Bryce Andress, Developer in Lehighton, PA, United States
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Bryce Andress

Verified Expert  in Engineering

DevOps Engineer and Software Developer

Location
Lehighton, PA, United States
Toptal Member Since
February 1, 2022

Bryce is an eight-year IT professional who started work while still in college as a Level 1 IT support technician. Since then, he has worked for a Fortune 500 health insurance company, an ISP, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a key leader in a Series A-funded startup. Although well-versed in multiple areas of IT, DevOps and cloud security are his passion. Bryce designs secure, efficient, scalable, and available solutions to worthy problems.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)ServerlessDockerLinuxDevOpsAWS LambdaBashAmazon Web Services (AWS)GitLabPythonLinux Server AdministrationAWS CloudFormationTerraformKubernetesJira

Portfolio

Presage Security Inc
Python 3, Serverless, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, MacOS, Incident Response...
Circles Sodexo - Main
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Architecture...
Toptal
Azure, SQL, Networks, Azure Active Directory

Experience

DevOps - 8 yearsCI/CD Pipelines - 8 yearsInfrastructure as Code (IaC) - 8 yearsKubernetes Operations (kOps) - 5 yearsAmazon EKS - 3 yearsPython - 3 yearsContainer Orchestration - 3 yearsKubernetes - 3 years

Availability

Full-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Vim Text Editor, iTerm2, GitLab CI/CD, GitLab

The most amazing...

...project I have worked on was a biometric, signal, and facial recognition video processor that worked as a virtual polygraph in a serverless fashion.

Work Experience

Deputy CTO

2020 - PRESENT
Presage Security Inc
  • Architected a novel 3 tier biometric passive authentication system that has been deployed in multiple Fortune 500 GDRP compliant enclaves.
  • Collected, transformed, and processed large data sets into a variety of data stores for fast retrieval and review.
  • Collaborated with clients in numerous business sectors to identify where our technologies could better improve theirs.
  • Assisted six junior developers with learning best practices and security standards.
Technologies: Python 3, Serverless, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, MacOS, Incident Response, GitLab CI/CD, CTO, Python, Machine Learning, Amazon DynamoDB, CI/CD Pipelines, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Continuous Integration (CI), AWS Lambda, Elasticsearch, Web Applications, PostgreSQL, Load Balancers, Elastic Load Balancers, Container Orchestration, DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Linux Server Administration, GitHub Actions

AWS Expert with Secure VPC Networking Experience

2022 - 2022
Circles Sodexo - Main
  • Designed a secure virtual private network (VPN) using AWS technologies to the client's security specification.
  • Presented design and documentation to key leaders to confirm everyone's understanding of the technology and for implementation approval.
  • Used CloudFormation to template the VPN and deployed it in the customer's AWS account.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Architecture, Subnet, Networking, DevOps, VPN, Security

Subject Matter Expert: Azure DevOps | Landing Zones

2022 - 2022
Toptal
  • Documented Toptal's Azure landing zone deployment strategy.
  • Presented documentation to key leaders and answered questions regarding design choices.
  • Implemented an Azure landing zone to specification in the test environment and walked through the architecture.
Technologies: Azure, SQL, Networks, Azure Active Directory

AWS DevOps/Infra Engineer

2022 - 2022
Pogo Technologies, Inc.
  • Hardened ElasticBeanstalk staging and production environments.
  • Defined a cybersecurity risk management plan and report.
  • Implemented security fixes from findings. Improved RDS reliability.
  • Deployed GitHub Action pipelines to automate code deployment.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Elastic Beanstalk, PostgreSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)

IT Professional

2018 - 2020
Department of Justice
  • Maintained a highly available and customized Oracle Commercial of the Shelf product.
  • Designed the migration plan that embraced cloud technologies to migrate the above product to AWS.
  • Implemented this migration in AWS using Serverless technologies and standard DevOps best practices such as IaC and CI/CD.
Technologies: Bash, Python, Jenkins, Linux, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD Pipelines, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Continuous Integration (CI), Jira, AWS Lambda, Web Applications, PostgreSQL, Load Balancers, Elastic Load Balancers, Container Orchestration, DevOps, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Linux Server Administration

IT Support

2017 - 2018
Guardian Insurance
  • Assisted with company-wide migration to Windows 10.
  • Troubleshot various technology issues with employees ranging from laptops not booting, viruses, up to full system restorations.
  • Shadowed senior DevOps team members in free time to learn more about the field.
Technologies: Troubleshooting, Windows, Microsoft, Continuous Integration (CI), Jira, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Linux Server Administration

Remote Polygraph

A cloud-first application deployed in AWS and utilized Python and Node.js. The application analyzed video in near real-time using a combination of machine learning and equations to gather in-depth detail on the subject. The system was designed to be highly available and fault-tolerant. Under the hood, the system was a 3-tier web application. The web and app tiers were hosted on a Fargate ECS Task while the database utilized an Aurora Serverless PostgreSQL database. All deployments were automated and utilized GitLab CI/CD.

Open Source Data Collect

Designed and implemented a system responsible for collecting ~1TB of data per week of open-source data. The system leverages the lost cost and efficiency of AWS Serverless technologies and NoSQL databases to keep expenses minimal and access to data quick. The system has been designed so that after an Access Pattern is established, adding a quick retrieval path of that data usually takes minutes. The system can also be scaled to add further collections or transforms with no impact to existing services and with minimal overhead.

Languages

Python, Bash, Python 3, C++, SQL

Tools

GitLab CI/CD, GitLab, Vim Text Editor, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, Jira, Amazon EKS, Jenkins, AWS Fargate, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), VPN

Paradigms

DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI)

Platforms

Linux, Docker, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MacOS, Kubernetes, Rancher, Windows, Microsoft, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Azure, Databricks

Other

Agile Software Testing, Serverless, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD Pipelines, Elastic Load Balancers, Operating Systems, Web Applications, Load Balancers, Container Orchestration, Linux Server Administration, Kubernetes Operations (kOps), GitHub Actions, iTerm2, Data Structures, Incident Response, CTO, Machine Learning, Troubleshooting, Networks, Architecture, Subnet, Networking, Security

Libraries/APIs

Jenkins Pipeline, Node.js

Storage

Amazon DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Azure Active Directory

2016 - 2018

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Kutztown University of Pennsylvania - Kutztown, Pennsylvania, USA

2014 - 2016

Associate's Degree in Computer Science

Lehigh Carbon Community College - Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, USA

FEBRUARY 2022 - FEBRUARY 2025

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

AWS

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