Rodrigo Ballon Gumucio
Verified Expert in Engineering
Infrastructure Engineer and Developer
Miami, FL, United States
Toptal member since March 11, 2025
Rodrigo is an engineer with over 20 years of experience, excelling in leadership and technical roles. He has a proven track record of managing global teams and delivering exceptional outcomes. His collaborative approach, adaptability, and results-driven mindset set him apart. Combining deep technical knowledge with strong leadership skills and business acumen, Rodrigo is an expert in navigating complex tech landscapes and guiding teams through challenges.
Portfolio
Experience
- Red Hat Linux - 20 years
- Linux - 20 years
- Bash - 20 years
- Splunk - 10 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 10 years
- Terraform - 10 years
- Ansible - 10 years
- AWS Cloud Architecture - 5 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, Bash, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Ansible
The most amazing...
...achievements include leading an offshore team, migrating a business unit to AWS, and transitioning operations offshore during COVID-19 to ensure efficiency.
Work Experience
Principal Cloud Operations Engineer
Harvard Business Publishing
- Architected and implemented Ansible for the entire business unit, creating playbooks and roles to fully automate patching, configuration management, and application deployments.
- Implemented microservices using AWS CloudFormation, deploying Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Redis OSS for scalability and efficiency.
- Mentored offshore resources in AWS, Windows, and Linux technologies.
- Automated user and configuration management processes using AWS Systems Manager.
- Optimized Splunk forwarder installations and configurations by integrating AWS Systems Manager and AWS Secrets Manager.
- Spearheaded a Kubernetes proof of concept to replace the EC2 and ECS development fleet.
- Implemented a Terraform proof of concept to create and manage New Relic resources, enabling observability as code.
- Migrated EC2 and RDS instances from older versions to the latest, including Amazon Linux, Windows Server, MySQL, and Oracle.
- Oversaw vulnerability remediation and the decommissioning of deprecated software.
Principal Infrastructure Engineer
DFNS
- Architected and implemented automated procedures to identify unnecessary resources, reducing infrastructure spending by approximately $80,000 monthly.
- Conducted a proof of concept for next-generation Kubernetes-based metrics and logging using Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki.
- Optimized and refactored infrastructure as code (IaC) to separate resources by the environment across different AWS accounts.
- Designed and implemented new IaC deployments to enhance platform security.
- Developed automated reports for C-level executives to support data-driven decision-making.
Senior Systems Engineer | Team Lead
PayPal
- Migrated terabytes of data from legacy Splunk instances to newly built and Ansible-managed instances, significantly reducing space consumption on costly drives. This effort enabled storage tiering, further optimizing costs for the company.
- Architected a new server management solution and implemented server monitoring, enhancing the manageability and scalability of the environment.
- Implemented a centralized log server for the entire environment, including Linux servers, ESXi hosts, and network equipment. This solution provided the team with easy access to valuable troubleshooting information in one centralized location.
- Implemented Spacewalk from the ground up, creating custom channels and automating maintenance through Python scripts leveraging the Spacewalk Server API.
- Implemented patching and update policies to ensure servers remained up to date, enhancing the overall stability of the environment.
- Deployed a Nagios XI server to enhance monitoring, immediately improving response times to outages.
- Served as scrum master, leading and mentoring onshore and offshore teams.
- Designed and implemented procedures to transition run-the-business tasks to the offshore team, freeing time for the entire team to focus on next-generation cloud architectures.
IT Systems Engineer, Product
Amazon Robotics
- Architected the next generation of cloud-based systems to replace the existing fleet, designing integration methods with custom solutions.
- Collaborated closely with hardware and firmware teams to design new code that leverages improvements in robot design.
- Mentored direct reports, cooperative education students, and interns, fostering their growth and development.
- Developed and maintained Bash and Python scripts to standardize and automate the deployment, configuration, and monitoring of the blade/chassis systems that control robot movement in fulfillment centers worldwide.
- Worked as part of a team overseeing more than 80 regions with thousands of mission-critical Linux servers operating around the clock across a broad geographic area.
Experience
Kubernetes-based Observability Solution
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Science
Bolivian Catholic University - La Paz, Bolivia
Certifications
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
Red Hat
Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
Red Hat
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Terragrunt
Tools
RPM, Nagios, Terraform, Ansible, Splunk, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS IAM, Amazon CloudWatch, ntpd, Firewalld, AWS CloudFormation, Grafana, Loki, Rsyslog, Syslog
Languages
Bash, SQL, Python
Paradigms
DevOps, Microservices, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Integration (CI)
Platforms
Linux, Red Hat Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon EC2, Docker, Azure, Windows, Kubernetes, New Relic, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
LVM, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), smbd, MariaDB, Redis, PostgreSQL
Other
NFS, SSH, Cloud, Networking, Red Hat SpaceWalk, CI/CD Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), AWS Cloud Architecture, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Cloud Architecture, Virtualization, VMware ESXi, Remote Desktop, SELinux, HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, SMTP, Proxies, Linux Kernel, Microsoft Entra, Amazon RDS, Prometheus, Robotics, Firmware
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