Jeffrey (Jeff) A. Clark

Professional Summary

Technologist with a passion for infrastructure as code, full-stack architecture, and systems engineering. I'm equally comfortable collaborating in a group, working independently, or mentoring a team. As a seasoned devops engineer with hands-on exposure to many systems, languages and frameworks, I have a proven track record of quickly providing value to any project. Extensive automation, continuous integration & delivery, and private cloud infrastructure (firewall, IDS, geographic load balancing, monitoring, security, etc) experience. Currently pursuing an AWS Solutions Architect certification.

Core Competencies

Soft Skills

• Effortlessly prioritize tasks and quickly shift focus as necessary.
• Ability to communicate complex technical systems and concepts to any audience.
• Enjoy collaborating with peers at all levels of experience and background.
• Comfortable working directly with customers, stakeholders, and executives.
• Curious by nature, always seeking to improve personally and professionally.

Systems

• RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, KVM, LXC, Docker, Proxmox, VMWare, VirtualBox, JunOS, Cisco IOS, Xen, Solaris, TrafficWorks, IronWare, Fabric OS
• Familiar: AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Nomad, Openstack, Openshift, NetBSD, Windows Server, AS/400, VAX/OpenVMS

Services

• Terraform, Apache, Caddy, IIS, Nginx, MySQL (Mariadb, Percona), PostgreSQL, Bind, OpenLDAP, Squid, Tomcat, Nagios, OpenNMS, Puppet, Elasticsearch, Grafana, Github CI, Gitlab, Gitlab CI, Circle CI, Buildbot, etcd, Consul, Redis, Graylog
• Familiar: Tinkerbell, MongoDB, GlusterFS, Jenkins, Teamcity, Veritas VM, Legato NetWorker, Websphere, DB2, MS SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle

Software & Standards

• Awk, Bash, Regexp, Vi, Eclipse, SSH, Git, Syslog, Kerberos, NFS, NIS, DNS, IP Routing/Tunneling, NAT, DNS, HTTP, SSL, TLS, PPTP, L2TP, IPSEC, VLAN, Bridging, BGP, OSPF, ISIS, VLAN, VXLAN, ARP, LDAP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, SIP, XMPP, PXE

Languages & Development

• PHP, Perl, Python, Lua, Javascript, Ruby, Puppet, LaTeX, ASP, SQL, HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, REST, JSON, AJAX, NodeJS, Phalcon, Golang
• Familiar: ActionScript, Ansible, C, C++, Chef, Corona, ColdFusion, ErLang, Flex, Java, MoSync, SMalltalk, Pascal, Cobol, Rails, Symphony, Turbogears

Experience

Professional Services Engineer at Perforce from 2022 to Present

Partner with customers to implement solutions based on the Puppet ecosystem.

• R&D and software engineering to extend platform support, fix product bugs, and improve CI/CD.
• Created Bolt orchestration framework for testing and public training with Terraform, Docker and AWS.
• Authored devops blog posts covering advanced orchestration using Puppet.
• Eliminated the soul crushing repetitive work of our customers' engineering teams using Puppet.
• Completed Puppet Professional Certification.
• Performed product classroom training, maintained course content and material.
• Assisted sales & marketing team with pre-sales engineering support.
• Develop, publish, and maintain Puppet component modules.

Head of DevOps at Network Merchants (NMI) in Schaumburg, Illinois from 2016 to 2021

Responsible for the management of all infrastructure and technical operations to support the SaaS platform facilitating over $150 billion in credit card payments.

• Managed, mentored and expanded DevOps and enterprise teams, supporting 24x7x365 on-call operations.
• Responsible for budget, procurement and management of all IT resources.
  eg. personnel, data centers, carriers, network, firewall, servers, and storage.
• Managed project deliverables using kanban with Jira and Confluence for documentation.
• Established and tracked technical KPIs.
• Collaborated with security team to ensure compliance with PCI DSS, GDPR, and SOC 2.
• Worked closely with product to forecast budget, resource, and purchasing.
• Implemented extensive infrastructure automation and deployment using Puppet 3, 4, 5, and 6.
• Multi-site redundant elasticsearch and centralized logging infrastructure for company wide data mining and real-time visualization using Grafana.
• Migration from legacy VM infrastructure to private cloud based on LXC and KVM.
• Created systems and processes for multi-site redundancy and failover.
• Designed and developed multi-site MySQL automatic fail-over and backup systems.
• Upgraded critical multi-terabyte MySQL database infrastructure with zero downtime.
• Developed real-time process monitoring framework and services reducing the time to event notification from minutes to seconds.
• Deployed multi-site redundant S3 compatible filesystem and redis clusters.
• Created virtual production development system, deployable by any user, for development and testing.

IT Consultant / Software Developer at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois from 2011 to 2016

Responsible for development and systems supporting the International Linear Collider Global Design Environment (ILC) and Linear Collider Collaboration (LCC) web environments. Technical editor for the ILC Technical Design Report (TDR).

• Advanced web development for managing the ILC NewsLine newsletter and optimized email delivery software.
• Converted static layout designs to XenoCMS, WordPress, and LaTeX for the LCC, NewsLine, and ILC TDR.
• Designed process using Redmine and PHP to manage assets and automate LaTeX compilation for the ILC TDR.
• Developed software using PHP and JavaScript for automatically updating XenoCMS with data from EDMS.
• Created web application for managing and displaying ILC members in XenoCMS using PHP, JavaScript, Google maps API, and SQLite.

Principal Consultant / Lead Developer at Action Lead Solutions in Chicago, Illinois from 2009 to 2012

Responsible for software architecture and team building.

• Brought revenue generating sites online first day, from all sites down after previous contractors walked away.
• Designed and developed SAS platform replacing all existing tech stacks.
• Recruited and mentored development and support teams from ground zero.

Director of Technology at Table Mountain Trading, Inc. in Flagstaff, Arizona from 2002 to 2008

Responsible for planning, establishing, and implementing technology policies and goals.

• Developed 7 diverse web properties utilizing C, PHP, Perl and MySQL, serving over 72 million unique visitors annually.
• Designed B2B SaaS using SOAP and XML-RPC API allowing partners to integrate our products and payment services.
• Implemented geographically redundant services, eliminating systems related downtime utilizing Xen hypervisor.
• Migrated operations to diskless Linux, reduced support costs by 80%.
• Converted analog phone system to VOIP, lowered costs by 30%, increased call capacity by 40%.
• Led team of developers and support staff, introduced SCM and agile techniques into the development cycle.
• Created list management software, increased efficiency by 75% and reduced overhead by 50%.
• Developed recurring billing platform on PHP, handled over $2m in revenue per month.
• Established security policy that exceeded merchant Level 2 PCI compliance.
• Developed framework in PHP for processing real-time card not present transactions, with modular fraud detection, utilizing dynamic algorithms and automated charge back management.
• Utilized VMWare for P2V live migration, and subsequent V2P, for moving and expanding technology assets.
• Advised and managed technology based product acquisitions and relationships.

Lead Developer at Free-CDSoftware.com, Inc. in Flagstaff, Arizona from 2001 to 2002

Responsible for the development and maintenance of proprietary web platform written in C.

• Created RDBMS backed application and migrated data from flat files.
• Redeveloped static web site in one month, complete redesign, real-time payment processor, dynamic stock management, increased sales by over 200%.
• Negotiated source code release under NDA to eliminate vendor development costs.
• Created intranet to streamline operations, provided services for CRM, real-time product management, warehouse order fulfillment, P&L reports, advertising management, and utilization statistics.
• Developed extensive branding framework allowing partners to seamlessly integrate our products platform.

Senior Systems Engineer at XNet Information Systems in Lisle, Illinois from 1998 to 2001

Responsible for maintenance, evaluation, design and implementation for a wide variety of software and hardware systems in a fast paced ISP to business environment.

• Engaged executives to develop strategies and assisted in hiring and mentoring staff.
• Maintained network of Solaris and Linux servers providing critical services such as dial-up, DSL, hosting, usenet, email, shell, DNS, Radius, and RDBMS.
• Developed a dial-up self-provision system in PHP and installation CD for resellers.
• Provided second tier technical support to customers and in-house developers.
• Implemented Solaris JumpStart, and created native for seamless deployment.
• Experience maintaining clustered systems behind Cisco load balancer.
• Responsible for software and service security, applying patches, compiling, testing, and deploying into a zero down-time production environment.