Samir Patel

Slingshot Aerospace - Senior DevOps Engineer

May 2022 - Sep 2023

Provision Anyscale using Terraform to run machine learning workloads in AWS
Migrate a mission critical application from ECS to EKS, with all AWS dependencies automated using terraform, coordinate production cutover
Implement DataDog logging and APM across all new and existing applications
Spearhead initiative to significantly reduce AWS cloud spend across all teams
Continually monitor the log/alert stream from all applications, assist dev teams in resolving errors
Create dashboards and alerts in DataDog to monitor and notify team's channels in Slack
Migrate Kafka based application running on ECS to EKS, scale it out, shorten build time
Create terraform monorepo and provision AWS infrastructure to host mission critial applications, migrate from Pulumi code
Create GitHub Actions workflow definitions for CI/CD pipelines
Upgrade and optimize a critical legacy application with several microservices to run in EKS
Modernize and upgrade aspects of a legacy application using Cassandra on ECS
Support legacy IaC that orchestrates AWS resources using CDK
Create and maintain template repos to help developers create new microservices

Optimize.ad - Staff Infrastructure Engineer

May 2021 - May 2022

Build Ethereum ERC-721 NFT smart contract for luckygoat.org
Create backend APIs and jobs necessary to mint NFTs and display provenance
Introduce standardized CI/CD build process for all services
Introduce GKE and migrate existing applications
Create service to dial outbound phone numbers powered by Twilio API
Run critical backend workloads using PubSub for reliability and scalability
Create a smart router for leads to move information from one state to another determined by making several API calls to other backend services
Manage caching and SSL at the edge using Fastly
Introduce DataDog to provide visibility using dashboards that display StatsD metrics emitted by Kubernetes applications
Use Istio service mesh to manage traffic routing and SSL certificates
Create a high volume event stream processor using nest.js and next.js for the backend and frontend respectively
Gain novel insights into user activity by creating a map/reduce job to analyze Google Analytics provided sharded tables in BigQuery

FloSports - Staff DevOps Engineer

Feb 2019 - Apr 2021

Create a service in golang to capture request logs from Istio managed Envoy proxies for realistic traffic playback capabilities
Maintain and upgrade DataDog agent in Kubernetes and create related dashboards and alerts
Upgrade and maintain GKE Kubernetes clusters and Istio Service Mesh
Implement Continuous Delivery using GitOps methodology using Cloud Build, GCR and GKE with Slack notifications for deployments
Convert high traffic endpoints running in Lambda into new services running in Kubernetes to drastically increase scalability
Consolidate logs from all applications running on EC2, lambda and kubernetes into DataDog
Build and operate containerized, scalable and continuously delivered workloads in Kubernetes
Outline vision and collaborate on implementation for full migration of existing services into Kubernetes
Assist development teams in onboarding their application into Kubernetes by creating self service documentation and in person assistance
Create process and tooling to rapidly provide CI/CD for Kubernetes services (Google Cloud Build using GitOps to deploy into GKE cluster)
Establish best practices for future Kubernetes architecture via on premises collaboration with Google Cloud Solutions Architects
Initiate and manage support requests with AWS technical representative directly and by via support tickets
Create and manage AWS infrastructure using Terraform
Create Fastly services in Terraform to add edge caching to existing webservices
Create a REST API in Typescript that allows clients to run long running containerized workloads reliably
Consult with representatives from other teams on future architecture and infrastructure requirements for future initiatives
Add system and application level metrics to charts on a dashboard for measuring performance and detecting anomalous signals
Dynamically create live streaming backend servers using Terraform, Wowza, Ansible and Packer
Continuously define an Infrastructure Roadmap by working with project managers on a regular cadence
On call PagerDuty rotation for production infrastructure and services

FloSports - Staff Software Engineer

Oct 2016 - Feb 2019

Create several dozen API endpoints and real-time background jobs to service specific product requirements for mobile, web and TV apps
Migrate legacy API to a well documented, low latency, modern API by preserving backwards compatibility and migrating data continuously
Virtualize local development environment using vagrant and Ansible in order to quickly onboard new developers
Participate in code review, application architecture and Pull Request review workflow
Create an automated caching mechanism, called RoboCache, for Doctrine entities using REDIS
Use advanced concepts in the Doctrine ORM like discriminator mapping, event listeners, joined inheritance type, DBAL etc
Strictly follow PSR1/2 coding standards and ensure testing pyramid viz. unit, functional and integration tests are in the right proportion
Use mockery to mock objects for the purpose of unit testing specific pieces of functionality and maintain test performance
Assist infrastructure team in provisioning and setting up jenkins to deploy and build AWS infrastructure for the application
Explain and amend application architecture and design with product owners and developers
Collaboratively build application features through whiteboarding and cross team collaboration
Create and operate migration of several hundred TB of video content and database records using many job servers running parallelized workloads
Build content search API with AWS CloudSearch and continuously warm index using message queue driven background job
Investigate and resolve performance issues and errors as reported by NewRelic, DataDog, ELK, Rollbar, CloudWatch and PagerDuty

ReStream Solutions - Senior Software/Infrastructure Engineer

Apr 2016 - Feb 2018

Created playbooks using Ansible to configure and provision a load balanced cluster of web and job servers
Used redis for PUB/SUB message queue and caching
Created a fully automated local environment using vagrant, virtualbox and Ansible
Designed an API using Symfony3 with PHP 7.0 running on Nginx, which accepts payloads from IoT devices in the field that collect scientific measurements, such as temperature, ORP, pH, pressure, tank level, flow rate etc
Built a fully functional web UI using bootstrap to display charts and reports from the collected data
Created a global exception listener to triage different categories of thrown exceptions and to send them to different locations depending on their nature
Deployed a horizontally scalable architecture for web servers, job servers, redis cluster, NoSQL and SQL database using AWS services
Created tests using phpunit to ensure system durability

Whole Foods - Senior API Engineer

Feb 2015 - Apr 2016

Led the effort to migrate a legacy API written in node using express to PHP using Symfony
Contributed to writing Ansible playbooks to provision, orchestrate and deploy code, all using AWS
Created an infrastructure to list, deploy and execute jobs to run work asynchronously
Collaboratively created an API client which is used by several applications
Created several internal composer packages that other teams consume
Migrate users from one platform to SalesForce via an ETL job
Implemented iOS wallet functionality used for a digital rewards card via an API endpoint
Authored several jobs that run at scale to create rewards card numbers, relate identifiers and sync sensitive user information to and from several backend systems
Created the ability to send emails in real time using API calls to Epsilon via scalable background jobs for the purpose of company wide e-mail marketing
Contributed heavily to the development of a system to securely store and unify user profile information to and from various backend systems
Created a mechanism to encrypt field level sensitive user data, using AWS KMS
Heavily contributed to writing database migrations using Phinx against PostgreSQL running on RDS

Austin Coding Academy - PHP / Python Instructor

Sep 2015 - Nov 2016

Taught Python and PHP for four semesters
Gave public talks on bash, git, redis, resque, AWS etc
Mentored junior developers and students

LIN Digital - Senior Software Engineer

Sep 2014 - Feb 2015

Implemented features in an application called Platform that was being replaced by a Ruby based legacy application called Neuron
Worked on financial reports by porting over metrics and improving the quality of the report
Improved code quality by making the controllers thinner by creating a well organized service layer
Introduced unit and functional testing to the project using Codeception
Wrote several unit and functional tests and set a standard for how to interact with the service container
Introduced, installed and demonstrated New Relic as a replacement to a MySQL driven custom performance data collection and reporting system
Created an Ansible playbook that provisioned a fully functioning vagrant virtual machine, complete with a local instance of the development database
Changed the deploy process from an RPM/SCP based approach to a git based deploy using Ansible
Used a GitHub centered Pull Request workflow to get others to look at the code prior to merging using HubFlow

Sapling Learning - Senior API Engineer

Jun 2014 - Sep 2014

Created an API using Symfony2 that interfaced with external APIs for the purpose of consolidating various external API calls into a standard API
Used Resque as as job queuing mechanism to defer execution of long running processes
Created a central data broker to inform the web cluster of the status of a job and any data that it might have returned
Leveraged polymorphism along with the factory pattern to instantiate required implementations at runtime
Used Doctrine as the ORM layer along with Symfony's Service Container to achieve loose coupling using dependency injection
Created several unit tests and functional tests using Codeception
Wrote several bash scripts to work with Chef in order to automate certain parts of theworkflow, including setting up and maintaining state for the job servers

Frontgate Tickets - Software Engineer

Sep 2013 - Jun 2014

Port over old code to a new Symfony2 application using solid PHP5 OO principles making the system scalable and highly available
Design caching code that works under load and scales horizontally over a cluster of Memcached servers. Code also leverages local caching using APC and protects users from stampeding on the same data object
Create Order, Transaction, Cart, Tax, Shipping, Handling etc.. classes to handle placing an order using abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, dependency injection, singleton and factory patterns
Created asynchronous jobs for carting, account management, save order information and place an order. The jobs are bidirectional i.e. data from the async process is returned back to the frontend using a standard JSON response object
Write, explain and consolidate queries using advanced joins, aggregate functions, range clauses and having conditions
Thoroughly document each method, it’s signature, return type and any thrown exceptions. Also document class overview and properties by type and purpose
Conform to PSR-1 and PSR-2 for coding standards and style. Also follow all FIG coding guidelines for naming conventions, logging and autoloading
Created and developed several features in the system that all generate measurable revenue that directly impacted the bottom line

Red Ventures - Software Engineer

Jun 2012 - Feb 2013

Develop Reports using custom Reporting framework developed in house. DataCollection class generates data behind the report. DataView class handles all presentation logic, DataParameter classes handle any additional filter data that is automatically rendered as an appropriate control. i.e. drop down, multi select box, check box, date picker etc
Create dashboards using real time technologies like node, and meta refreshes to display accurate real time statistics about various business metrics as they happen. Data is cached using memcache. Framework developed to build and manage dashboards ties in to the reporting framework. Once a report is created, the data on the dashboards can simply subclass the report DataView and extract one data point by passing in DataParameters that are configurable from DataParameters, which are powered by a MySQL database
My primary role is to actively develop and maintain a LAMP ERP and CRM system that runs on over 35 load balanced web servers and empowers a sales force of over 1500 people to sell millions of dollars in products and services a day!
The Orvis application uses full MVC concepts with a home grown ORM
Created OO Javascript objects that initialized on page load using constructors extending prototype, and then calling public methods from within the object once the DOM is ready
Objects perform various show/hide logic for questions that drive customer experience based on hundreds of parameters and dependencies. Application is finely configurable using inputs from data tables that are generated by administrators using in house intranet applications
Data from these tables drives what the customer experiences and is able to buy based on prior purchase history, credit score, physical location etc
Write queries that join 20+ tables, in some cases, to efficiently aggregate data to answer business questions in real time. Debug slow MySQL queries using explain
Write import scripts that transform data automatically using SOAP, and FTP connections to several third party vendors. Use the concept of buffers in conjunction with memcache to run queries in bulk
Use InnoDB specific features in MySQL, transactions and foreign keys to maintain data integrity for orders and related tables
Use inheritance in conjunction with abstraction and design patterns effectively to simplify development, readability and reuse. Document code thoroughly and adhere to naming conventions

Industrial Distribution Group - Software Engineer

Feb 2011 - Jun 2012

Redesign IDG's eCommerce web presence www.shopidg.com using Joomla (MVC) with over a 100 new features and improvements completely transforming IDG's online presence and invigorating the sales force, including lightning fast relevant searches using Sphinx and SEF URLs
Create a web based iPad Application using HTML5 and jQuery Mobile, with local WebDB SQL storage. App can run completely offline, all assets are loaded from the local cache, auto compile script to compile PHP down to HTML for local caching. All server side calls made via JS
Create StoreRoom completely in PHP, E-Mail notifications, SOAP calls for table based auto complete, business logic and display separation, DB abstraction, logging every action on every trigger, interface to view user interaction history, AJAX'd the entire interface with page reloads only when presenting a new UI, OO JS creating native objects extending prototype then stringifying and converting a multidimensional data set to JSON, objects are consumed using a generic handler that unravels the object for logic and insert into MSSQL
Create a Python application to receive documents from GMail via IMAP IDLE using threading . Compiled down to windows executable using py2exe . Documents automatically printed in the background as a batch process . RPC communication with central server for synchronizing a swarm of users with application level TTL to match GMail’s IMAP timeout
Create a windows based forms application in VB 6 to interact with the API for a symbol barcode scanner that scans part numbers into the application which would send that data directly to the shopping cart of the aforementioned website to streamline repetitive mass ordering in a warehouse environment
Create a standards compliant PHP/ MySQL application for on site customers at factory locations to procure items by adding them to a queue in a storeroom . IDG Buyers interact with the interface. Emails are sent out to multiple individuals in the manufacturing authority chain, who click accept or reject which drives a complicating process to approve or disapprove orders . Orders are submitted to the ERP via a SOAP based web service
Write over 20 SOAP clients and a handful of SOAP servers to consume various data sets directly from the ERP to get real time QOH, pricing, attributes, items, customer P / Ns etc . directly from infor's SX.e ERP system, written in PHP
Write a giant import script to update the website from a local content management application complete with processing and writing to over 12 related tables, consuming a giant XML file with a multidimensional product to item structure. Script is automated via CRON and processes high quality TIF images. Website is automatically updated nightly with fresh products and information added daily by the content team. Script is written completely in PHP
Create a generic data collection handler for most of the web services and for every meaningful click on the website to derive application use, performance and user experience
Create CURL scripts using PHP and XPATH to automate scraping semi structured data from competitors website into a structured set of data tables to automatically analyze competitor pricing and market dominance, stored in MySQL then transformed to FileMaker for reporting

Alamark Technologies - PHP / CWP / Filemaker Developer

Oct 2008 - Feb 2011

Create custom front end and back end components, modules and plugins using MVC pattern for TASA
Custom development work for several small to medium sized businesses with a primary focus on PHP/MySQL/FileMaker development deployed on a linux web server
Create and deploy eBC applications for several customers customizing integration with SCPRO and automating the import of content, vendors and accounts from the ERP using PHP
Created an application in PHP for Cure Solutions that allows users to create database tables, fields and add records for the purpose of storing sensitive customer network, machine and application credentials
Ground up creation of applications using LAMP + FileMaker + AJAX
Bash Scripts for backup, FTP, grep on linux, automation applications in .NET deployed on windows
Team based application design and creative problem solving

Dynapac - System Administrator / Application Developer

Oct 2007 - Oct 2008

Created and maintained Visual Basic DTS packages
Modified and created Visual basic 6 programs
Conducted the migration of old MS Access applications into an ASP.NET version
Created reporting applications using existing data for executive level trend analysis
Resolution of open issues with malfunctioning hardware/software on networked windows based machines

The Rug Store - E-Commerce Administrator

Oct 2005 - Oct 2007

Built an ECommerce website using Web Store technology. (PHP / MySQL)
Set up company wide network with access rules and inventory management
Synchronize inventory and availability across multiple physical locations

Lloyd's Diamonds - Digital Display Content Creator

Oct 2004 - Oct 2005

Designed and developed an online catalog for product promotion and sales
Pixel perfect smooth content rolling for an outdoor digital display
Creating and managing multiple schedules for target marketing
Client facing technical advice for streamlining business processes / network

Related Experience / Freelance Work - Web Developer / Consultant / Network Engineer / System Administrator

Jan 2000 - Oct 2004

Created numerous websites for individuals and small businesses
Debugged and tested malfunctioning machines to determine source of problem
Analyzed problems and developed solutions for Truman State University
Design and maintain personal tutorial website and CMS for personal promotion, articles on technical subjects, solutionsamir.com
Ground up design for theillbeat.com, hobby music mix upload site for musicians
Created application for mystery shoppers using AJAX and OOP with inheritance, composition and polymorphism, consumerimpressions.com
Created a web application that allows content creators to upload technical part information, clients use a filtering mechanism to add items to their order globalfasteners.com

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