nw@hydaspes.if.org
608–358–2147
http://granicus.if.org/~nw/resume.html
I am looking for a leadership position in a technology oriented company where I can combine my skills, experience, and education to directly benefit the organization.
With over twenty years experience as an administrator and programmer, I have run small businesses and managed employees, in addition to providing high level technical direction in my areas of expertise. I have been responsible for hiring and evaluating employees and purchasing equipment to meet a defined budget.
I bring a wide variety of skills and experience to the job. As a result, I can see the routine and emergent tasks in their larger context and anticipate issues that might not be apparent on the surface. This allows me to ensure that my areas of responsibility fit in well with the overall goals and structure of the organization. My legal training and experience gives me a larger business perspective that is valuable in communicating business requirements to subordinates and technical requirements to business and legal oriented colleagues and superiors.
My work has frequently revolved around automating and recommending changes to processes so that the business needs and infrastructure services provided combine efficiently. I am very good at identifying underlying and non-obvious obstacles to efficient work and suggesting implementable improvements. I understand many different aspects of computing infrastructure and can identify ways in which changes to different subsystems interact.
In addition to my regular work helping clients with their PostgreSQL architecture and programming projects, I have worked with PostgreSQL in some capacity for about twenty years, beginning with version 6. I wrote a module for PostgreSQL implementing a UUID type before PostgreSQL had a built in UUID type, and I maintain an extension package providing additional support for PostgreSQL UUID types beyond that provided directly by the base PostgreSQL install.
February 2017 to present
Provided PostgreSQL expertise to multiple clients in the areas of query tuning, capacity planning, load balancing and replication, upgrade and version migration planning, and troubleshooting. Developed monitoring solutions for perioding monitoring and reporting. Developed automated backup and recovery testing systems. Some experience with Oracle to Postgres migrations. Automated setup and deployment of streaming and WAL based standby replicas.
December 2015 to July 2016
Worked with end client to provide needed expertise in query optimization, database and schema design. Wrote programs to automate system updates, system monitoring, and system maintenance. Acted as primary Postgres expert for companies Postgres implementation. Assisted with conversion of SQL server scripts to Postgres. Designed and executed replication, backup, and restore functionality for Postgres. Assisted system administrators with process automation, design, and monitoring.
Primary Architect and Developer
ongoing to present
Built linux distribution from scratch. This included writing build scripts for linux packages, analyzing dependencies, configuring package servers, and everything else required to cleanly build and update packages for the distribution. Partially automated package version checking to make keeping packages up to date easier.
Wrote the customer web interface for customer ordering and support tickets. Designed the backend database for the customer support infrastructure and developed middleware scripts to provide a web interface to the customer support database.
Wrote a complete set of boot scripts to handle system initialization tasks. These included network control scripts, system service start and stop scripts, inittab configuration, and early filesystem mounting.
Lead Database Architect
May 2018 to September 2020
Lead database team working on company’s postgresql based product. Provided feedback to business analysts on architecture questions. Screened candidates for DBA positions. Trained junior and mid-level DBAs. Designed and implemented postgresql systems to solve business process needs.
Programmer and Systems Architect
December 2011 to present
Wrote programs to interface with Salesforce providing technical expertise in Salesforce integration and development.
Provided training and advice on unix systems administration and migration of virtual servers. Designed and implemented scaling of databases from thousands of records to one million or more records.
Created strategies for operations monitoring of existing systems to reduce support load. Created migration plan for company server infrastructure to more scalable hardware, administration, and monitoring platform. Provided PostgreSQL expertise to facilitate process improvements and provide PostgreSQL skill augmentation. Determined hardware and staffing requirements to help business development employees price and negotiate partnership arrangements with domestic and foreign partners.
IT Operations Manager
March 2013 to March 2014
Responsible for ensuring continuity of IT operations. Responsible for system capacity planning. Developed quotes for IT operations expansion in multiple countries. Developed training programs for junior system administrators. Modified existing Perl and shell scripts to take advantage of increased hardware capacity. Modified and wrote scripts to automate business tasks and trouble shoot bugs. Wrote new web applications to assist customer service employees. Interviewed and selected candidates for junior and mid-level system administration positions. Designed and helped implement automated interfaces to external websites. Designed and implemented services for partner data integration. Supervised and automated processing of data for ad-hoc customer requests.
PostgreSQL Database Architect
July 2009 to November 2011
Lead company wide PostgreSQL implementation and architecture projects. Responsible for designing PostgreSQL databases to support company’s internal and external applications. Created PostgreSQL database schemas from scratch, paying close attention to both data normalization and retaining a flexible architecture to accomodate future application versions. Created schema versioning and migration processes for the company PostgreSQL environment. Created scripts for automated RPM packaging of utilities and database configurations. Rewrote older schemas to improve normalization and orthogonality while providing clean and repeatable migration paths for system upgrades.
Implemented database side programming requirements to support client interfaces to PostgreSQL databases and maintain transaction support for complex business logic. Wrote support utilities to administer and automate routine database and system administration processes. Wrote data transformation layers for JSON and XML data formats to facilitate data loading into native PostgreSQL schema. Wrote supporting documentation for database schema and related utilities. Provided advice and assistance for server, query, and hardware optimizations. Assisted other employees in improving their SQL skills. Suggested non-SQL solutions to issues where other tools were more efficient.
1995 to present
Held a successive series of computer contract positions of increasing responsibility. Responsible for many computer programming and administration projects, and worked at small and large corporations including IBM and Sun Microsystems.
Started and managed a restaurant. Hired front and back end managers, interviewed staff, and managed business relationships with suppliers. Conducted performance reviews of employees Performed all tasks needed for permits and licencing required by multiple government agencies.
Started a small consulting company. Filed business paperwork required to start and operate the business. Coordinated payroll with outside payroll company. Negotiated consulting contracts. Managed technical and non-technical employees.
Contracting Responsibilities included technical evaluation of computer systems, implementing both simple and complex configurations in many different environments, including LDAP, DNS, Sendmail, BIND, Postgres, Perl, Apache, and SSH, among others. Created hardware purchase recommendations to fit within existing budgets.
Interviewed and screened applicants. Supervised employees to ensure everyone was on task. Mentored junior employees and created training plans to improve junior employee’s skills.
Collected and documented comprehensive network use and connectivity requirements for every network infrastructure and application in use by the client, followed by automating firewall and router configuration parameters based on collected information.
Engaged in customer contact and technical discussions with customer representatives. Identified customer goals, and helped the customer identify their own goals. Created plans to achieve the customer’s goals within the agreed budget and timeframe. Provided feedback, advice, and progress reports on implementation plans. Worked with the customer’s point of contact to ensure that everyone’s activities remained coordinated.
Intelligence Analyst, August 1988 to August 1992
Translated Arabic documents, cross-trained for interrogation of prisoners, transcribed Arabic radio conversations, assigned as interpreter during the Persian Gulf War, led squad during exercises and trained squad members on equipment.