engineering to refactor agile work, CI, and planning tools.
- Migrated the legacy architecture to AWS RDS, Elastic Beanstalk, ElastiCache, Elasticsearch, and CloudFront.
- Envisioned, communicated, and executed strategic security and scalability plans.
Chief Technology Officer
Diagnotes
- Extended the API to support client-driven events and external calls.
- Integrated with clients' electronic medical records systems.
- Deployed and managed the VPN connectivity to our client's systems.
- Managed the development pipeline and overall product strategy.
- Delivered HIPAA-compliant secure messaging, medical records, and on-call scheduling.
- Recruited and hired developers, systems administrators, and a mobile team.
- Extended an application to multiple new revenue opportunities (mobile apps).
Chief Technology Officer
TheRegistrationSystem.com
- Architected and built a live e-ticket sales application (Ruby on Rails 3) in four weeks.
- Built a bidirectional API to support a multi-platform mobile application.
- Upgraded and extended the architecture to support high peak volume event sales.
- Recruited and managed the overseas development team.
Chief Technology Officer
WhatNext
- Extended and maintained a healthcare-focused social networking application.
- Optimized Sphinx searching, the Redis cache functionality, and a new feature pipeline.
- Managed a remote team for incremental improvements.
Chief Technology Officer | Co-founder
Sagebit LLC
- Designed the business plan and raised capital for a tech consultancy.
- Hired and trained a team of six developers and four interns.
- Managed migration of social networking site from PHP to Ruby on Rails.
Experience
ASmallWorld.net
https://www.asmallworld.com/GCP Platform for ML/AI and HIPAA
Migration of an On-premise Project to AWS
https://my-trs.comEducation
Master of Science Degree in Computer Science
Brown University - Providence, RI, USA
Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science
Dartmouth College - Hanover, NH, USA
Certifications
GCP Professional Machine Learning Engineer
Google Cloud
GCP Certified Associate Cloud Engineer
Google Cloud
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
AWS Training and Certification
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
AWS Training and Certification
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Terragrunt, REST APIs, Sidekiq, jQuery, Resque, React, Slack API
Tools
Git, GitLab CI/CD, Jira, AWS IAM, GitHub, Terraform, Helm, GitLab, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Amazon EKS, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google Compute Engine (GCE), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Google Workspace, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Auth0, Chef, VPN, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS CloudFormation, Grafana, AWS Fargate, SemaphoreCI, AWS CodeDeploy
Languages
Ruby, YAML, SQL, Bash, JavaScript, HTML5, SAML, Python, Snowflake
Frameworks
Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sinatra, React Native, gRPC
Paradigms
Agile Software Development, HIPAA Compliance, Test-driven Development (TDD), DevOps, DevSecOps, Microservices, Microservices Architecture, Agile, Continuous Integration (CI), Agile Project Management, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Continuous Delivery (CD), Event-driven Architecture, Azure DevOps
Platforms
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Amazon EC2, Linux, Docker, Azure, AWS Lambda, PagerDuty, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, iOS, Android, KServe, Vertex AI, Rancher
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MySQL, PostgreSQL, Datadog, Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud, Elasticsearch, Sphinx Search Engine, Redis, Databases, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud SQL, Azure Cloud Services, MongoDB
Industry Expertise
Project Management, Cybersecurity
Other
Software Development, AWS DevOps, Cloud Architecture, Cloud Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, SecOps, Cloud FinOps, Enterprise Architecture, CI/CD Pipelines, Infrastructure Architecture, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Security, Startups, Cloud Migration, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Architecture, Advisory, CTO, Coaching, Leadership, Scalability, Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Engineering, Team Leadership, App Infrastructure, Code Review, Software Design, Cloud Monitoring, Costs, Financial Operations & Processes, Financial Options, Operational Finance, AWS Certified SysOps Administrator, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, AWS Cloud Architecture, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Migration, Cloud, DevOps Engineer, Documentation, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Multitenancy, Site Reliability, Full-stack Development, Platform Engineering, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Networks, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Argo CD, GitHub Actions, VPC, Containers, Networking, Monitoring, IT Security, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Configuration Management, Containerization, Security, System Administration, Log Management, Systems Monitoring, Time Series, Amazon RDS, Amazon Route 53, Full-stack, Process Development, Release Management, APIs, Cloud Networking, Scalable Web Services, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS VPN, Network Engineering, Single Sign-on (SSO), Encryption, PCI Compliance, Algorithms, API Gateways, Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, Serverless, API Integration, Analytics, Memorystore, Google BigQuery, Dataproc, Pub/Sub, Snyk, Google Cloud Functions, Amazon Redshift, Finance, PCI, PCI DSS, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Disaster Recovery Consulting, Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), Prometheus, Amazon API Gateway, Data Engineering, AWS CodePipeline
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