Resume

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James Strong

Overview

Experienced Technical Professional who works well with minimum supervision as well as a group member. Customer oriented problem solver with an ability to adapt to new situations. A quick learner with a desire for continuous personal and technical growth. Effective communicator with the ability to create technical materials that convey value for both clients and end users.

Professional Experience

Isovalent • Senior Solutions Architect

Remote • Jan ‘24 - Present

Chainguard, Inc • Staff Solutions Architect

Remote • Dec ‘21 - Dec ‘23

Responsible for providing Chainguard customer product support, answering technical questions while architecting solutions, and solving customer problems with the suite of Chainguard products. Also, partner with customers to upgrade their CI/CD and SDLC to enable new Software Supply Chain Security practices and tools such as SBOM and CVE attestations and container signing utilizing Sigstore.

Kubernetes • Ingress-nginx Maintainer

Remote • 2019 - Present

Core maintainer for the kubernetes sig-network project sub-project Ingress-Nginx Ingress controller. Bi-weekly run the community where we discuss pressing needs of the project and the community. Responsible for triaging issues, approving pull requests and most importantly releasing new versions of the controller for open source users and business to consume.

Repo https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx

Community meeting playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL69nYSiGNLP2Rqe8T4mDnyHqDZ4VYPY1X

Contino • Cloud Native Director

New York City, NY • Sept ‘19 - Dec ‘21

Responsible for Evangelizing Contino’s work in DevOps and Cloud transformations. Partnering with clients, conference organizers, and others to bring their message to their communities, accelerate the adoption of new platforms, or present on topics such as Kubernetes, Cloud Native Architecture, or Application Modernization. Aides in all facets of the project life cycle, beginning with a project proposal and closing SOWs with the sales team by helping technical teams deliver value to the client.

O’Reilly Author - Kubernetes Networking

Remote - September 2021

Kubernetes Networking is an essential guide for anyone who wants to deploy, manage, or troubleshoot a production scale Kubernetes network.

Understanding Kubernetes clusters is not enough to operate Kubernetes at scale. Every layer of the stack–the network, operating system, Kubernetes–depends on the layer below. Successful administrators need to understand each layer and how it works across deployments on-prem, in the cloud, and with managed services. Kubernetes Networking clearly guides administrators through the layers of complexity and abstraction that come with running a Kubernetes network. It covers:

  • The Kubernetes networking model
  • The CNCF Container Network Interface Project and how to choose the best interface for your clusters
  • The networking and Linux primitives that power Kubernetes
  • How to quickly troubleshoot networking issues and prevent downtime
  • Cloud networking and Kubernetes with the three major providers: AWS, GCP, and Azure
  • The pros and cons of various network tools–and how to select the best ones for your stack

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/kubernetes-networking/9781492081647/

A Cloud Guru Instructor

Since its release in 2014, Kubernetes has become the de-facto standard for container orchestration. Kubernetes is a distributed system for managing containers and its networking is no different. Many companies are deploying Kubernetes on-prem and in the cloud, both managed offerings and self-deployed. With that, the demand for System, Network and Cluster Administrators to understand the underpinnings of the network stack in Kubernetes is ever-increasing. This course is a deep dive into the Kubernetes network model, the components involved and how to deploy, manage and troubleshoot the cluster network.

https://learn.acloud.guru/course/advanced-networking-with-kubernetes-for-aws/dashboard

Volunteer • Meetup Organizer

New York City, NY • April ‘19 - March ‘20

Responsible for organizing and scheduling several Meetups in the Louisville and NYC tech community. In Louisville, Kubernetes and Cloud Native, GoLou, and the AWS User group. James works as Co-Organizer for DevOps NYC.

https://www.meetup.com/Kubernetes-and-Cloud-Native-Computing-Louisville/

https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-AWS-Users-Group/

https://www.meetup.com/DevOps-NYC/

https://www.meetup.com/go-lou/

Contino • Technical Principal

New York City, NY • Jan ‘18 - Dec ‘18

Lead technical teams implementing technologies such as Terraform, Docker and other cloud native technologies. To upskill teams on those technologies implementing paired programming or workshops. Responsible for day-to-day Scrum master duties, completion of Project deliverables and report outs to Key stakeholders.

Contino • Senior DevOps Consultant

New York City, NY • Jan ‘18 - Dec ‘18

Provide guidance for Enterprise organizations on how to adopt DevOps practices by

  • Creating automated pipelines for infrastructure and applications, on premise and in the cloud, utilizing Hashicorp suite of tools.
  • Upskilling current workforce with hands mentoring during Architecture, coding reviews and deployments of pipelines.
  • Accelerating the adoption of DevOps tools; Docker, Terraform, Configuration management tools such as Chef, Puppet or Ansible and coordinated with CI/CD software like Jenkins.

Bluesentry IT • DevOps Engineer Lead

Louisville, KY • Jan ‘17 - Jan 18

Aided client’s efforts to transition to Cloud based architecture exclusively utilizing AWS

  • Architecture review including VPC design, IAM policy and Least Privilege model review, Services utilization and migration to AWS services.
  • Creation of Infrastructure as Code for client’s AWS resources utilizing Terraform
  • Scrum Master for Team, leading all discussion and backlog reviews.
  • Product Owner discussions with clients and backlog prioritization.

Cafepress • DevOps Engineer

Louisville, KY • Sept ‘16 - Dec ‘16

Responsible for aiding the Organization transition to a Cloud based Architecture and mindset

  • Develop strategy for the organization’s move to a Cloud based architecture and API driven infrastructure
  • Create automated pipeline for building out infrastructure utilizing Jenkins Pipeline, Hashicorp’s Terraform and Packer.
  • AWS - Troubleshoot AWS environment; EC2 Clean up, Cost optimization and setup security/usage/architecture guidelines.
  • Release manager for website code base; Project plan for simplifying and automating the release process.

GE Appliances • Cloud Architect - Marketing IT

Louisville, KY • May ‘15 - Sept ‘16

Responsible for aiding the team’s transition to a Cloud based Architecture and mindset; utilizing tools, technologies and methodologies like Docker, Continuous Integration, Agile, and Microservices.

  • Increased developer effectiveness.
  • Establishing coding standards.
  • Completed migration to git for all of team’s source code repositories.
  • Automated Code Deployment and CI/CD pipeline.
  • Increased AWS adoption and awareness including Architecture, Operations, standards, and migration of customer facing web applications.
  • Migration of static websites to AWS utilizing S3 and Cloudflare.

GE Appliances • IT Lead Technologist – Cloud

Louisville, KY • February ‘13 – May ‘15

Responsible for development and support of GE Appliances’ in-house developed Private Cloud solution utilizing a combination of technologies including Ruby, Micro web services, Puppet, RabbitMQ, Jenkins CI, Github, Docker and VMware infrastructure. Also, responsible for public cloud migration utilizing Amazon Web Services.

  • Implemented API key management Services.
  • Designed and implemented Snapshot management API, Cloud dashboard for Capacity management.
  • DevOps and cloud evangelist.
  • Network management between GE and AWS.

GE Home & Business Solutions • IT Technologist – Cloud

Louisville, KY • August ‘12 – February ‘13

  • Responsible for continued implementation, design, and support of GE Home and Business Solutions’ private cloud utilizing VMware’s vCloud automation center 5.1, C#, Puppet and Ruby. Also, contributed in the support of the current VMware virtualization infrastructure.
  • Implemented ServiceNow to DynamicOps SOAP interface.
  • Collaborated on creation of REST web service design for cloud integrations.
  • Implemented integration into current IPAM solution.

GE Home & Business Solutions • Information Technology Leadership Program (ITLP) Member – Enterprise Client Services

Louisville, KY • February ‘12 – August `12

Facilitated the design and implementation of an infrastructure as a service environment utilizing DynamicOps Cloud Automation Center. Completed manual Virtual server builds to understand the build process to automate it.

Collaborated with team on choosing orchestration and IAAS engine to run our private cloud resulting in the implementation of DynamicOps Cloud Automation Center.

Lead role in the design and deployment of a Cisco UCS lab environment for testing of UCS firmware, VMware ESXi, and vSphere upgrades.

GE Appliances & Lighting • ITLP – Project Management Office

Louisville, KY • August ‘11 – February ‘12

Lead developer and Scrum Master of the agile project for development and migration of the Project Management office’s project tracking and tollgate approvals to Service-now.com Cloud services.

GE Appliances & Lighting • ITLP – Midrange Team (Linux/UNIX Administration)

Louisville, KY • January ‘11 – August ‘11

Collaborated with the team and EMC to complete the installation, configuration, and migration to a new EMC Avamar grid.

  • Completed 5 weeks of on-call rotations.
  • Designed and implemented a user audit process for removing expired user accounts from approximately 10 different development servers.
  • Worked with cross-functional teams to substantially reduce the number of outdated Solaris 2.6 servers in a legacy environment.

GE Appliances & Lighting • ITLP – Global Network Team

Louisville, KY • June ‘10 – January ‘11

Worked with Team on daily operations, upgrades and on-call rotations.

  • VPN Cleanup - Created Perl scripts to remove all the unused/down/partial tunnels across our Cisco VPN concentrators. Once these tunnels were identified, they were removed from their perspective device configurations.
  • Network Upgrade - Coordinated with the business to upgrade end of life hardware. I oversaw both the communication and technical pieces of the upgrade.
  • Wireless Upgrade - Helped upgrade our wireless network in one of Appliances’ largest warehouses.

GE Consumer and Industrial • IT Intern

Louisville, KY • May ‘09 – August ‘09

Created a virtualization strategy for my team’s applications. The team was new to virtualization and wanted to know the Business and IT impact of virtualizing their applications which I supplied to them.

Migrated and updated website to company standards for Product Labs testing.

University of Dayton • Network Administrator

Dayton, OH August ‘06 – September ‘09

Worked with network management applications such as CiscoWorks, HP OpenView and AMP Airwave to monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot wireless around campus. Deploying and Troubleshooting Network equipment across Campus.

Accreditations

Current

Past

  • AWS DEVOPS - Professional
  • AWS CSA - Professional
  • AWS CSA – Associate
  • AWS DEV - Associate
  • AWS SYSOPS - Associate
  • AWS Certified Network Speciality
  • CCNA
  • CCNA Security
  • RedHat Certified System Administrator
  • VMWare Certified Professional 5

Education & Memberships

Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems: U. of Dayton, Ohio 2010

Masters of Science in Computer Science: U. of Louisville, Kentucky May 2015

IEEE Member: 92045724

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