Experienced IT Professional with business continuity, disaster recovery and data resiliency background. Experienced working in a DevOps manner within the public and private sector

Personal Profile

• Enthusiastic IT professional specialising in IT infrastructure, data backup and business continuity
• Confident working alone or in a team, leading others to achieve targets and provide customer satisfaction
• Proven ability to implement, manage and troubleshoot environments of varied size and complexity
• Articulate communicator capable of discussing technical subjects at different levels in a company structure

Primary Technical Skills

Education

Professional Education

Current Certifications

• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

Past Certifications

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator– Associate
• AWS Certified Developer Administrator– Associate
• Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions (70-534)
• Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (70-533)
• Sophos Certified Architect – UTM
• Sophos Certified Engineer – UTM and Web Protection electives
• Citrix Certified Associate: Virtualization (CCA-V)
• VMware Certified Professional (VCP410 & VCP510)
• VMware Desktop Virtualization Technical Post-Sales Accreditation: VMview 3 and 4

Training Attended

Microsoft accredited training:

• 20410D: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012
• 20346C: Managing Office 365 Identities and Services

Other training:

• Professional Scrum Master (PSM)
• Docker Fundamentals and Docker Enterprise Operations
• Huawei Certified Network Associate: Contact Centre – Completed a contact centre installation course

September 2003 – June 2006

BSc (Hons) 2.2 Information Systems. Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne

I studied modules within the Computing School including Java programming, human computer interaction and systems administration and gained a rounded education by studying two modules outside of the Computing School each year which allowed me to develop my knowledge of business, economics and law.

September 2000 – June 2002

Havering Sixth Form College. Hornchurch, Essex

Four A Levels : I.C.T (B), Business Studies (C), Media Studies (C), General Studies (C)

September 1995 – June 2000

Hall Mead Technology College. Upminster, Essex

Twelve GCSEs : Six Grade B and Six Grade C

Employment History

September 2022 – Present

Cloud Engineer – AND Digital, UK Wide

Successful projects delivered include

• Delivered a variety of re-usable code repositories for use when training junior engineers and demonstrating the capabilities of serverless technology to clients

December 2018 – September 2022

Platform Engineer – Capgemini, UK Wide

Successful client projects delivered include

• 9-month assignment in a government department assisting the delivery of a central internet access solution to enable simplified management, protection, and logging of traffic across multiple AWS accounts
• 18-month staff augmentation assignment in a government department. Primary responsibilities included:
  • Integrating newly developed public cloud based (AWS & Azure) solutions with existing services hosted both on-premises and in other public cloud accounts
  • Developing, maintaining, and troubleshooting shared services to support the migration to public cloud
  • Develop and maintain Jenkins based CI/CD pipelines to automate deployments
  • Produce and document code in a maintainable manner using Git version control
  • Use infrastructure as code (Terraform), configuration management (Puppet) and scripting (Bash) to ensure changes to infrastructure are easily repeatable for deployment through the release stages
• Assisted a government department in migrating a commercial-off-the-shelf application from on-premises hardware to public cloud (AWS) hosting. Primary responsibilities included:
  • Working with cloud architects to agree and configure the appropriate infrastructure as code
  • Working with the software vendor to automate deployment of the application and supporting services
  • Utilising CI/CD techniques to simplify deployment throughout the development lifecycle
• Containerisation proof of concept using Docker Enterprise Edition on public cloud infrastructure as a service to demonstrate the migration of applications currently running on legacy operating systems onto modern infrastructure.
• Migration of large monolithic applications onto public cloud infrastructure as a service in a micro-service architecture.

October 2016 – December 2018

Infrastructure Engineer – Perfect Image, North Tyneside

Successful client projects delivered include

• Production of Infrastructure as code environments in a version controlled DevOps manner utilising AWS CloudFormation and Azure ARM Template to create reusable and repeatable client environments
• Multiple cloud adoption projects, migrating client servers into AWS or Azure in a planned and controlled manner to maximise availability.
• Migration of a Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp 6.5 disaster recovery environment to XenDesktop 7.11, utilising both Machine Creation Services and Provisioning Services, for a global media corporation. This exceeded expected demand levels without loss of service when DR was invoked during a high profile terror attack
• Amazon WorkSpaces and AppStream 2.0 proof of concept for a global media corporation considering AWS services as an alternative to Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp
• Multiple migrations to Office 365 mail from a variety of originating sources using different techniques

April 2015 – October 2016

Technical Consultant – Technology Services Group (TSG), Gosforth, Tyne and Wear

Successful client projects delivered include

• Development of a VMware vSphere server environment to provide hosted Infrastructure for multiple clients
• Development of a Citrix XenDesktop backed VDI environment to provide hosted desktop computing for clients
• Configuration analysis workshop to improve stability and performance of a 30 server, 400 user Citrix XenDesktop environment
• Migration from a single Exchange 2010 server to an Exchange 2013 cluster
• Involvement in the successful overnight integration of 19 hotels into an existing network as result of a change of ownership. My responsibilities included
  • Liaising with third parties to configure and troubleshoot complex IP routing as part of a MPLS cloud
  • Working with the client’s IT staff to troubleshoot issues inside and outside the hosted server environment
  • Management of third party contractors who were providing an on-site presence at each hotel
• Migration and consolidation of a server environment containing 40+ physical hosts into a fully virtualised environment on TSG’s hosted infrastructure
• Migration from a single Citrix Netscaler 10.5 VPX to a newly built VPX 11 cluster for increased availability

September 2007- April 2015

Senior Technical Consultant – Aegis IT, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear

• During my time with Aegis IT I showed ambition to progress from my initial position of Trainee Service Desk Operative to Team Leader of the Client Services Division and, later, a Senior Technical Consultant role
• As team leader of the client services division I was responsible for five members of staff who supported small to medium sized IT infrastructures and acted as their escalation point when required
• I demonstrated initiative to introduce an internal wiki based documentation system to improve the efficiency of both finding and updating client environment documentation

Successful projects delivered include

• Implemented a VDI environment at a client’s head office to improve data accessibility for a 50 user small business with 7 remote offices with limited bandwidth availability
• Production and delivery of a one week VDI workshop aimed at training a client’s internal IT staff in the basic operation and troubleshooting of a 1000 user environment
• 18 Month secondment acting as IT manager for an 8 site, 50 user small business
• Involved in the on-time delivery of a full IP contact centre solution including a vSphere back-end with multiple security zones and contact centre environment for a government department with 150 contact agents
• Performance optimisation of a multi-SAN environment utilising volume based replication to improve performance without compromising on the recovery point or recovery time objectives (RTO/RPO)
• Physical to virtual server migration projects involving both P2V conversions and new virtual server builds

Successful client projects managed include

• Roll out of Windows 7/Office 2010 across VMview and physical desktop environments
• Several Windows Server upgrades/migrations

November 2006 – September 2007

First line Apple help desk operative – Twenty4Help, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

• First line public facing support, often helping customers who did not consider themselves IT literate