Greg Connor

Mobile: (408) 529-6176 E-mail: gconnor@nekodojo.org

I am currently a "working manager" in Systems Admin/Operations. In my roles at Ruckus, TiVo and Yahoo! I have worked closely with both operations teams and developers. I have a strong background in Perl programming, including automation, tools development and monitoring.

I am seeking a role that leverages my experience in both systems administration and automation/tools development, preferably in a medium- to large-scale production environment. I am also interested in monitoring and instrumentation.

Skills

Management and leadership: 18 years

Managing a system administration team: 15 years
Manager or senior role for split onshore and offshore teams: 10 years
Leadership or senior role working with developers: 10 years
Various other leader or project management roles: 5 years
Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

System administration: 11 years

Server administration: Fluent in Unix (including RedHat, Solaris, and others) Experience with set up and configuring various services (e.g. Kubernetes, Puppet, Ansible, Apache, Nagios, Jenkins, mysql, git, etc.)
Cloud and container: Experience with GCP and AWS stacks: VM, Kubernetes, Bucket storage, EFS, RDS, CDN, DNS, Terraform. Familiar with standalone Docker image/build and K8S/GKE.
Scalability/Automation: Expert at managing large numbers of servers using an automated system. Implemented and maintained Puppet automation for software install, config changes, access control, monitoring and alerting across a large environment (1000+ servers)
Sustainable operations: Proven track record of taking groups from "mostly firefighting" to "mostly proactive/planned activities"

Coding and development: 5 years

Perl and Python coding: Able to write medium to large Python and Perl scripts and tools, for monitoring, data-mining, test harnesses, etc. Able to implement advanced data structures, client/server tools, threading.

Other skill areas

SQA lead, testing, building, releasing and integration: 3 years
Technical support: 4 years

Work experience

Ruckus Networks Sunnyvale, CA

Manager, Systems Engineering, 4/2020 to 10/2025

Manage a group of 5 systems engineers in US and working closely with team in Bangalore. The team supports 3 production environments and 4 lower environments, running Kubernetes and GCP services. Total of 1000+ VM instances being managed.
Automation focus (2021-2024): Deployed Terraform using multiple layers to manage k8s clusters and other services. Terraform includes import of existing environments plus new green-field deployments.
Networking focus: Also responsible for connecting GCP to on-premise using Google Interconnect (direct fiber) and converting many-to-many VCP network to hub-and-spoke arrangement, plus custom NAT VM instances to work around Google network limitations.
Notable projects: Terraform for k8s, Terraform for PagerDuty, Automation for custom VM image deployments by Dev/QA teams
Work closely with Java developers to onboard applications, set operational requirements, improve monitoring/instrumentation.

TiVo San Jose, CA

Manager, Systems Administration, 4/2014 to 4/2020

UNIX focus (2014-2018) Manage a group of 7 systems engineers, split between US and Bangalore. The team supports the majority of Linux servers across the company (approx 3000 servers)
Monitoring focus (2018-2020) Manage a team of 6, supporting monitoring systems, tools, and automation for combined company (Nagios, Splunk, Zabbix, JIRA, Confluence, Ansible, Testrail)
Cloud operations and monitoring: EC2, EBS, RDS, IAM, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, TrustedAdvisor, cost analysis/budget alerts, configuration management and tuning
Notable projects: Puppet deployment, DR environment, SJ/LV site migration, JIRA move to AWS cloud, Monitoring migration.
As Puppet expert: created automation recipes to deploy configs in System, Middleware and Application spaces.
Resource for other managers and leader of cross-functional projects.

Yahoo! Santa Clara, CA

Senior Systems Engineer, 4/2010 to 2/2014

Bringing Advertising/Targeting applications onto Hadoop grid.
During onboarding of new applications, work directly with developers to add monitoring, deployment tools and dashboards.
Writing documentation and working with devs to resolve operability concerns, and improve readiness.
Acting as a resource for other members on the team: training, mentoring.

CreateSpace Scotts Valley, CA

Senior Systems Engineer, 10/2008 to 4/2010

As the manager and senior member of a 4-person team, supervised and trained others and coordinated all aspects of server and desktop administration at our site.
Rewrote Nagios configurations to apply the same configuration files across 5 sites.
Migrated email services from ISP-based mail to our parent company's Exchange-based system.

Shutterfly.com Redwood City, CA (2 positions)

Senior Systems Engineer, 3/2007 to 10/2007

Manager, Systems Engineering, 10/2007 to 9/2008

Migrated 1100 TB of data from 300+ servers onto new SAN. Created tools to automate data migration, manage concurrent threads, track progress and report problems. Automation tools/database/scripts invented for this project were used in 4 other projects, including data move, tape backup/restore, verification, etc.
Led a small team to take over and re-tool backups for both uploaded images and Oracle databases. Our team trained on the old system (combination of manual commands and cron scripts), took over operation, then redesigned the system to automate end-to-end, including rsync, restarting oracle, tape backup, tape restore and checksum compare. New design features include email notifications and a web front-end showing job status, problems and completion.
In both "senior" and "manager" roles, acted as manager, trainer, and mentor for others on my team. Published documentation and held brown-bag sessions for training and communication.

Silicon Graphics Inc. Mountain View, CA

Senior System Administrator, 2004 - 2007

Maintained IT infrastructure services: anti-spam, email relays, list servers, name servers, proxy, network monitoring, etc. Notably reduced fire-fighting to planned work ratio.
Replaced aging, non-standard infrastructure with modern tools, including spam filter, dns/dhcp management tool, and cleaned up spam bounces. Customized dns/dhcp management tool (perl/php) to our needs and submitted patches back to open source working group.
Provided leadership, training and mentoring for other members of the team, and managed projects.

AltaVista Company Palo Alto, CA (2 positions)

Senior System Administrator, 1998 – 1999

System Administration Team Manager, 1999 - 2004

As Senior System Administrator, focused on automation, scripting, updating documentation.

As Sysadmin Team Manager, provided management and leadership for a group of 8 System Administrators, including technical leadership, supervision, organization, communication, and policy setting.

Managed large projects such as Alpha to Linux back-end conversion, inventory database, custom mrtg/rrd deployment, large-scale Kickstart deployment, web content synchronizer, etc.

Terran Interactive, Inc. Los Gatos, CA

Network Administrator, 1996 – 1998

As the server/network administrator for a small software company, installed/maintained file and web servers, including a secure commerce order form. Also administered mail transport (sendmail) with custom anti-spam filtering. Set up monitoring and statistics for most core systems and pager alerts.
Designed, implemented and maintained FileMaker databases to automatically accept web orders, create invoices, print shipping labels, track inventory and receivables, and create sales and accounting reports.

Apple Computer Inc. Cupertino, CA

Quality Lead, 1994 - 1996

Served as Quality lead for Portables Group (8/94-1/95) and PowerTalk mail group (1/95-2/96). Hired and trained testers, wrote quality plans, performed testing and troubleshooting, implemented test automation.

Education

Completed 3.5 years of BS Computer Science program, on Dean's list. (Left college to serve as Quality Lead at Apple.)