Tom Gardiner
Verified Expert in Engineering
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Developer
Guadalajara, Mexico
Toptal member since January 9, 2019
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
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
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
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.
DevOps Engineer
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.
AWS Integration Engineer
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.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer
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.
Systems Engineer
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.
Team Leader
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.
Experience
Reverse Engineering AWS S3 ETags in Python
https://teppen.io/2018/10/23/aws_s3_verify_etags/Certifications
Linux+
CompTIA
SUSE Certified Linux Administrator
SUSE
LPIC-1
Linux Professional Institute
Skills
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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