1231
Sierra Village Place, San Jose, CA 95132
Mobile: (408) 529-6176
E-mail: gconnor@nekodojo.org
URL:
http://nekodojo.org/~gconnor/resume.html
I am an experienced senior-level Systems Engineer and manager, and I have a strong background in Perl, including automation, tools development and monitoring. I am seeking a role that crosses over between system administration and automation/tools, preferably in a medium- to large-scale production environment.
Management and leadership: 12 years
Managing a system administration team: 7 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) Able to set up and configure various services (such as sendmail, Postfix, bind, Apache, Nagios, rrd/mrtg, Mailman/Majordomo, dhcpd, mysql, CVS, etc.)
Scalability/Automation: Expert at managing large numbers of servers using an automated system. Implemented and maintained 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"
Perl coding: Able to write medium to large Perl scripts and tools, for monitoring, data-mining, test harnesses, etc. Able to use advanced data structures, client/server tools, threading.
Other skill areas
SQA lead, testing, building, releasing and integration: 3 years
Technical support: 4 years
CreateSpace Scotts
Valley, CA
Senior Systems Engineer, 10/2008 to present
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.
Completed 3.5 years of BS Computer Science program, on Dean's list. (Left college to serve as Quality Lead at Apple.)
I am passionate about stopping email spam, and I have spent a lot of my spare time setting up spam filters, reporting spam, participating in mailing list discussions and reviewing new technology and standards-track proposals. I am also interested in Hadoop and other distributed computing/storage systems.