Tom Gardiner, Developer in Guadalajara, Mexico
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Tom Gardiner

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Developer

Guadalajara, Mexico

Toptal member since January 9, 2019

Bio

Tom specializes in deployments and migrations with over 12 years of experience operating in cloud and on-premise environments. Wearing many hats, he's worked as a DevOps engineer, solutions architect, and, most recently, a project manager. With a solid foundation of customer service experience as a team leader, he prides himself on complete transparency and direct communication.

Portfolio

Woven Planet Holdings, Inc. - Woven IT (USA)
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Architecture, AWS Cloud Architecture
Minertoken
Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, Amazon Cognito, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Amplify...
Scalyr, Inc
AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)...

Experience

  • Linux - 12 years
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 7 years
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) - 7 years
  • Python - 5 years
  • Amazon API Gateway - 5 years
  • AWS Lambda - 5 years
  • DevOps - 5 years
  • Terraform - 4 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Terraform, Linux, Docker

The most amazing...

...cloud migration I've worked on consisted of a multi-region deployment from two data centers containing 500+ mixed-role EC2 instances.

Work Experience

Technical Project Manager

2022 - PRESENT
Woven Planet Holdings, Inc. - Woven IT (USA)
  • Managed a team of engineers working on the remediation of inherited AWS resources that enabled company-wide access to remediated infrastructure for collaborative research and development.
  • Produced project roadmaps for large-scale office moves involving complex technical equipment.
  • Coordinated the transfer of contracts and assets acquired through M&A.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Architecture, AWS Cloud Architecture

DevOps Engineer

2020 - 2022
Minertoken
  • Created an event-driven payment gateway that allowed customers to swap bitcoin for a custom ERC20 token.
  • Secured internal development tools and applications using zero-trust networking, eliminating the need for a VPN.
  • Migrated back-end APIs from AWS Amplify to the Serverless Framework.
Technologies: Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, Amazon Cognito, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Amplify, Bitcoind, Bitcoin, Ethereum, ERC-20, Node.js

AWS Integration Engineer

2019 - 2019
Scalyr, Inc
  • Developed an event-driven log shipper that shipped CloudWatch logs to Scalyr's platform, allowing Scalyr's customers to manage their logs in one location.
  • Created a Terraform module that deployed an ECS cluster to benchmark log ingestion using an open-source log generator.
  • Authored a CloudFormation stack and Lambda function that automatically subscribed CloudWatch log groups to the custom log shipper.
Technologies: AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Python 2

Senior Infrastructure Engineer

2015 - 2017
Vision Critical
  • Designed and implemented a custom multi-region disaster recovery system which removed costs from third-party software vendors and reduced restoration time.
  • Operated a large (500+) multi-region, multi-environment fleet of EC2 instances and associated support services.
  • Acted as the go-to person to resolve urgent production-impacting infrastructure problems.
  • Engaged as the infrastructure point-of-contact for SOC 2 security review.
  • Worked with development and deployment teams to create tooling around application delivery.
  • Decreased the monthly operating cost significantly by optimizing resource sizes and utilization and implementing an automated resource lifecycle.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Ruby, Hashistack, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), Chef, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, VMware

Systems Engineer

2010 - 2015
iiNet
  • Upgraded service provider mail platforms to keep the business in line with the latest mail and webmail technologies.
  • Developed a custom quality management system for the corporate support center using open-source software.
  • Upgraded the Cisco telephony system while working closely with Cisco technicians.
  • Designed and developed a new telephony IVR that provided more efficient customer interaction through the support center.
  • Wrote a custom monitoring solution for wireless customers that provided a visual metrics interface using SNMP counters.
Technologies: UCCX, Cisco, BIND, Varnish, Exim4, Dovecot, Sendmail, Apache, Solaris, Linux

Team Leader

2007 - 2010
Adam Internet
  • Managed the service provisioning, customer retention, complaints, and spam/abuse teams.
  • Implemented a customer feedback system to improve customer interaction and reduce complaints.
  • Performed a presentation at the Industry Ombudsman headquarters in Melbourne to educate and inform on service provider obligations and service level agreements.
Technologies: Cisco Unified Workforce Optimization Workforce Management, Cisco Unified Workforce Optimization Quality Management, UCCX, Cisco

Reverse Engineering AWS S3 ETags in Python

https://teppen.io/2018/10/23/aws_s3_verify_etags/
Details on calculating an AWS S3 ETag for a local file so they can be compared to objects in S3 without having to calculate or store any MD5 checksums in S3. This could be used as the basis for implementing disaster recovery software.
SEPTEMBER 2015 - SEPTEMBER 2020

Linux+

CompTIA

SEPTEMBER 2015 - SEPTEMBER 2020

SUSE Certified Linux Administrator

SUSE

SEPTEMBER 2015 - SEPTEMBER 2020

LPIC-1

Linux Professional Institute

Libraries/APIs

Node.js, AWS Amplify

Tools

Terraform, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), VMware, Amazon Cognito, Amazon CloudFront CDN, AWS Fargate, Apache, Sendmail, Exim4, Varnish, UCCX, Cisco Unified Workforce Optimization Quality Management, Cisco Unified Workforce Optimization Workforce Management, Hashistack, HashiCorp, Vault, Chef, Puppet, AWS CloudFormation, Grafana

Languages

Python, Ruby, Bash, JavaScript, Python 2

Platforms

AWS Lambda, Linux, Solaris, Docker, Red Hat Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Unix, Icinga, Icinga2, Ethereum

Paradigms

Scrum, DevOps, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI)

Storage

MySQL, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), AWS Elastic File System, AWS SimpleDB

Other

LPIC-1, Amazon Cognito User Pools, Amazon API Gateway, ECS, API Gateways, Dovecot, BIND, Cisco, AWS DevOps, AWS CodePipeline, Storage, Consul, Infrastructure, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Graphite, Grafana 2, Back-end Admin Systems, Bitcoind, Bitcoin, ERC-20, Cloud Architecture, AWS Cloud Architecture

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