Samuel Lock, Developer in London, United Kingdom
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Samuel Lock

Verified Expert  in Engineering

AWS DevOps Developer

Location
London, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
August 29, 2022

Samuel is an AWS-certified senior engineer specializing in serverless development and DevOps/platform engineering on AWS. He has experience delivering serverless REST APIs and data-ingestion pipelines, all powered by AWS Lambda. He has also worked in a DevOps role and considers himself an AWS CloudFormation, CI/CD, and automation expert. Samuel has a background in two early-stage startups, one of which handled medical data.

Portfolio

ServerlessGuru
AWS Lambda, Serverless, Serverless Framework, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon RDS...
Toptal
AWS Certified Solution Architect, Architecture, Technical Writing, Consulting...
uMed
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Django, Containers, Docker...

Experience

Availability

Full-time

Preferred Environment

Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Python, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Serverless, Startups, AWS CloudFormation, Node.js, GitHub, AWS Lambda, Serverless Framework

The most amazing...

...feeling is successfully delivering for the client, from start to finish. I utilize serverless paradigms to out-engineer traditional development processes.

Work Experience

Serverless Developer

2023 - PRESENT
ServerlessGuru
  • Delivered a set of APIs for an enterprise client as per their specifications. The APIs use an API Gateway, Lambda, and RDS tech stack. The Lambdas were written in Node.js and deployed via Serverless Framework.
  • Architected and delivered a data-ingestion pipeline. The pipeline leveraged S3 (trigger), SQS (decoupling), and AWS Lambda (processing). The pipeline was built with full observability and retry logic for failed events.
  • Publish content once a month on behalf of ServerlessGuru. This included a technical blog post with working code examples, partnering this with a YouTube video for their channel, and an internal webinar with other engineers.
Technologies: AWS Lambda, Serverless, Serverless Framework, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon RDS, Node.js, APIs, Event-driven Architecture

Technical Lead for AWS Certification Accelerators

2022 - PRESENT
Toptal
  • Created two eight-week accelerator courses to help engineers prepare and pass the AWS Solution Architect (Professional) and DevOps (Professional) certification exams. I delivered both of these accelerators in rotation.
  • Leveraged Toptal's agreements with Udemy and AWS Skills Builder to provide the bulk of the content. I then created 12 hours of in-person content to better prepare the engineers where those resources fell short.
  • Accomplished the 1st delivery of the AWS Solution Architect Professional accelerator that had a confirmed 15% pass rate (within a month of the accelerator finishing) from all those that enrolled.
Technologies: AWS Certified Solution Architect, Architecture, Technical Writing, Consulting, Mentorship, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Education

Senior DevOps Engineer

2020 - 2022
uMed
  • Defined, built, and deployed all the necessary AWS infrastructure singlehandedly to release the pre-seed company's flagship product and get to market successfully.
  • Designed and built a business-critical medical-data-ingestion pipeline. It leveraged S3 (trigger), SQS (decoupling), and AWS Lambda (processing). It was responsible for decrypting, processing, and storing sensitive medical data.
  • Built each app's CI/CD pipeline using CircleCI. The pipeline would run tests, create Docker images, and deploy to ECS or Amazon EC2.
  • Introduced the company to various AWS services such as AWS Lambda, Step Functions, and least-privilege IAM policies via demos and workshops.
  • Handled cost control within AWS, providing budget reports and recommendations on where money could be saved.
  • Contributed to the application code (Django) when time allowed.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Django, Containers, Docker, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS Copilot, AWS SAM, CircleCI, GitHub, GitLab, AWS Step Functions, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)

Founder

2019 - 2020
CleatSheet
  • Built a company website using React, and it is still live.
  • Designed and built a set of back-end microservices powered by AWS Lambda, API gateway, and RDS/DynamoDB tech stack. APIs were all RESTful.
  • Started and produced the business, but COVID-19 forced it to halt its operations.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon CloudFront CDN, React, React Native, Microservices, Software Architecture

Software Engineer I and II

2017 - 2019
Citrix
  • Inherited a manual performance testing process, fully automated it, and added it to a Jenkins CI/CD pipeline.
  • Mocked all 3rd-party services during performance testing to ensure any changes in results were purely down to code changes within this application.
  • Created a favorite feature for the company's flagship product, backed by Azure Cosmos DB.
Technologies: Azure, C#, Terraform, Microservices, Python, Performance Testing, Jenkins

Servlerless APIs for Enterprise Client

I delivered multiple serverless APIs as per the client's specifications. The APIs (Node.js) were fully unit-tested (Jest) with 100% code coverage. They performed request/response validation based on JSON schemas. They were RESTful and used an RDS back end and API Gateway in the front end. I also produced all documentation and Postman collections for our consumers.

Event Driven Health Data Ingestion Pipeline

https://umed.io/
Designed and built a data ingestion pipeline for UK health data. The pipeline used SFTP pollers, Lambda functions, Amazon S3, and ECS tasks with an event-driven architecture approach. I created CloudWatch dashboards to monitor it daily. The pipeline has been running daily for over a year.

Data Ingestion Pipeline for Enterprise Client

I architected, developed, and delivered a data-ingestion pipeline to move data from the AI labs of a large enterprise to their pricing systems. I leveraged S3 (trigger), SQS (decoupling), and Lambda (processing). The Lambdas were written in Node.js and deployed by Serverless Framework. I ensured the design provided full observability and redrive mechanisms.

Containerized Medtech Django Apps

https://umed.io/
Containerized MVP Django applications and deployed them as Docker containers in AWS. For this process, I used Amazon ECS with AWS RDS back-end databases. I utilized the AWS Copilot tool to orchestrate the containers' deployment and created the infrastructure using CloudFormation templates.

Open-source PyPI Package/CLI

https://github.com/ServerlessSam/data-file-merge
I created an open-source Python project that does rule-based merging/splitting of data files (JSON/YAML). It is available as a PyPI package or as an independent CLI. The project is fully unit-tested and documented via a GitHub wiki. The project includes a complete CI/CD pipeline running on CircleCI.

Languages

Python, YAML, C#

Tools

AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), CircleCI, GitHub, AWS Step Functions, Terraform, PyPI, PyInstaller, GitLab, Jenkins, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon EKS, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS CodeDeploy, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeCommit, Amazon ElastiCache, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Amazon CloudWatch

Paradigms

Microservices, DevOps, Event-driven Architecture

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, AWS Lambda, Unix, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Azure, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EC2

Storage

Amazon S3 (AWS S3), JSON, PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB

Other

Serverless, Startups, Software, Coding, AWS Copilot, AWS SAM, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Containers, Performance Testing, Software Architecture, Solution Architecture, Amazon RDS, SFTP, API Gateways, Open Source, Architecture, Technical Writing, Consulting, Mentorship, AWS CodePipeline, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Route 53, Cloud, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Education, Amazon API Gateway, APIs, Amazon EventBridge, SDKs, Solution Design

Frameworks

Serverless Framework, Django, React Native

Libraries/APIs

Node.js, React

2013 - 2017

Master's Degree in Experimental Physics

University of York - York, UK

JANUARY 2024 - JANUARY 2027

AWS Certified Solutions Architect

Amazon Web Services

JUNE 2023 - JUNE 2026

AWS Certified DevOps Professional

Amazon Web Services

JANUARY 2023 - JANUARY 2026

AWS Certified Developer Associate

Amazon Web Services

MAY 2022 - MAY 2024

AWS Certfied Solutions Architect Professional

Amazon Web Services

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