Due to the nature of previous positions, a multi-talented person with a wide range of talents has been required to become a "Master of All Trades" as opposed to a "Jack." It has been demonstrated how the work of this candidate can help a business expand from a Start Up to an Enterprise after spending the last ten years helping to build Cloudreach as a founding engineer.
Prior to this, Paul worked as a volunteer ambulance technician for the London Ambulance Service while pursuing a degree in computer science and working a full-time job as a deeds manager who started his career by upgrading their Employer's infrastructure.
Employment History:
Principal Cloud Systems Developer - Cloudreach 2013 - Present
Beginning at Cloudreach when it was a small start up company, fluid in responsibilities across the business, including sales, seeing it through several ownership changes throughout a decade long career. Always within the first cohort to be promoted when rank was introduced owed to in depth knowledge of Technology, Security, Dev(Sec)Ops and Automation. I would become the First Cloud Systems Developer Lead as well as their First Principal Cloud Systems Developer.
Some notable internal achievements include:
- Opening their initial US region and Office in New York
- Creating an array of Security Education material to up skill and develop Junior engineers
- Maintaining a Pod of 8 team members with 100% retention (until my promotion)
Deployed upon many clients across many different business sectors, although primarily focused in Finance and Government industries that demand a keen sense for Security related tasks. Tasked to Design, Architect, Secure,Build, Administrate and consult across all of Cloudreach's client set of the past decade.
Considered the Go-to Guy by my peers to make "the impossible, possible!" in a technical sense. The following are some of the clients and a brief rundown to show off my achievements
Notable Projects:
ResMed
Project Spec: Build out of Serverless IAM platform backed by Okta in AWSPosition: Senior DeveloperInfrastructure: AWSProvisioners: Terraform, Python, NodeJS (Angular)Technologies Used: AWS Serverless, GitHub Actions,Terraform, Python, NodeJS (Angular)OS: Linux and Windows.Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, NodeJS
Global Payments
Project Spec: Cloud Migration from Azure to GCP
Position: Lead Security and DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: Azure, GCP, On-Prem
Provisioners: Terraform and Ansible
Technologies Used: Squid, Nginx, VMs, CloudSQL, DLP, Networking tools from VPC to Global Forwarding Rules and GCP Firewalls, Apigee, Jenkins, Jira, Molecule, Suricata
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Groovy
PitchUp
Project Spec: Creating a Landing Zone GCP configuration to the client's application array.
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: GCP, On-Prem
Provisioner: Terraform, CloudBuild
Technologies Used: Kubenetes, GKE, Helm
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy
SentriLock
Project Spec: Rearchitecting the OAuth process in their Serverless application to secure and prevent DDoS attacks.
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: GCP
Provisioner: CloudBuild and Terraform
Technologies Used: GCP CloudRun, GitHub, GitHub Pipelines, Cloud Functions, GCloud
OS: Serverless environment, but I suspect Linux under the hood.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python for the application
BUPA
Project Spec: Designing, Architecting and rebuilding of the GCP Landing Zone to host their application array
Position: Lead Security Architect and DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: GCP, On-Prem
Provisioner: Terraform, Jenkins
Technologies Used: Git, squid, custom scripting, client's array of custom security tooling
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy
Cynergy Bank
Project Spec: Security Audit of established environment and overhaul to create a "bank in a box" product
Position: Lead Security and DevOps Engineer and Architect
Infrastructure: GCP
Provisioner: CloudBuild, Terraform, Applications from third party containers.
Technologies Used: Kubenetes (GKE), infection Monkey, CloudSploit
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy
Refinitiv - WorldCheckOne Platform
Project Spec: Creating a blend of Jenkins pipelines to deploy ECS clusters to a secured specification via Terraform, pipelining 3rd party apps on to this configuration
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: AWS
Provisioner: Terraform, Jenkins
Technologies Used: Docker, Custom Scripting, RedLock, boto3
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy
Project Spec: Part of Operation YellowHammer - Migrated the DWP database and applications away from Europe to "British Data Centres" on a stressed time line so as to not incur any penalties when the UK was pulled away from the EU.
Position: Security and DevOps Lead Engineer
Infrastructure: AWS
Provisioner: Terraform and Ansible
Technologies Used: Custom Scripting, Squid proxies, MongoDB, Log Stash, ElasticSearch, Solr, Graphana, Graphite, Linkerd, Jenkins, Nginx, squid, Wazuh, MySQL
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy, Ruby
London Stock Exchange
Project Spec: Working with the Security Teams create custom security controls around their cloud practice during build out of their an Landing zone Environment leaning towards automatically remediate conflict in controls and notify teams across all cloud platforms.
Position: Security and DevOps Lead Engineer
Infrastructure: AWS, GCP and Azure
Provisioner: Terraform, Jenkins
Technologies Used: Serverless, AWSNuke, RedLock, Nginx, Guard Duty, Macie, TwistLock, Dome9
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy
Refinitiv
Project Spec: Building out an array of Jenkins Pipelines to check and secure Terraform Code that would build out their GCP Landing ZonePosition: Security and DevOps Lead Engineer
Infrastructure: GCP
Provisioner: Terraform, Jenkins, Chef
Technologies Used: Terragrunt, custom scripts, RedLock, Kubenetes
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Powershell, Groovy
FCA
Project Spec: Mentoring a large team of Client and Cloudreach engineers to build out the MiFid platform for the FCA, enabling their developers to work faster to deploy and update their code with CI/CD and all controls adhered to to protect the data this client works with.
Position: Security and DevOps Lead Engineer, Architect
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Cloudformation (sceptre), Chef
Technologies Used: ELK stack, MySQL, Wazuh, Nginx, Nagios, OSSEC, Artifactory, Jenkins, AWS Code Deploy, GitHub Enterprise, Foreman, SpaceWalk, EMR Clusters, RedShift
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Groovy, Ruby
Capital One UK
Project Spec: Working within the Security and Risk Teams to consult DevSecOps guiding the creation of automated controls around their cloud practice and automatically vet risk as the Developers adopted the Cloud. The lessons taught would aid avoidance from same cyber attack used against the USA region of the company, guiding them by "Principles of least privedge".Position: Security and DevOps Senior Engineer and Consultant
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Cloudformation/Terraform, Chef, AMI Factory, Docker
Technologies Used: Docker, Custom scripting for controls and automation, Jenkins, Evident.io, Dome9, AWS Security Tooling
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Groovy, Ruby
Economist
Project Spec: Revamping the Economist Drupal Stack to move to ECS and an API based Architecture that read from the initial Drupal Instance. Including a Security Incident that was remediated.
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer, Security Consultant and Architect
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Cloudformation
Technologies Used: EC2, EC2, Docker, Custom array of API applications, Drupal, MySQL
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Groovy, Ruby, Go, NodeJS
Citizens Advice Bureau
Project Spec: Aiding a migration and creation of a fully automated Cloud Stack using OpsWorks and Chef, additional recruitment help given to find engineers to help maintain the stack.
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer and Consultant, Security Consultant, Architect and Recruitment Interviewer and Trainer.
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Chef, Cloudformation, Opsworks, AWS SnowBall, VPC Design, Custom Database software
Technologies Used: OpsWorks, EC2, IIS, Apache, MySQL, TeamCity, EpiServer
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, Groovy, Ruby, Powershell
ITV
Project Spec: Consulting on their move to AWS while automating their on-prem cloud (VMWare) to provide HA and DR between two sites using Python. Also, Created two open source projects in their Repo one which was also adopted by a big data company, Beaver!
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer and Automation Software Architect
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem, VMWare/vSphere
Provisioner: Custom Made for VMWare using pyvmomi libraries, puppet and the Foreman
Technologies Used: Signiant, LogStash, Apache, Nginx, Elasticache, Squid, Git, VSphere, Foreman, Jenkins, Puppet, HP iLO
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python and Ruby
BP
Project Spec: Integrated their Azure AD IdP with their multi cloud estate to allow RBAC and ABAC while also creating scripts to allow access via programmatic means.
Position: DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: AWS, Azure ,On-Prem
Provisioner: GitHub, Azure DevOps
Technologies Used:
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Bash, PowerShell
IPC Media (Time Inc UK)
Project Spec: Relocated IPC media and automated their path to AWS with Troposphere, after an 87% saving in hosting costs which lead to the paradigms being adopted across the rest of the Time Inc Business.
Position: Lead DevOps Engineer and Automation Software Architect
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Puppet, CloudFormation with Troposphere
Technologies Used: Nginx, ElastiCache, Load Balancers, String Ray, Zidara, Complex Networking, Akamai, ELK Stack, Nagios, MySQL
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Ruby, Bash, Powershell
Exeter Family Friendly
Project Spec: Created a suite of automated scripts to snapshot and “copy” a multi OS environment from one AWS account to another.
Position: DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Chef and Cloudformation
Technologies Used: S3, VPC, Custom Scripting, Behave, InSpec
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Python, Ruby, Powershell
Telegraph
Project Spec: Created a suite of scripts to automate and save costs for the Telegraph’s Hybrid Cloud Strategy as they explored different options with providers.
Position: DevOps Engineer
Provisioner: Cloudformation, Chef
Technologies Used: Bamboo, Jira, Crowd, Apache, Escenic, WordPress, Nagios, Redis, ElastiCache,
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Bash, Python, Ruby, Powershell
BP
Project Spec: Initial migration to the Cloud create bootstrapping cookbooks to enable first provisions to the Cloud Environment configured to Security Guidelines. Developed an array of custom security tooling to enable better security posture.
Position: DevOps Engineer
Infrastructure: AWS, Azure ,On-Prem
Provisioner:
Technologies Used: Chef, NMap, boto, Windows AD and Samba
OS: Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Bash, Python, Ruby, Powershell
Sky
Project Spec: Creating an Automated Logging Stack to work across their AWS and On-Prem stack. The setup was able to take over 1 million records every second.
Position: DevOps Engineer and Consultant
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Provisioner: Ansible for everything!
Technologies Used: Ansible, ElasticSearch, LogStash, Kibana, Redis, OpenStack, Nginx
OS: Xen, Linux and Windows.
Languages/Scripts Created: Bash, Python, Java, Javascript
NewsCorp (News International)
Project Spec: “Customer Insight Platform” creating a hadoop EMR cluster on EC2 Classics, Migrating and rebuilding a lot of the infrastructure for overly popular news websites from their DC, Implementing their PayWall and secure the infrastructure, technology would grow into the known standard for Pixel tracking technology.
Infrastructure: AWS, On-Prem
Position: DevOps Engineer, Data Architect and Consultant
Provisioner: Cloudformation, Puppet and Chef
Technologies Used: Escenic, AntHill Pro (CI/CD), Hadoop, Docker (alpha), Jenkins
OS: Linux, Windows
Languages/Scripts Created: Bash, Python, Java, Javascript
Systems Administrator and Web Developer - Loft Digital - 2011 - 2013
Systems Administrator and Web Developer for a PHP Web App Shop, Working with versions from 4.3 onward and constantly working to keep them secure. Would Design, Architect, Procure, Build and Administrate a customised network to promote office location move, including VoIP systems. Haunted 24/7 by a Nagios and Munin System Setup (Joking!).
Managing Servers and Security Operations by Fixing Problems in Developers workflows, Creating a customised Back Up and Restore Process, Maintaining Business Critical Communications Server Performance Optimisation
and management of all website deployments. On site and remote for global clients.
Would champion Cloud Adoption and Automation before it was cool
Self-Employed - 2ndStudios - 2007 - Present
Created a Freelance company providing web space for friends, family and small businesses using Linux and Apache. This later expanded into a small web development agency delivering PHP, MySQL, JS ,XHTML and CSS.
Older Employment History:
As a MSSQL Database Administrator and Deeds Clerk, would automate all administration duties and taking on more responsibility in other areas of the firm. Began University during this employment while working full time to achieve my degree.
A Small Special Needs Education Unit aimed at rehabilitating Children with special educational needs back into mainstream education with the tools they needed to succeed
Tasks would include day to day administration as well as acting as first line IT Support with care for children with disabilities.
Profile:
Languages: English, French and Russian
References: Available upon request.
Disclosure Checks Available: CRB/DBS, SC.
Hobbies: Reading, Offensive Security, Writing Code, Problem Solving, Music, Gardening, Automation.
Education:
2010 - 2012 - Birkbeck – University of London - Computer Science
2003 – 2005 - Epping Forest College -Information and Communication Technology
2002 – 2003 - Woodbridge High School – AS Level Psychology and General Studies
1998 – 2002 - Woodbridge High School - GCSEs (Between A*-C)
Information Technology, Maths, English Literature, English LanguageScience [Double Award], Russian, French, History, Music, Religious Studies
Certification:
- AWS DevOps Professional - Expired
- Cisco CCNA1 - Expired
- AWS Associate Solutions Architect - Expired
Memberships:
Currently studying for:
