Objective

Senior Engineer / Systems Administrator / Systems Operations Engineer -- Maintaining and architecting rock-solid reliability and functionality of core internet systems.

Work Experience

Principal Solution Architecture - End to End Engineering

5/2007 - Present Sabre, Southlake, Texas

s As an engineer I work with application teams to help design and run systems that handle literally billions of transactions per day. The systems use Linux, Java, message queues, and databases to serve external clients and to link massive internal systems together. I was a significant contributor to a set of operational standards that all systems enterprise-wide must adhere to. These standards have greatly reduced downtime and have increased the consistency of applications in the environment. I'm called upon to diagnose complex issues involving highly interconnected systems.

Senior Systems Engineer

3/2005 - 5/2007 Travelocity, Southlake, Texas

s Responsible for the uptime of one of the internet's busiest travel sites. Managed outsourced maintance of hundreds of servers. Coordinated multiple complex projects spanning multiple teams. Helped guide release cycles to ensure continued smooth operation of site. Migrated a complete business to a new datacenter in record time. Mentored new and more junior team members. Became systems expert for Load Balancing architecture. Was point-person for emergency teams tasked with resolving several major site-impacting problems. Reduced site downtime by effectively leading teams to resolution of immediate crises. Assisted with hiring decisions for new team members.

Senior Systems Administrator

7/2002 - 1/2005 Penson Worldwide (Nexa Technologies, Integrated Trading Solutions), Allen, TX

s Built, from the ground up, company's first international data center presence in London, England, to support trading with the London Stock Exchange. Migrated most of company's production systems including web, database, and application servers from Sun Solaris on Sun hardware to Redhat Linux on either Dell or IBM x86 hardware to gain speed and reduce costs. Consolidated multiple small servers into IBM BladeCenter servers. Built and managed SAN networks consisting of Brocade fibre switches, IBM FAStT storage arrays, and RAM Disk arrays which were accessed from Sun, IBM, and Dell servers. Managed backup systems located in Tier-1 datacenters in New York, NY; Allen, TX; and London, England; using LTO2 tape drives in robotic libraries with Veritas NetBackup. Maintained constant uptime for core services including FTP, E-mail, DNS, NTP, and multiple websites. Installed, configured, maintained, and managed Squid Proxies; Snort Intrusion Detection Systems; MySQL; multiple Java Message Service (JMS) Brokers (Tibco, Fiorano, etc.); Tarantella; Jira; CVS; Twiki; Sendmail; Tripwire; and SAMBA, PCNetLink, NFS, and AppleShare fileshares. Installed and managed Oracle 9i RAC databases using shared filesystems via Sun Cluster and Veritas Volume Manager in production and development environments. Database was capable of 100% uptime. Interacted with stock-trading regulatory agencies and automated reporting required data. Requested and reviewed quotes from vendors for new hardware and software. Designed company's logo, splash screens, and some advertising materials. Interacted with stock-trading regulatory agencies and automated reporting required data. Requested and reviewed quotes from vendors for new software and hardware. Designed company's logo, splash screens, and some brochures.

Senior Systems Administrator

5/2000 - 7/2002 A. B. Watley Group, Allen, TX

s Supported and designed a secure financial transaction environment where downtime of seconds can cost thousands of dollars at an online stock brokerage. BEA Tuxedo administration and Objectivity Database management. Installed and managed Sun Sunray network appliances. Managed and installed systems in multiple, geographically disparate co-location facilities. Worked with java developers to maintain separate test and production environments and to implement Java Web Start, JMS, and databases. Helped architect and build a network operations center to monitor all systems. Working with Sun Enterprise 4500 and Netra class systems with fibre channel based T3 storage systems. My department was acquired by Penson Worldwide.

UNIX Systems Administrator

11/1999 - 5/2000 Brierley & Partners, Dallas, TX

s UNIX Systems Administration. Built clustered, highly-available internet systems for new e-commerce start-up. Supported and installed Oracle and Sun's Cluster software on E5500s, Sun A3500 disk arrays, and java application servers. Administration of cross-platform (Solaris, Windows NT, and Macintosh) backups and archiving using Veritas NetBackup and robotic tape library.

Systems Administrator - Security

5/1999 - 11/1999 SBC Internet Services, Plano, TX

s Systems analysis, planning, and development for over 300 production UNIX and NT servers. Designed patching policies and interpreted security scans. Worked with jumpstart servers and web interfaces to automate mass installations. Designed and promoted a central inventory database to consolidate the accounting of production systems. Held monthly cross-departmental meetings to discuss and implement enterprise-wide policies.

Systems Administrator - E-Mail

10/1997 - 5/1999 SBC Internet Services, Plano, TX

s Systems administration, capacity planning, and development of email architecture for one of the world's largest Internet Service Providers. Provided close to 100% uptime for over 300,000 customers in a seven-state region using two major data centers which handled millions of messages per day. Helped grow subscriber base by at least 30% by providing a fast, reliable e-mail system. Configured, tuned, and maintained dozens of servers running Sendmail, Veritas File System, Veritas Volume Manager, Qualcomm's Qpopper, NFS, NIS+, DNS, Netscape Enterprise Server, and in-house developed software on Sun Enterprise class systems with multiple RAID and distributed fault-tolerant configurations. Worked closely with Sun developers to help roll-out and develop next generation e-mail platform using Sun's Solstice Internet Mail Server (SIMS).

Producer/Manager of Information Systems/Webmaster

4/1996 - 10/1997 Dragon Street Pictures, Dallas, TX

s Spearheaded projects for Trammell Crow, Sonic Drive-In, Harcourt Brace, and Wyndham Hotels. Created secure, user-friendly website and administration interfaces, including database and multimedia integration. Managed mixed network of UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh workstations and servers. Responsible for statistics on all web sites and back-ups/archives of all systems.

Apple Assistance Center - Tech. Support

10/1995 - 4/1996 Apple Computer, Austin, TX

s Dealt with set-ups, installations, and support of PowerPC machines. Made warranty determinations and acted as an authority of Apple Computer for customer satisfaction issues.

Education

10/2005 - 10/2005 F5 (Big-IP), Southlake, TX

s Hands-on training on F5's Big-IP load balancers. Version 4.5 & Version 9, plus advanced topics.

8/2000 Objectivity, Mountain View, CA

s Training in the administration of Objectivity's object oriented database.

9/2000 BEA, San Jose, CA

s Training in BEA's Tuxedo server architecture.

2/2000 Sun Educational Services, Dallas, TX

s Sun Solaris Jumpstart - June 1999

s Sun Cluster Administration (SA-330) - February 2000

s Sun Enterprise System Performance Management (SA-400) - April 1999

s Sun Solaris Networking (SA-380) - March 1998

11/1998 Harker Systems, Dallas, TX

s Configuration and Administration of Sendmail and DNS

11/1996 Richland College, Richardson, TX

s Programming in C

5/1994 Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA

s Bachelor's of Music -- Major in Music Production and Engineering

Skills

Perl, Photoshop, PHP, Red Hat Linux, Shell Programming (ksh/bash), Oracle/Sun Solaris Systems Administration, Symantac/Veritas Volume Manager/Filesystem, MySQL, SQL, HTML, Web Development