Colin Shea

A Programmer, Sysadmin, and DevOps Expert

(646) 847-8929

Phoenix, AZ

USA

Technical Skills

Mastery of: Linux, Ruby, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Ansible, Python, TLS/SSL, git, CI/CD, IaC, AWS, JavaScript & TypeScript, Docker, Gitlab

Proficient at: MySQL, HTML, SQL Server, Redis, SaltStack, Puppet, Go, PowerShell, Azure, PHP

Knowledge of: VMWare, Rust, MongoDB, OCaml, ReasonML, Elixir, C#, Rust, Java, ELK Stack, Chef

Experience

Qwick, Inc.

Staff DevOps Engineer

June 2022 - August 2024

Leveling up the organization's DevOps chops as they were all developers without the appropriate specialized skillset. Instituted a number of reforms to allow for automated management with significant improvements to security.

Rebuilt production with zero downtime from manually created Kubernetes 1.18 deployment to EKS 1.24 with Terraform to ensure we're not on unsupported versions.
Upgraded the database clusters from PostgreSQL 11 to 15 in RDS resulting in huge performance improvements and switching from internet access to requiring a VPN.
Spearheaded multiple penetration tests leading to many patches and fostering a culture of security awareness.
Created and lead the Open Source Office and Compliance program.
Authored dozens of documents, allowing colleagues to grok the network and improving resolution speed during incidents.

Get Together, Inc.

Senior DevOps Engineer

November 2021 - May 2022

Owned the developer experience tools that developers interacted with. Furthering automation to allow my team to focus on projects rather than ad-hoc requests.

Managed servers in AWS to power an ECS (Elastic Container Service) cluster.
Automated infrastructure with CloudFormation with an eye towards a Terraform replacement.
Supported a PHP application powered by MySQL and Redis.
Managed a fleet of build servers for running CI in Buildkite.
Integrated a ChatOps approach to connect Github and Slack with a Python chatbot.

StrongMind

DevOps Engineer III

November 2017 - July 2021

Responsible for introducing various DevOps inspired practices and mentalities to the entire organization, along with migrating physical compute loads to the cloud. A heterogeneous network of Ubuntu and Windows across a broad hybrid cloud of VMWare, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud Platform deployments.

Introduced and taught Confirmation Management and Infrastructure as Code concepts to automate every team's operations.
Lead development of a full observability stack with centralized logging, unified metrics, and distributed tracing.
Developed internal tooling with Go, Ruby and Python to bridge various external APIs and glue internal microservices together.
Lead developer on a complete company-wide architectural overhaul to event-driven paradigms.
Lead multiple teams, training people with no prior experience to mid-level developers.
Contributed to the company's applications in Ruby, Python, C#, and TypeScript

Really Simple, Inc

Senior System Administrator

November 2016 - May 2017

Automation for an AWS based infrastructure with heavy integration of RedHat management technologies, supporting a hybrid Spring Boot, Tomcat and node.js platform.

Ansible used to provision, deploy, and configure every server, and every service.
Built automation to create clones of production for clients and contractors.
Managed security policies and handled incoming reports.
Deployed Prometheus for monitoring, Logstash for centralized logging, LYNIS and OpenSCAP for auditing, Spacewalk for patch management, FreeIPA for AAA
Developed internal tooling with Go, Ruby and Python to automate deployment and management
Used Docker to create reusable containers across production and testing environments
Jenkins used for continuous integration of Java, Node.js and Ansible code. Continuous deployment via RPM packages.

Internet Security Research Group

System Administrator

December 2015 - August 2016

Deployment and management of Let's Encrypt in a highly secure environment to create the first truly open CA. Part of the team shepherding it from closed beta to general access.

Created policies to use public cloud infrastructure alongside the existing secure datacenters.
Worked with auditors and root trust programs to create and operate a high trust network.
Developed custom saltstack formulas for a variety of standard management tools within the high trust network.
Worked with the developers of boulder in Go and certbot in Python to help automate the creation of over 5 million TLS certificates, creating one of the largest certificate authorities in the world
Continuous integration of application code using Travis CI with continuous deployment via RPM packages.

The Evogi Group

Lead System Administrator

September 2013 - June 2015

Configuration, monitoring, and deployment of 1,000+ Ubuntu and CentOS servers in AWS running Ruby on Rails, Java, Erlang and Go applications.

Developed custom internal applications for the operations and development teams, in Ruby, Go, and Java
Transitioned from a monolithic server architecture to a multi-tiered architecture using Amazon VPC
Revamped the authentication and structure for the internal admin panel of the Rails code base
Modernized configuration management and deployment using Chef 12 and Amazon EC2 Autoscaling
Deployed applications to Heroku, Elastic Beanstalk, and other PaaS services
Set up Nagios, Icinga, Shiken and ELK stacks to monitor components of the network
Helped administrate multiple MySQL databases with terabytes of data
Maintained patches against upstream gems and cookbooks to use internally developed libraries
Set up TeamCity for continuous integration with Rails initiated by Github webhooks

Certifications

SaltStack Certified Engineer April 2016 - Present SaltStack, Inc

Security+ April 2010 - Present CompTIA

Linux+ April 2010 - Present CompTIA

Network+ October 2009 - Present CompTIA

A+ (IT Technician) June 2009 - Present CompTIA

Education

University of Advancing Technology, Tempe, Arizona USA

2010 - 2013

Triple Major: Open Source Technologies, Network Security & Network Engineering

Colin Shea — colin@shea.at — References available upon request.