Technologies

SONiC NOS, EBGP, IBGP, Linux, KVM/libvirt, STP, git, python, open networking, ethernet switching ASICs and software architectures.

Technical Leadership

• Joined the NOS team as a founding member and worked together with several peers to establish all of the major cultural and technical systems needed to get the team into a productive posture.
• Provided product strategy and guidance for Target's private SONiC distribution. Used my influence to keep the team focused on releasing a product that stands up to the demands of a production network.
• Personally headed up the establishment of lab facilities and automation, test infrastructure, and quality culture and practices.
• Established the Qualification practice in the team, which included building a test harness, establishing code and process best practices, and teaching the members of the team about systems behavioral testing and how to write testcases that expose the most relevant problems and vulnerabilities in the NOS. This also included bringing the team up to speed on how to validate hardware and how to conduct all-up integration tests to validate full system functionality.
• Established a practice of continuous testing, eventually reducing the maximum time between code commit and the completion of a full test suite to about 12 hours.
• Influenced my peers to think about old problems in new ways.
• Served as the team's principal networking subject matter expert.
• Improved the visibility of our team to the rest of the organization by making presentations about our work, and by engaging with engineers in other silos to solve problems of mutual interest.

Systems Engineering

• Built a containerized test harness using docker, python, pytest and pytest plugins.
• Introduced the SONiC virtual switch to the team and taught them how to use it to increase velocity in the development of software running on top of the NOS.
• Developed a virtual network topology manager to orchestrate groups of virtual switches and endpoints for development and testing activities.
• Developed tooling to automate the tasks associated with using physical lab equipment.
• Wrote behavioral testcases using python and pytest. Lots and lots of testcases.

Technologies

EBGP, IBGP, Linux, KVM/libvirt, SaltStack, Ansible, git, python, terraform, EVPN, VXLAN, Public Cloud

Systems Engineering

• Designed and deployed a multi-region OCI tenancy using a declarative and repeatable approach.
• Designed an automation toolchain to enable programmatic provisioning of compute and network resources in support of qualifying networking products for use in OCI's production infrastructure.

Technical Leadership

• Provided architectural guidance for automation systems and served as a sounding board for other engineers to help them refine their ideas and approaches.
• Mentored my peers, both formally and informally, to help them reach their own professional milestones.
• Assisted network engineers to make the transition to a devops-focused way of working.

Technologies

EBGP, OSPF, python, Netbox, Redisdb, SaltStack, Ansible, HAProxy, Whitebox switching/Network Disaggregation, FRR (Free Range Routing), Linux (Cumulus, Debian, CentOS), KVM/libvirt, git, NFV, iptables, keepalived, ZTP, IBGP

Technical Leadership

• Worked as a product manager to integrate the work of engineers of many different skill levels, ultimately leading to the development and implementation of a successful home-grown SD-WAN platform.
• Guided junior engineers in the successful execution of complex infrastructure projects.
• Maintained balance between delivering a product quickly and delivering that product in a way that preserved the revenue-generating capacity of the business.
• Worked to build relationships with leaders and individual contributors in other technical silos.
• Introduced Git Flow concepts to the team to accelerate development work and keep defect rates low.
• Provided formal and informal training for other engineers who were actively improving their skills.

Network Engineering

• Served as the principal subject matter expert for routing design projects.
• Designed a campus network using whitebox switches and open source components.
• Used Infrastructure-as-Code tools and approaches to enforce consistency in configuration management practices.
• Used bash shell scripting to wrap various Linux tools into simpler utilities.
• Designed a backbone network to provide interconnectivity between multiple datacenters and various IP transit providers.
• Used NFV and server virtualization concepts to modularize network designs and accelerate maintenance work.
• Designed an automation and configuration management ecosystem which included SaltStack and Ansible as central components.

Technologies

EBGP, IBGP, OSPF, LDP, MPLS, Internet Routing, Private Peering, Multicast, Carrier Ethernet, IOS, IOS-XE, IOS-XR

Architecture

• Developed technical strategy to guide the expansion of the service provider business into government and large enterprise market segments.
• Provided the network design guidance needed to answer various Requests for Proposals (RFPs).
• Created financial models to accompany technical designs for a new connectivity product. These models directly connected network architecture to business objectives in a way that allowed us to make grounded decisions about network services expansion.

Network Engineering

• Advised executive leadership on critical operational issues and served as last tier of escalation for technical problems.
• Provided subject matter expertise and technical leadership to guide the deployment of service provider technologies.

Communication and Leadership

• Trained junior, mid-level, and senior network engineers as part of new technology deployment intiatives.
• Presented technical strategy concepts to executive leadership to secure business sponsorship and funding.

Technologies

EBGP, IBGP, Inter-AS MPLS, IS-IS, LDP, RSVP, MPLS-TE, Internet Routing, Private Peering, Firewalls, IPSec VPN, Load Balancers, IOS-XE, IOS-XR

Network Engineering

• Deployed and supported MPLS VPNs using Inter-AS Options A, B, and C.
• Deployed and supported MPLS Traffic Engineering using dynamic and explicit path configurations.
• Deployed and supported private peerings using IXPs around the globe for improved packet delivery for Adobe products.
• Used Ansible and python to reduce human error in network operations and deployment tasks.

Communication and Leadership

• Trained and mentored junior network operations team members.
• Worked to develop engineering processes for improving the delivery of new network designs.
• Introduced git as a tool for peer review and collaboration to the network engineering team.

Technologies

EBGP, IBGP, MPLS, OSPF, LDP, Firewalls, EIGRP, VRF-Lite, GLBP, IPSec VPN, DMVPN Phase 1, 2, and 3, STP, DHCP, IPv6, LAN Switching, HSRP, Cisco VSS, QoS, Multicast, Wireless, Remote Access VPN, Legacy IOS, IOS-XE, NX-OS

Network Engineering

• Deployed and supported enterprise MPLS VPNs, which included BGP route reflectors for scalability.
• Designed and implemented internet-facing BGP connectivity for both IPv4 and IPv6.
• Designed and implemented remote branch office networks in 68 countries using DMVPN, zone-based firewall, IP SLA, and various other branch office technologies.
• Designed and implemented a global WAN strategy for improving application performance using private connectivity and globally-distributed Points of Presence.
• Designed, tested, and documented network standards for deployment by other network implementation engineers.
• Created basic deployment automation tools using PHP and other open source software.
• Created infrastructure audit tools using PHP, Python, SNMP and REST API's from Cisco Spark, Zscaler, and Meraki.
• Used Ansible to automate lab provisioning tasks.
• Designed and implemented an international video broadcast distribution network using draft-Rosen MVPN.

Communication and Leadership

• Overcame language barriers to resolve network issues at international sites where limited networking expertise was available.
• Trained and mentored junior network operations team members.
• Developed methods for evaluating the technical skills of candidates applying for network engineering roles.
• Worked with internal customers to understand technical and business requirements and produce network design proposals that met those requirements.

Technologies

LAN Switching, Infiniband, OSPF, OSPFv3, Linux, DHCP, DHCPv6, IPv6, Fibrechannel, Cisco Anyconnect VPN, IPSec VPN, iSCSI

Network Engineering and Operations

• Responsible for network architecture and design for all datacenter, storage, and high-performance networks.
• Supervised day-to-day operations for CHPC's network infrastructure at the University of Utah, which included 3 datacenters, about 80 switches and routers, and about 1500 servers.
• Designed and implemented fibrechannel and iSCSI SANs to support central storage resources.
• Designed, implemented, and maintained datacenter Infiniband networks for various compute cluster I/O fabrics.
• Designed the Infiniband fabric for an HPC cluster which included IB-to-ethernet bridging technology.
• Implemented multi-vendor (HP and Cisco) OSPF and OSPFv3 to replace a large static routing infrastructure.
• Deployed RHEL4 and RHEL5 Linux servers for various high-performance benchmarking projects.
• Implemented Linux routers (running Quagga) to route IPoIB traffic for a large Infiniband fabric.

Weber State University

B.S., Telecommunications Administration

CCIE #57102, Routing & Switching

Other Samples of My Work

• Derick Winkworth and Automation - The Hedge Episode 3
• Ethan Banks and Network Fundamentals - The Hedge Episode 30
• Single Source of Truth - The Hedge Episode 24
• Geoff Huston on DOH - The Hedge Episode 5
• Peering with Providers - Network Collective Episode 43
• BGP Peering in the Real World - Network Collective Episode 48
• Video: The Art of Network Maintenance
• Using MPLS In The Enterprise - PacketPushers Show 389
• Blog at PacketPushers.net