Experience

LINUX SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
Leidos - Stennis Space Center, MS
01/2023 - Present

SENIOR PLATFORM ENGINEER - LINUX
Rabobank - Chesterfield, MO
06/2022 - 01/2023

Responsible for system monitoring and operations, capacity and performance monitoring and management, and performing, maintaining, and supporting implementations, upgrades, and patching for all RHEL environments running on physical servers and VMware vSphere virtual platform. Develop, test, and manage backup, and disaster recovery processes for all RHEL systems. Participate in on-call rotation and disaster recovery tests.

  • Upgraded Tripwire Enterprise console and migrated TE Agents to Axon agents.

SENIOR LINUX SYSTEMS ENGINEER
Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine - Bethesda, MD (working remotely in Saint Louis, MO)
07/2021 - 05/2022

Supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS engineering and administration and scientific application installation and upgrade in support of multiple military medical research programs. Worked with HJF’s IT staff, project leaders, and business users on a variety of business process improvement and process automation to manage and help improve HJF operations.

  • Deployed Red Hat Satellite Server to provide Red Hat and CentOS inventory management, subscription management, and patch management.
  • Developed standard build process for RHEL 8 virtual machines including base image and Ansible playbooks to run roles that configured root passwords, administrator accounts, registered VM with Red Hat Satellite Server, installed common software, and applied common system configurations, including system hardening configurations.
  • Evaluated and implemented security configuration changes to RHEL and CentOS systems based on HIPAA benchmark and DISA STIG requirements. Compliance reporting was implemented in Red Hat Satellite Server.
  • Installed, configured, and maintained LabKey software and components (Java, Apache Tomcat, RStudio Docker container, PostgreSQL database, SSL certificates).

LINUX SYSTEMS ENGINEER
Leidos - Bethesda, MD
06/2020 - 07/2021

Worked on multiple facets of the training systems designed, developed, integrated, and installed by the Signature Trainer Support (STS) program at Naval sites around the nation. Part of a team responsible for technical planning, system hardware-software-network design, development and integration, verification and validation, and fielding Linux-based (RHEL and CentOS) training systems that utilized various Linux tools and services such as Foreman, Puppet, DNS, DHCP, KVM, and Docker. Performed systems requirements analysis. Provide technical leadership.

  • Added configuration automation tasks in Puppet applied during trainer systems build process to improve security scoring based on DISA STIG requirements.
  • Wrote a script to automate log drive setup that included LUKS disk encryption, LVM, and setting SELinux contexts appropriately for the mounted log file systems.
  • Wrote scripts to automate performing password changes and anti-virus signature file updates across the systems in the trainers to make these tasks easier for onsite maintainers.

SENIOR SAN/SYSTEMS ARCHITECT
Financial Network, Inc. - Olivette, MO
10/2005 - 06/2020

Evaluated. designed, installed, configured, and maintained server and storage infrastructure encompassing, at various times, HP-UX (11.11 through 11.31), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES 10 and 11), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 5 through 7), vSphere ESXi and vCenter Server Appliance (5.0 through 6.5), Cisco Storage Area Network (SAN) switches (MDS), Brocade SAN switches (Silkworm), HP storage arrays (VA, EVA, MSA, and Nimble), EMC storage arrays (CLARiiON, VNX, and VNXe), and EMC VPLEX. Analyzed and resolved problems associated with server hardware, operating systems, and application software. Monitored, diagnosed, and repaired problems on servers. Acted as a leader within the department, shared ideas, assisted in setting policies, procedures, and standards. Exercised autonomous judgment with strong emphasis on minimizing unplanned outages.

  • Evaluated and recommended storage array and SAN switch options to replace old EMC VNX arrays, EMC VPLEX, and Cisco MDS 9148 switches supporting internal and customer environments. Once decision was made and equipment purchased, planned and implemented migration to Cisco MDS 9148T switches with Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) for SAN and HPE Nimble storage array.
  • Headed group of internal stakeholders (Systems, Security, Networking, DBAs) in the move to cloud for DR. The group interviewed six providers and went through prolonged discussions to determine needs and requirements and to evaluate each provider’s ability to accommodate those needs and requirements. Once provider was selected, continued to be involved in meetings with cloud provider team and FNI stakeholders to get environment setup and move towards the goal of shutting down company’s DR site as quickly as possible.
  • Evaluated and recommended storage array options to replace old EMC VNXe arrays for backups.
  • Developed standards for configuring templates and service profiles for Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) enclosures and blade servers.
  • Automated post build process for RHEL 7 virtual machines and physical servers.
  • Planned and implemented migration from EMC CLARiiON to EMC VPLEX and EMC VNX storage infrastructure.
  • Designed and implemented virtual data center environment in collaboration with Networking and Security teams using VMware vSphere 5.
  • Developed and documented standards for SLES systems and clusters using Heartbeat and DRBD.
  • Planned and implemented migration from Brocade/HP SAN to Cisco/EMC SAN. Implementations were performed with minimal customer impact and within tight maintenance windows.
  • Evaluated and implemented security configuration changes to HP-UX, SLES, and RHEL systems based on CIS benchmarks, established security policies, and PCI requirements. Also wrote and implemented scripts to run CIS scoring tool and to generate a web page containing all server CIS score reports weekly for Security team to access.
  • Designed and implemented "poor man's" failover scripts and procedures to support redundant servers when Serviceguard was considered too expensive and automatic failover was considered unnecessary.
  • Designed and implemented highly available NFS and NIS services that were integrated into Serviceguard package control scripts.

SENIOR SYSTEM TECHNICAL ANALYST
Signature Consultants - Heathrow, FL
04/2005 - 09/2005

Performed all aspects of UNIX (HP-UX) systems administration and engineering for customer on-site and hosted systems at American Automobile Association National Office. Recommended, planned, and implemented changes to UNIX computing environment.

  • Evaluated, planned, and implemented system monitoring of hosted UNIX systems using Mercury SiteScope.
  • Evaluated and implemented security configuration changes to hosted and on-site UNIX systems based on client policies.

SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
Miracle Software Systems, Inc. - Dearborn, MI
10/2004 - 01/2005

Supported 500+ UNIX (Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX) servers in 24X7 data center as member of second level support team at Ford Motor Company. Performed all aspects of system administration, maintenance, monitoring, and troubleshooting for operating system and web servers.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT - SYSTEMS ENGINEER
The Sedona Group - East Moline, IL
01/2004 - 10/2004

Performed all aspects of UNIX (HP-UX) systems administration and engineering for customer on-site and hosted systems at John Deere Information Systems. Recommended, planned, and implemented changes to UNIX computing environment. Provided third level UNIX support and training to client's internal support teams.

  • Developed and implemented new build process that consolidated three separate Ignite-UX tapes and automating time-consuming manual processes. Implementation included Ignite-UX server, SD-UX, DHCP, and POSIX shell scripts. New process reduced a two days installation to less than an hour.
  • Investigated and documented possibility of hosting legacy applications related to UNIX servers to customers on Internet without VPN. Involved extensive security considerations to develop recommendation.
  • Developed educational material to train the internal support staff on UNIX topics they were interested in learning.

SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION PROFESSIONAL - ADVISORY
IBM - Saline, MI
03/2003 - 01/2004

Note: Visteon Corporation outsourced entire IT organization to IBM.

Performed all aspects of UNIX (HP-UX) systems administration for CAD workstations and plant floor application and database servers, physical Oracle RDBMS administration, and Windows NT Server administration. Planned and implemented changes to computing environment. Worked as member of information technology support group to support 600+ Windows desktop systems. Provided support to other plants that did not have local UNIX and Oracle database support personnel.

  • Migrated plant web server from Windows2000 to Red Hat Linux. Implemented file sharing via Samba for Windows users needing access to edit web pages.
  • Evaluated and implemented replacement of Hummingbird Exceed with Hummingbird Exceed onDemand. Saved nearly $90,000 in licensing costs by switching to web-enabled product for legacy UNIX-based plant floor applications.

SYSTEMS ANALYST
Visteon Corporation - Saline, MI
06/2000 - 02/2003

Note: Auto parts supplier spin-off from Ford Motor Company.

Performed all aspects of UNIX (HP-UX) systems administration for CAD workstations and plant floor application and database servers, physical Oracle RDBMS administration, and Windows NT Server administration. Planned and implemented changes to computing environment. Worked as member of information technology support group to support 600+ Windows desktop systems. Provided support to other plants that did not have local UNIX and Oracle database support personnel.

  • Planned and implemented conversion from static IP addresses to dynamic IP addresses for desktop computers using DHCP on UNIX servers.
  • Initiated, planned, and implemented refurbishment of UNIX server backup and recovery procedures to minimize outages in event of server failures. Procedures included using MirrorDisk/UX, Ignite-UX, and fbackup HP-UX utilities as well as Oracle RDBMS archivelog mode to facilitate online database backups for point of failure recovery.
  • Initiated, planned, and implemented consolidation strategy for UNIX server environment to minimize maintenance and power costs. In twelve months, this effort to eliminate obsolete, malfunctioning, and underutilized equipment reduced active server inventory from twelve to seven.
  • Initiated concept and developed two web browser interfaces, one to legacy overhead paging system and another for online submission of computer access requests, using Perl CGI scripts, JavaScript, and Apache web server.

SYSTEMS ANALYST
Ford Motor Company - Saline, MI
01/1996 - 06/2000

Performed all aspects of UNIX (HP-UX) systems administration for CAD workstations and plant floor application and database servers, physical Oracle RDBMS administration, and Windows NT Server administration. Planned and implemented changes to computing environment. Worked as member of information technology support group to support 600+ Windows desktop systems.

  • Planned and implemented migration of data between Oracle database servers for two applications to resolve Y2K compliance. Volunteering to become trained as Oracle DBA saved approximately $10,000 per instance per year that would have been needed to contract support.
  • Coordinated migration of over 600 users from mainframe-based email system to Microsoft Outlook in four weeks. Information technology support group had no supervisor during this migration.
  • Planned and implemented migration from OS/2 servers to Windows NT servers during leased computer rollout of over 600 desktop computers in six weeks.

UNIX SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
MIS International - Saline, MI
08/1995 - 01/1996

Performed all aspects of UNIX (HP-UX) systems administration for plant floor application and database servers at Ford Motor Company Saline Plant. Assisted client with use of HP-UX in support of applications being launched at site.

  • Wrote shell script to provide text-based menu system for users to run, view, and print SQL reports against plant's maintenance system's Oracle database.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS SPECIALIST I
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI
08/1992 - 08/1995

Performed all aspects of UNIX (SunOS and IRIX) systems administration for College of Pharmacy and Biophysics Research Division. Provided support for Windows and Macintosh computers on network. Acted as liaison to other campus departments regarding network.

  • Integrated heterogeneous network of Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations using NFS and NIS.
  • Migrated Sun workstations from X11R5 to X11R6. Required compiling, testing applications against, and deploying new X server software on production equipment with no interruption of service.
  • Implemented email servers using IMAP, POP, and sendmail.
  • Assisted in planning and implementing migration from campus mainframe to distributed computing environment.
  • Created and maintained prototype web site using Apache web server.