Jonathan Bethune
Verified Expert in Engineering
Cloud Architect Developer
Dallas, TX, United States
Toptal member since March 9, 2018
Jonathan is a seasoned cloud architect and DevOps specialist based in Dallas who's worked for several startups, building their infrastructures and improving security. He's exceptionally knowledgeable about machine learning, artificial intelligence, LLMs, and data layer optimization. One of Jonathan's best qualities is his knack for quickly learning new things, which explains his passion for the evolving world of cloud technology.
Portfolio
Experience
- DevOps - 12 years
- Continuous Integration (CI) - 9 years
- Python - 8 years
- Cassandra - 7 years
- Apache Kafka - 7 years
- Terraform - 5 years
- Docker - 4 years
- Spark - 3 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Java, Python, Git, Linux
The most amazing...
...thing I've done was automating the software environment (creation/deletion) for a company that saved tens of thousands of dollars—simple but satisfying work.
Work Experience
Founder and Chief Developer
Jakmet
- Obtained angel investment, built a team of developers to create a proof of concept, and eventually launched an open beta in May of 2024.
- Created back-end DevOps automation tools for automatically creating storage, API keys, cloud servers, networking, and other assets for instant AI application deployment.
- Wrote Python services to add support for Google Gemini and all other popular LLM providers.
Founder
Bethune Consulting
- Completed numerous Toptal client engagements successfully.
- Scoped, estimated and implemented dozens of independent client projects.
- Built a profitable Texas-based software corporation leveraging both local and remote talent.
Terraform/Kubernetes/GCP DevOps
Persona Identities
- Wrote thousands of lines of Terraform code to resolve gaps in the IaC coverage for their production environment.
- Built a proof of concept using Terragrunt to demonstrate ways they could make their codebase more DRY.
- Audited their GCP infrastructure and created a proposal for a "stacks" paradigm to help them develop dedicated environments for large clients.
DevSecOps Engineer
Yahoo! - Yahoo - Paranoids US
- Fixed Databricks Python scripts and deployed them to automate compliance metrics across various dashboards.
- Completed a proof of concept for a developer portal technology and wrote up documentation on alternative products and the general ecosystem of dev team management tools.
- Upgraded vulnerability management internal tools in AWS and debugged legacy code issues with the engineering team.
DevOps Engineer
Fujitsu General America Inc.
- Optimized Dockerfiles for faster build times and smaller Docker images for storage.
- Consulted with the tech team to help debug uWSGI issues and NGINXConfig for the REST API service.
- Fixed build scripts and implemented a new base image for Docker container apps.
Head of Engineering
Eden Labs
- Sourced all relevant talent for Rust development and DevOps engineers to create the initial Eden Labs blockchain POC.
- Managed the engineering team in weekly sprints for the end-to-end creation of the consensus algorithm, blockchain protocols, and Kubernetes deployment to AWS using EKS.
- Wrote Terraform code for establishing the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) paradigm to ensure scalable cloud architecture is properly documented and customizable.
Engineering Manager
Arizona State University
- Created the initial AWS infrastructure using EC2, RDS, and Terraform. Set up the DevOps roadmap for the next two years and continued working hands-on with DevOps engineers building out CICD pipelines and improving security.
- Sourced talent and handled interviews and onboarding for new team members. Wrote knowledge base documentation and created training videos to improve ramp-up speed for new engineers.
- Collaborated with ASU leadership and product management to define software deliverables and provide estimates. Managed day-to-day engineering operations and production releases and implemented development best practices across the team.
DevOps Engineer
Egomotion OpCo Corp. dba Zeus Living Inc.
- Migrated all EKS Clusters to private subnets and upgraded to the latest versions of Kubernetes. Also helped optimize Kubernetes configuration across environments for faster CICD pipelines.
- Wrote Terraform and Terragrunt code to establish infrastructure as a code paradigm.
- Completed network security audit of AWS infrastructure and leveraged security hub to create prioritization of vulnerabilities identified in S3, RDS, and EC2.
Director of Education and Training
Toyota Research Institute Advanced Development
- Ran dozens of classes on Agile development, leadership, and scrum. Ensured several hundred untrained Japanese developers were capable of developing software in a fast-paced Scrum-style environment.
- Designed multiple educational programs for hundreds of Toyota staff. These included online English courses, self-paced programming classes, and soft skills courses in management and Agile development.
- Served as the product owner for TRI-AD "Dojo," an education startup within the Toyota group working with various external partners to deliver modern software development training to Japanese clients within and outside the Toyota group.
Senior Consultant
Instaclustr
- Developed Instaclustr's PaaS offerings for Cassandra and Spark.
- Helped Instaclustr clients successfully deploy and optimize Apache technologies such as Cassandra, Spark, and Kafka.
- Wrote technical blog posts to help improve SEO and recruit engineering talent.
DevOps Engineer
Boston Consulting Group
- Created Prometheus monitoring and alerting for AWS infrastructure to support a machine learning application.
- Designed AWS architecture for back-end machine learning software services and deployed relative AWS assets to support apps developed by the engineering team.
- Served as SRE in charge of alert response for outages and other system problems. Created Runbooks, documentation, CronJobs, and other tools to help automate recovery from various failures.
Senior DevOps Engineer
CloudPassage
- Served as a data architect which entailed optimizing the Cassandra data model and tuning multiple Cassandra clusters.
- Solved production outages and created monitoring systems as an SRE.
- Wrote the infrastructure code in Chef and Terraform to automate deployments, testing, and configuration changes.
- Hardened cloud systems through code auditing, penetration testing, patch management, and enforcing the encryption of data at rest and in transit.
- Created numerous tools and scripts to automate common forensic tasks such as tracking Chef server changes or updating user ACLs.
- Designed and implemented migration to a Docker-based Mesos-Marathon infrastructure with support for multiple clouds (AWS, Rackspace, SoftLayer).
Software Engineer
Knewton
- Wrote unit and integration tests for Java services.
- Helped develop a student event microservice in Java.
- Created a deployment tool in Python that leveraged AWS APIs (Boto library), Chef, and CloudFormation to simplify environment creation.
- Automated test environment creation in AWS and served as an SRE during my tenure as a systems engineer.
- Served as the deployment engineer for Java services and managed the Jenkins servers.
Experience
Logistic Regression Implementation in Python
Melanippe
FaceMatch
Blockchain Educational Credentials for Major University
https://pocket.asu.edu/Jakmet AI
https://jakmet.aiEducation
Master's Degree in Information Technology
University of Phoenix - Online
Bachelor of Science Degree in English Education
New York University - New York, NY, USA
Certifications
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Inc.
Japanese Language Proficiency Adult Fluency Level
The Japan Foundation
Machine Learning
Stanford University via Coursera
Cassandra Architect
Datastax
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Amazon EC2 API, WebRTC, Apigee, React, Node.js, TensorFlow, PySpark, Azure API Management, Jenkins Job DSL
Tools
Git, Ansible, NGINX, Apache ZooKeeper, Chef, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, Jenkins, GitHub, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon EKS, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), AWS IAM, Vault, Boto 3, Sentinel, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), CircleCI, Helm, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Systemd, Nagios, VMware, Grafana, Jamf Pro, VPN, Logging, Puppet, Sumo Logic, GitLab, Azure App Service, MongoDB Atlas, Kustomize, Talend ETL, IntelliJ IDEA, Apache Tomcat, AWS AppSync, Hyperledger Indy
Languages
Python, Java, SQL, YAML, Bash, Bash Script, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Go, R, JavaScript, C++, C#, Scala, Python 3, Clojure, Rust, C, Haskell
Frameworks
Spark, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Hadoop, Flask, Django, .NET Core, Selenium
Paradigms
DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), DevSecOps, HIPAA Compliance, Azure DevOps, Scrum, Agile, Agile Project Management, Agile Product Management, Management
Platforms
Kubernetes, Azure, Apache Kafka, Amazon EC2, Linux, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS Lambda, Heroku, MacOS, New Relic, Rackspace, Blockchain, Buildkite
Storage
Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Datadog, MySQL, Azure SQL, Ceph, Data Centers, Azure SQL Databases, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch
Industry Expertise
Cybersecurity
Other
Machine Learning, Security, Cloud Architecture, AWS Cloud Architecture, CI/CD Pipelines, Monitoring, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Back-end, Pipelines, Application Security, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon API Gateway, ServiceNow, System Administration, DNS Configuration, Cloud Infrastructure, IT Networking, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Domain DNS Setup, DNS Servers, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Scripting, AWS CodePipeline, AWS DevOps, High-availability Systems, API Management, Data Analytics, Scalability, System Architecture, DevOps Engineer, Growth, APIs, Large Scale Distributed Systems, Shell Scripting, HAProxy, Linux Administration, User Permissions, Clustering, Access Control, Cluster Management, Real-time Communication (RTC), Scalable Architecture, Startups, Infrastructure Monitoring, Wireless Protocols, Connectivity, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Architecture, Proxies, OpenTelemetry, CTO, Load Balancers, Containers, Power Shell Commands, Delivery Management, Large Language Models (LLMs), Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Prometheus, FedRAMP, Amazon Kinesis, Azure Virtual Machines, Argo CD, NixOS, Cisco, Okta, 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Product Management, Engineering Management, Communication, Education, Training, Vulnerability Assessment, Argos, Atlantis
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