Josh Beard

IT Professional / DevOps / Sysadmin

Summary

IT professional with a strong background in systems administration, cloud, and DevOps with years of experience and collaborations with more than a hundred teams across hundreds of projects.

Experience

Senior DevOps Engineer with Live Oak Bank

September 2022 - Present · Remote

  • Serve as the DevOps Lead for a software engineering team dedicated to developing cutting-edge banking services.

  • Work extensively with AWS, Terraform, GitLab, Go, Python, and Docker.

  • Developed and maintain an open source Terraform provider for publishing to the ReadMe.com documentation platform.

  • Successfully implemented CI/CD pipelines across numerous projects, streamlining processes, introducing new features, and enhancing release reliability.

  • Orchestrated the deployment of robust monitoring, observability, and alerting solutions using AWS, DataDog, and PagerDuty, all managed with Terraform.

  • Engineered Terraform modules and tools to efficiently oversee and manage hundreds of GitLab projects, users, and pipelines.

Key technology: AWS, DataDog, Docker, GitLab, Go, Golang, Python, Shell, Terraform

Lead DevSecOps Engineer with Ventera, Inc at USGS

June 2022 - April 2023 · Remote

  • Contracted to Water Resources Mission Area at the US Geological Survey.

  • DevSecOps on a small team working on a project focused on modernizing and advancing a highly-utilized set of services for water data collected and provided by the USGS.

  • Collaboratively designed, implemented, and supported infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines for a Python codebase of Lambda functions, modularized static websites, and supporting resources.

  • Specialized in cloud-native and serverless application development and infrastructure.

  • Integrated and automated code analysis into the developer workflow and pipeline.

Key technology: AWS (CloudFormation, Lambda, CloudFront, S3, IAM, RDS, API Gateway, more), GitLab, Python

Lead DevOps Engineer with Apogee Engineering, LLC at USGS

September 2015 - May 2022 · Remote

  • Contracted to Science Analytics and Synthesis at the US Geological Survey.

  • Managed the architecture and implementation of the IT platform for 50+ USGS products, ensuring their smooth operation.

  • Led and contributed significantly to complex technical projects within the Science Analytics and Synthesis group at the US Geological Survey.

  • Deployed comprehensive configuration management across hundreds of Linux servers using Puppet and Ansible.

  • Migrated hundreds of projects from Bamboo and BitBucket to GitLab.

  • Architected and deployed scalable and flexible HTTP services with AWS, Nginx, and Traefik.

  • Successfully migrated 50+ products from on-premise and on-VM deployments to AWS and Docker.

  • Automated CI/CD pipelines for hundreds of projects, streamlining release processes and enhancing consistency.

  • Collaborated effectively with over a dozen teams to deliver critical applications to the USGS science community.

  • Authored extensive documentation, adopting a "docs-as-code" approach to ensure clear guidance on DevOps practices and project-specific information (utilized Markdown).

  • Provided mentorship and training to colleagues on various topics, including Docker, AWS, and Terraform.

  • Established and managed Infrastructure as Code for numerous applications and services.

Key technology: Linux, GitLab, Docker, AWS (wide range of services), Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, Python, Packer, VMware vSphere, Jira, Artifactory, Bamboo, BitBucket, Tomcat, Ruby, Nginx, Traefik, Apache

Sr. Professional Services Engineer with Puppet Inc.

September 2013 - April 2015 · Remote

  • Consulted on Puppet products and DevOps practices for a wide range of customers, including some of Puppet's largest customers and most sophisticated engagements.

  • Instructed dozens of classes on Puppet products to organizations and general public.

  • Contributed Puppet modules and other tools for community use and used within Puppet's commercial products.

  • Developed Puppet, Ruby, and shell code for extending products and automating processes.

  • Consulted on pre-sales, scoping of work, and post-sales support.

  • Earned high marks for customer satisfaction, team work, and professionalism.

Key technology: Linux, Puppet and Puppet Enterprise, Git, GitLab, Packer, Vagrant, Jira, Tomcat, Ruby, Shell, Nginx, Apache, WebSphere

Linux/Unix Systems Administrator with Douglas School District

January 2010 - September 2013 · Box Elder, SD

  • Deployed and administered school district Linux and FreeBSD servers and services for thousands of users.

  • Improved integration across network services for over 2,000 students, faculty, and staff.

  • Administered network file systems, HTTP, DNS/DHCP, Firewalls, Monitoring, Logging, Mail (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, filtering, webmail), and other services for all district users.

  • Improved workstation provisioning through automation, deploying several hundred new workstations a year.

  • Introduced configuration management (Puppet) to manage servers.

  • Redesigned district website and implemented WordPress to manage it.

Key technology: FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS, Puppet, Apache, Nginx, BIND, Shell, HTML, CSS, PHP, Ruby, KVM, pf, Sophos, Graylog, Nginx, Icinga, NFS, Postfix, WordPress

Tier II Technical Support with Apple, Inc.

October 2008 - January 2010 · Remote

    Signal Support Systems Specialist with US Army

    August 2006 - October 2008 · Fort Carson, CO

      Skills

      12 Factor App Methodology · AWS (EC2, RDS, IAM, S3, Elasticsearch, ECS, EFS, CloudFront, Lambda, Route53, Secrets Manager, Load Balancing, CloudFormation, CDK, misc) · Accessibility · Analysis (e.g. Codacy, CodeFactor, Mend, DeepSource, Owasp ZAP, rspec) · Ansible · Apache · Arch Linux · Artifactory · Atlassian · Bamboo · Bash and Shell · BitBucket · CI/CD · Cloud · DataDog · Debian/Ubuntu · DigitalOcean · Docker · Elasticsearch · Everything is Code · FreeBSD · Git · GitHub · GitHub Actions · GitHub Workflows · GitLab · GitLab CI/CD · Go · Golang · Graylog · HAProxy · HTML/CSS · Infrastructure as Code · Jira · LXC · MariaDB/MySQL · MongoDB · Nginx · Octopus · PagerDuty · PHP · Packer · Postfix · PostgreSQL · Puppet/Puppet Enterprise · Python · RedHat/CentOS/Rocky/EL · Ruby · Security and Compliance · Sensu · Serverless · Terraform (including provider development) · Test-Driven Development (TDD) · Tomcat · Traefik · Vagrant