Meta, Altoona, Iowa
2024-Present
Production Operations Engineer
- Fleet-Wide Hardware Lifecycle & Operations: Manage, validate, and troubleshoot the entire spectrum of datacenter infrastructure, performing component-level diagnostics and repairs across compute, storage, and specialized high-density GPU/AI server architectures.
- Automated Repair Loops & AI Integrations: Design, write, and deploy software automation (Python, Bash/Zsh, SQL, Hack/PHP) to detect and auto-remediate hardware faults at scale, leveraging AI/LLM workflows to triage complex system errors and minimize manual touch time.
- High-Speed Fabric & Network Diagnostics: Diagnose and resolve physical layer and fiber optic failures across high-speed Infiniband and Ethernet network fabrics, troubleshooting transceivers, cabling, and link degradation to maintain maximum throughput.
- Power Subsystem Debugging: Troubleshoot complex power distribution issues spanning Open Rack Power (ORv3) shelves, utility grid interfaces, and power distribution units to ensure cluster stability and isolate root causes of power anomalies.
- Cross-Functional Leadership & Operational Strategy: Lead site capacity expansion initiatives, hardware design validation phases, and retrofits. Partner with hardware design, systems tooling, and network engineering groups to improve fleet serviceability, and serve as a technical lead and mentor for data center teams.
Meta, Altoona, Iowa
2021-2024
Release to Production Engineer
- Collaborated with internal hardware design teams and external vendors to validate, test, and onboard new server platforms and computing architectures into the datacenter fleet.
- Built and maintained automated tooling and CI/CD pipelines for workflow automation, validating server health and configuration quality prior to production release.
- Led cross-functional initiatives with datacenter operations teams to define hardware serviceability, diagnostic tooling requirements, and quality baselines.
- Acted as a technical lead and escalation resource, mentoring peers and troubleshooting complex system-level hardware and Linux OS issues.
Facebook, Altoona, Iowa
2016-2021
Data Center Capacity Engineer
- Perform deep dives and analyze complex technical issues within the
data center, ranging from automated tooling to hardware failures and
network issues.
- Provide guidance and mentor technical peers and be a go-to technical
resource to evaluate and look for better ways to resolve issues and
define updates to tools and processes.
- Plan for large-scale deployments of hardware, while considering
space, power, cooling, networking, and resiliency.
- Work with internal hardware teams and vendors to help resolve complex
technical issues that affect Facebook's computing
infrastructure.
IBM, Des Moines, Iowa
2015-2016
Global Devops Technical Lead for IBM Cloud Builder
Technical lead for global Devops tools and automated developer testing
for Softlayer cloud products, now called IBM Cloud, including
CloudBuilder, IBM Cloud Orchestrator, Urban Code Deploy and other IBM
cloud products. I also performed code review for several automation
platforms that are written in Python, Groovy, Java and Go. Internally, I
promoted and implemented the usage of emerging technologies and
techniques such as continuous integration, docker and saltstack. My work
required broad knowledge of cloud architectures, creating continuous
integration pipelines and guide the continuous deployment of new
products, features and fixes.
Appcore, Des Moines, IA
2013-2015
Product Cloud Architect
- Appcore was a successful startup that required extreme overlap into
multiple facets of technology.
- Collaborate to create product road map for Project Atlas, a cloud
orchestration platform.
- Lead Architect for implementing baremetal management into software
orchestration.
- Develop cloud automation software in Groovy and Python using agile
methodologies.
- Create a complete software deployment pipeline driven by
Gradle(Groovy) and continuous integration.
- Report bug fixes and patches to open-source projects such as
SaltStack(Python), OpenStack(Python) and CloudStack(Java) Provide
technical education for storage and networking technologies.
- Support customers using a wide variety of technologies such Gluster,
Puppet, Nexenta, CentOS, NFS, iSCSI, XenServer.
E-Markets, Ames, IA
2008-2013
IT & Systems Operations Lead
- Managed the IT department and ran the production datacenter hosting the company's web-based ERP ordering platform, ensuring high availability for the core business product.
- Directed corporate IT infrastructure, managing network connectivity, security, and systems across three remote branch offices in North America.
- Built and scaled the corporate communications network, migrating the headquarters and branch offices to an Asterisk-based VoIP platform.
- Developed custom software integration systems and web features in Perl and C#, and built a Perl-based automated deployment pipeline for the ERP platform.
- Managed IT personnel, vendor contracts, hardware provisioning, and system automation using SaltStack and Microsoft System Center.
Cynic by Trade, LLC, La Crosse, WI
2002-2011
Vice President
- Co-founded and operated a technology consultancy providing full-stack systems engineering, network design, and custom programming to small and medium businesses.
- Designed and deployed secure local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) topologies, incorporating firewalls, VPNs, and subnetting.
- Built, programmed, and maintained custom business software, databases, and automated integrations using various scripting and programming languages.
- Deployed, configured, and maintained on-premise Linux servers, storage solutions, and network infrastructure (routers, switches, cabling).
Palisade Systems, Inc., Ames, IA
2005-2008
Software Engineer
- Supported and maintained network and endpoint security appliances (PacketHound, ScreenDoor) running on FreeBSD, contributing to the packet inspection engines written in C.
- Utilized PCRE and network hashing algorithms to build and debug application signatures, upstreaming rules to Snort and supporting SSL proxying with Squid.
- Developed and updated the appliance administrative WebUI using PHP and JavaScript.
- Built automated test harnesses that ran against software builds to validate TCP/IP and UDP traffic handling for the release pipeline.