Kev Jackson
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Kev has worked in various business domains and sectors, including energy, billing, education, eCommerce, logistics, and warehousing. He's currently working on a government-funded research project. He's looking for additional work as he's used to combining his main job with different projects. He's enthusiastic about meeting his new clients and working on exciting projects.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, Java, Python, SQL, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), OpenStack
The most amazing...
...contributions I've made to a global eCommerce system are websites, content management, full-text search, deployment pipelines, scaling, and RDBMS design.
Work Experience
Principal Software Engineer
The Hut.com
- Led the refactoring of an eCommerce platform to improve reliability and improve the user journey. Focused on using APM tools to drill down into code paths and fix the encountered issues.
- Used AWS Lambda and SQS to build a bridge between monitoring tools and chat tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
- Migrated a warehouse management system from AWS to OpenStack using CloudFormation, Terraform, and Google Cloud Deployment Manager.
- Developed Terraform infrastructure-as-code scripts to allow deploying Kubernetes clusters onto OpenStack nodes.
Senior Lecturer
RMIT International University
- Re-developed a C programming course, converting it from MS Windows and Visual Studio to Linux, GCC, and Vim. I also re-developed a software engineering course, converting it from J2EE to Spring Framework and IoC.
- Wrote and administered exams for Java programming, software engineering, design patterns, and web development.
- Led a team of lecturers to develop and deliver software engineering content to Vietnamese undergraduates.
Contract Developer
Cogini
- Helped develop a variety of projects, including a bus timetable and routing app.
- Worked remotely with lead engineers in Taiwan, fixing bugs and developing the admin web application.
- Handled day-to-day development, bug fixes, and suggestions for additional features.
Experience
Script to Deploy Kubernetes Clusters
https://github.com/OpenSource-THG/k8s-on-openstackIn the past, single shared clusters were provisioned, which was deemed to not meet the requirements of dev teams that were becoming geographically dispersed and needed access to their clusters. This meant we needed the proper tooling to build clusters rapidly.
Deploying Teleport to OpenStack via Pulumi
https://github.com/OpenSource-THG/teleport-gcp-exampleI planned, designed, and implemented the solution from inception to deploying on production infrastructure as a security research project.
The full write-up is not yet published.
Warehouse Management System
https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/dynamically-building-build-servers-a6e785655834I was heavily involved in the infrastructure management, including AWS EC2 instances along with Route53 for DNS, S3 for docs, DynamoDB and RDS for state, and Lambda.
I worked in CloudFormation and Ansible for deployments, Jenkins for CI pipelines, and core Java, Scala, and Kotlin for application features.
As a senior engineer, I was very involved with mentoring the junior staff about AWS practices and was a key member of the team that migrated the stack from AWS to OpenStack.
Some blog posts about the project:
• https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/dynamically-building-build-servers-a6e785655834
• https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/capturing-application-metrics-1ef6c5dcbce5
• https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/a-feather-in-their-caps-4c4083cf9f46
• https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/continuous-process-improvements-ac6fad24290c
• https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/terraformin-6bf6c592d8a2
• https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/consolidating-database-technologies-d424f1a4c47e
Skills
Languages
Java, Python, SQL, C, Scala, Clojure, Erlang (OTP), PHP, TypeScript
Platforms
Linux, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), OpenStack, AWS Lambda, Kubernetes, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon EC2
Frameworks
Spring Boot, Ruby on Rails (RoR), GAE
Tools
Terraform, GitHub, AWS CloudFormation, Git, GitLab, Jenkins, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Other
Software Development, Consul, Software Engineering, Risk Management, CI/CD Pipelines, Amazon RDS, Amazon Route 53
Libraries/APIs
Cloud-Init, Jenkins Job DSL, Jenkins Pipeline
Paradigms
Functional Programming
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Education
Master of Science Degree in Management and Implementation of Development Projects
The University of Manchester - Manchester, UK
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
The University of Manchester - Manchester, UK