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Shiraz Hazel, Systems Engineer and Developer in Sheffield, United Kingdom
Shiraz Hazel

Systems Engineer and Developer in Sheffield, United Kingdom

Member since April 15, 2020
Shiraz is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate) and an IT consultant with over 13 years of experience in various industries that include enterprise-level ISP, a leading fintech startup, and an influential digital transformation consultancy. On whatever project Shiraz works on, he's always pursuing the best, especially in the areas of maintenance and improvement in security, performance, reliability, and resilience of online infrastructure.
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Portfolio

  • Viewdeck Consulting
    Pipelines, Python, Bash Script, Ansible, Azure, Azure DevOps Services...
  • Dulmer Ltd
    Amazon Web Services (AWS), Redis, AWS DynamoDB, Git, Bash Script...
  • Plusnet
    PHP, Oracle, Java, Docker

Experience

Location

Sheffield, United Kingdom

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Go, Docker, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform

The most amazing...

...thing I've built was a PCI-DSS-compliant cloud environment that connected with a finance service provider to process real-time financial data.

Employment

  • Cloud DevOps Engineer

    2020 - 2020
    Viewdeck Consulting
    • Involved in the large cloud transformation project of the global IT estate of an educational institution for Cloud 2.0 in a hub and spoke model.
    • Implemented IaaC using Terraform for all new infrastructure and includes virtual machines, key vaults, blob storages, virtual WANs, virtual hubs, VPNs, bastions.
    • Implemented CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps and Azure Pipelines.
    • Integrated an exiting enterprise service desk application with the new infrastructure using bespoke scripts (Bash and Python).
    Technologies: Pipelines, Python, Bash Script, Ansible, Azure, Azure DevOps Services, Azure DevOps, Terraform

  • Cloud DevOps Architect

    2020 - 2020
    Dulmer Ltd
    • Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines using GitLab and AWS CodePipeline services.
    • Containerized the applications and overhauled the deployment strategy to make use of AWS container services and CI/CD.
    • Built and integrated monitoring systems to monitor the new and existing environments using cAdvisor, Prometheus and Grafana.
    • Designed a logging infrastructure and implemented log aggregation and analytics using an ELK stack.
    • Integrated alerting mechanisms using AWS CloudWatch and PagerDuty as main components.
    • Added IaaC to the organization to move all of the cloud IT infrastructure to Terraform.
    • Used CloudFormation templates for the finance department for bespoke billing report process.
    • Advocated for a more serverless architecture using AWS Lambda for new microservices, and implemented a skeleton framework and documentation.
    Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Redis, AWS DynamoDB, Git, Bash Script, AWS ElastiCache, AWS Lambda, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, AWS CloudWatch, ELK (Elastic Stack), GitLab CI/CD, Grafana, Prometheus, cAdvisor, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), AWS ECS, AWS CodePipeline, AWS

  • Systems Engineer

    2018 - 2020
    Plusnet
    • Developed new features in the enterprise infrastructure for the organization to be able to comply with new Ofcom regulations.
    • Played a key part from the technology side in the very large migration of a legacy billing infrastructure to a modern efficient technology framework.
    • Liaised with stakeholders to draw out technical requirements.
    • Implemented a phased smooth delivery of the new features to end-users.
    Technologies: PHP, Oracle, Java, Docker

  • Engineering Lead

    2016 - 2018
    U Account Ltd
    • Resourced, led, and mentored a team of DevOps engineers, technical architects, and software developers.
    • Planned, designed, and implemented a PCI-DSS-compliant infrastructure.
    • Built and improved health and monitoring across the platform.
    • Assessed infrastructure capacity and planned and executed scaling based on requirements.
    Technologies: GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Ansible, Puppet, ELK (Elastic Stack), Terraform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS, Kubernetes, Docker

  • Senior Systems Engineer

    2013 - 2016
    U Account Ltd
    • Implemented a secure API-rich fintech service on cloud infrastructure, in Rackspace services using Go, PHP, and AWS Aurora.
    • Planned and implemented a seamless migration of an active application from Rackspace to AWS infrastructure.
    • Implemented resilient VPN networks in the infrastructure to improve continuous service.
    Technologies: Web Application Firewall (WAF), Terraform, ELK (Elastic Stack), Jenkins, Cloud Migration, Docker

  • Systems and Software Engineer

    2012 - 2013
    Plusnet
    • Maintained and improved the billing system which was one of the critical parts of the organization.
    • Proactively identified problematical parts of the systems and addressed them with tactical and strategic solutions.
    • Created and maintained shell scripts to automate several parts of the system that included daily billing runs and automated deployments.
    Technologies: Oracle, MySQL, PHP, Java, Linux, Bash Script

  • Qburst Technologies

    2007 - 2012
    Senior Engineer
    • Created various Bash scripts to assist with automation of processes in large projects.
    • Implemented large applications from the ground up using PHP and MySQL.
    • Supported and mentored to upskill junior engineers.
    Technologies: Python, MySQL, PHP, Bash Script

Experience

  • Terrform Update to Include a Get-instance-type API
    https://github.com/greenjambi/terraform-provider-aws

    AWS has recently released a new API to get instance types based on certain search criteria. In the process of updating the open-source Terraform code to include this API.

    This API will be very much useful to Terraform users. As a very simple example, users can search for the instance type that is eligible for free-tier.

Skills

  • Languages

    PHP, Bash Script, Go, Java, Python

  • Tools

    Terraform, Git, ELK (Elastic Stack), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS CloudFormation, GitLab CI/CD, AWS ECS, Grafana, AWS CloudWatch, AWS ElastiCache, Ansible, Chef, Jenkins, Puppet, Azure DevOps Services

  • Paradigms

    DevOps, Agile, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Azure DevOps

  • Platforms

    Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Docker, AWS EC2, Azure, AWS Lambda, Kubernetes, Oracle

  • Storage

    MySQL, AWS DynamoDB, Redis

  • Other

    Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Migration, Elastic Load Balancers, AWS, cAdvisor, Prometheus, PCI DSS, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Linux Administration, Web Application Firewall (WAF), AWS CodePipeline, Pipelines

  • Libraries/APIs

    Node.js

Education

  • Master's Degree in Wireless Sensors and Embedded Systems
    2011 - 2012
    University of Bradford - Bradford, UK

Certifications

  • AWS Solutions Architect (Associate)
    MARCH 2020 - MARCH 2023
    Amazon

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