Experience

Linden Lab

• United States
• Computer Games
• 100 - 200 Employee

• Systems Engineer

  • Sep 2017 - Present

  Fully Remote Highlights Include: Took initiative and became Project Lead for Implementation of Akamai’s Cyber Security product, ‘Kona Site Defender’ for our web properties, delivering a presentation and conducting a Q&A session at our company conference. In migration to AWS, I was personally asked by the Lead Developers of our Billing Engine to serve as their Lead Operations Engineer. In our Data Center environment, I served as an on-call Operations Engineer and a top escalation point for… Show more Highlights Include: Took initiative and became Project Lead for Implementation of Akamai’s Cyber Security product, ‘Kona Site Defender’ for our web properties, delivering a presentation and conducting a Q&A session at our company conference. In migration to AWS, I was personally asked by the Lead Developers of our Billing Engine to serve as their Lead Operations Engineer. In our Data Center environment, I served as an on-call Operations Engineer and a top escalation point for outages. As Project Lead for implementing Akamai Kona Site Defender, I led the design and creation of web property and security configurations for our Marketplace and various site services. Working as the main Operations Engineering POC with developers, QA engineers, our Security Dev Lead, and Akamai’s technical account manager, the successful implementation of this product provided a complete solution to DoS attacks previously causing complete outages. In Uplift to AWS, I worked within its various services to uplift applications from our data center. This included troubleshooting of CloudFormation templates, working with EC2 Instance Management, ELBs, ASGs, VPCs, S3, CloudFront, ECS, CloudWatch, and more. In our Data Center environment, I was responsible for maintaining and responding to any issues surrounding our thousands of servers, their networking equipment, and applications. Recognizing a need for a better process in how we handled change controls, I created a deploy plan guide that serves for all involved teams, laying out their roles, and providing a rollback plan in the event of failures.

• Linux System Administrator

  • Mar 2014 - Present

  Remote Took initiative to manage the patch deployment of our main product, “Second Life,” to thousands of servers, and in my primary role I troubleshot all system and network issues. In taking on the lead role for patch deployment, I discovered ways to improve the process and implemented accordingly: Reduced production deployment time by over 33% by tracking our overall internal network load, discovering that we weren't fully utilizing our network infrastructure's hardware/bandwidth… Show more Took initiative to manage the patch deployment of our main product, “Second Life,” to thousands of servers, and in my primary role I troubleshot all system and network issues. In taking on the lead role for patch deployment, I discovered ways to improve the process and implemented accordingly: Reduced production deployment time by over 33% by tracking our overall internal network load, discovering that we weren't fully utilizing our network infrastructure's hardware/bandwidth capabilities, and made appropriate adjustments. This led to considerably less downtime for customers, and freed us to push out more updates to other applications. Established a contingency plan by documenting all processes, their importance and function, and personally trained each team member in my department on how to run our tools and scripts in the event that I'm unable to be present. Our future system admins now have a complete guide and living document on what to do. Prior to taking this role, only our supervisor and the last remaining developer were familiar with the ins and outs– now everyone can be. Detection & Mitigation of in-game scripted attacks by malicious users. Having learned some of the anomalies seen in our product's log files during end-user initiated attacks intended to disturb or 'grief' other users, I was able to develop a method by which our team is now able to definitively determine who is behind the attack, the technique(s) they're using, and take action to prevent or mitigate further disruption. This process has been credited with a higher customer retention rate by our Product Managers as 'griefers' had been a major pain point cited by customers.



Emagine IT, Inc.

• United States
• Business Consulting and Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Information Security Analyst, USDA

  • Sep 2013 - Mar 2014

  Washington D.C. Metro Area Conducted Security Assessments for Federal Information Security Systems. This involved working with the Information System Security Officers (ISSO) and System Tech Leads to collect, inspect, and assess all documentation, security scan results, and conduct interviews with personnel to ensure the operational compliance of systems’ Security Controls. After the submission of an assessment, the assessment is evaluated by an Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) team. Any… Show more Conducted Security Assessments for Federal Information Security Systems. This involved working with the Information System Security Officers (ISSO) and System Tech Leads to collect, inspect, and assess all documentation, security scan results, and conduct interviews with personnel to ensure the operational compliance of systems’ Security Controls. After the submission of an assessment, the assessment is evaluated by an Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) team. Any outstanding issues from the assessment may lead to the creation of a Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M), which I would then help ISSOs and System Tech Leads to resolve. Show less



Latisys

• Service Desk Technician

  • Mar 2012 - Sep 2013

  Ashburn, Virginia I earned the respect and trust of our company's CEO and executives by taking initiative to serve as Acting Team Lead during all Emergency Outage events and routinely ranked amongst the top performers for our team's monthly number of cases closed, and overall customer satisfaction. Formally offered a promotion to Team Lead (September 2013); respectfully declined to pursue a new opportunity. SPOT Award Winner (Spotlight of Excellence) in 2012, and in 2013 as recognized by CEO Pete… Show more I earned the respect and trust of our company's CEO and executives by taking initiative to serve as Acting Team Lead during all Emergency Outage events and routinely ranked amongst the top performers for our team's monthly number of cases closed, and overall customer satisfaction. Formally offered a promotion to Team Lead (September 2013); respectfully declined to pursue a new opportunity. SPOT Award Winner (Spotlight of Excellence) in 2012, and in 2013 as recognized by CEO Pete Stevenson. As Acting Team Lead during Emergency Outage events, I was responsible for taking initial diagnostic steps before escalating the issue to our Senior Network Engineer team, delegating tasks to fellow team members, communicating effectively with incident-management teams, maintaining a timeline of events, and overseeing all follow-up communication with affected customers. I made it a point to volunteer for this role every time I was present. Show less



Net2EZ

• NOC Technician Tier 1/Data Center Technician

  • Dec 2011 - Mar 2012

  Ashburn, VA Served as a direct point-of-contact for all customer and service provider interaction, acting as a liaison between our Tier 2 and Network Engineering teams. Resolved Tier 1 customer Remote Hands tickets via phone, email, and our internal system. This included rack/stack server deployment, cabling, drive swaps, hardware troubleshooting, power cycles, shipping, KVM attachments, and escorting vendors and customers to Data Center Colo space.



RCG Inc

• Help Desk Analyst/Service Technician

  • Jul 2011 - Dec 2011

  Fairfax, VA Handled technical troubleshooting (hardware and software) on various laptop manufacturing brands, the majority being Toshiba. Responsible for data recovery, backups, and virus removal. Contributed to a Knowledge Base and provided updated information on Standard Operating Procedures as it pertained to each manufacturing brand.



Public Partnerships, LLC

• Respite Care Provider

  • Aug 2010 - Jul 2011

  Fredericksburg, VA Provided care for an exceptional teenager struggling with severe autism by helping to reinforce successful life skills and habits outside of the classroom environment. Assisted with changing of diapers, showering, meal preparation, housekeeping, discipline, and communication skills through an application called Proloquo2Go.



Northern Virginia Community College

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• IT Assistant/Writing Center & ESL Tutor

  • Feb 2008 - Jul 2008

  Annandale, VA Assisted in managing a LAN environment of over 20 desktops used for training students with an administrative account. Provided hardware, software, network, and application support for students and staff members at the Writing Center. Also served as a Writing Center & ESL tutor. Taught effective writing strategies, research methods, literary devices, and brainstorming techniques for students. Also conducted speaking sessions with ESL students geared towards practicing English.



Twinbrook Gifts, Cards, and Jewelry

• Store Clerk

  • May 2005 - Oct 2006

  Burke, Virginia, United States Regularly opened the shop, ran day-to-day operations, and closed shop independently. Maintained inventory and helped develop relationships with customers. Performed minor jewelry repairs and assisted with occasional antique restoration