Xander Harris

Staff Software Engineer

Sirius XM Radio, Inc.•  April 2024 - June 2024•  Remote

Software Engineering Automated documentation processes with existing tools, including GitLab CI/CD, Python, and GitLab Pages. Created Python programs to automate and simplify versioning processes while maintaining Semantic Versioning and PEP-440 compliance. Supported and advised several development teams on containerization and migration from on premises infrastructure to AWS deployments. Infrastructure as Code Wrote Terraform modules to facilitate transfer of infrastructure from existing DCs to AWS accounts in all major environments (dev, qa, staging, prod). Used existing tools to produce documentation for existing and new Terraform modules where none existed previously. Provided advice to and received requirements from development teams on the most cost-effective use of cloud resources, including deployments to EKS, VPCs, S3, Cognito and Lambda.

DevOps Engineer

Wunderkind•  September 2021 - December 2023

App metrics were defined, metrics standards were written, and Go metrics were added as part of monitoring efforts. A migration from DataDog to Prometheus/Grafana was also executed. Helm charts for GKE deployment were developed, an on-call rotation with PagerDuty was joined, and infrastructure cost was managed with various tools under operations. Applications were deployed using helm charts and GitLab CI, SonarQube was implemented with GitLab CI, and Docker builds were optimized in the CI/CD process. Terraform scripts for GKE were written, GCP resources were imported to GitLab CI, and code was moved from Google Deployment Manager to GitLab CI using Terraform as part of Infrastructure as Code. Go applications for API communication were built, management needs were transformed into code, development was streamlined with Docker Compose, documentation was automated, and GCE instances were provisioned under software engineering. Tools: vscode, vim, GitLab CI, Docker, Alpine Linux, BASH, Go, GCP GKE, GCP Compute, GCP Storage, GCP Networking, GCP Cloud SQL, Terraform, Python, git, DataDog

Chief Technology Officer

Gahan Corporation•  May 2016 - December 2023

Wrote, edited, and submitted all required legal documents for the formation of an LLC and its subsequent conversion to a C Corp (unwisely) without the aid of legal counsel. Provided technical consulting services to several clients ranging from simple Python development to the complete range of software and systems engineering combined with the responsibilities of an IT department. Used many technologies including, but not limited to Ansible, Python, Terraform, Jenkins, Shell Scripting, Linux Administration, Terraform, AWS, ERP systems, git, and several others.

Documentation Platform Engineer

Databricks•  November 2021 - July 2023

Automated Python API docs for Databricks Feature Store, streamlining documentation processes and enhancing team efficiency. Enhanced PyTest coverage for Databricks docs Python codebase, boosting code reliability and maintainability. Documented build/test workflows for documentation sites, ensuring consistent, error-free updates and deployments. Managed CircleCI pipelines for Databricks docs, ensuring seamless builds/deployments and integrating custom Sphinx extensions. Supported technical writers with the use of Sphinx to generate Databricks docs, ensuring quality and consistency in documentation delivery. Tools: vscode, vim, Python, Sphinx, Bazel, CircleCI, git, GitHub, pytest, bash, Docker, YAML, Markdown, rST

Senior DevOps Engineer

Fox Media•  May 2020 - July 2021

Compiled data on New Relic alerts caused by Media Cloud systems for tuning purposes. Moved existing New Relic monitoring to DataDog for all Media Cloud services. Automated deployment of DataDog agent configuration to Docker services with Jenkins and Ansible. Improved stability of video and audio transcoding and quality-control production services running on EC2 instances using both Linux and Windows such that outage frequency was reduced from several per day to once or twice per month. Participated in a 24/7 on-call rotation to provide incident response and issue resolution for all Media Cloud mission-critical production services. Wrote Jenkins pipelines to enable execution and analysis of Python and Java unit tests.Created Terraform code to deploy EKS clusters and related ECR repositories in multiple AWS environments. Tools: vscode, vim, Jenkins, Docker EE, RHEL, Alpine Linux, BASH, Python, AWS, Terraform, Terraform Enterprise, Bitbucket, git, Python, New Relic, DataDog

Senior DevOps Engineer

Infor•  September 2019 - May 2020

Designed and implemented GitLab CI pipelines for numerous projects across two teams. Automated build and deployment of RPMs using Python setuptools, FPM, GitLab CI, Faro and Ansible. Developed and deployed several Docker images for use on GitLab runners. Spearheaded unit testing efforts using pytest and Pester for testing of Python, BASH, and PowerShell code bases. Added coverage reporting for numerous Python code bases using pytest-cov. Developed BASH and Python implementations of a log monitoring service. Tools: vscode, vim, GitLab, GitLab CI, GitLab Runner, Docker, CentOS, Alpine Linux, BASH, Python (2 and 3), PowerShell, AWS,, SumoLogic, Ansible, Faro

Senior DevOps Engineer

Disney•  December 2018 - September 2019

Improved continuous integration, deployment, and delivery. Developed multiple continuous delivery pipelines with Jenkins. Architected, deployed, automated and maintained Jenkins as a service with Docker Swarm, Groovy, Bash, Kubernetes and Ansible. Replicated services and software from Fox Media AWS accounts. Implemented deployment of Docker Swarm clusters to AWS with Terraform. Deployed monitoring packages such as New Relic, Splunk and Sysdig to all systems managed by the operations team with Ansible.

Senior DevOps Engineer

Infor•  June 2018 - November 2018

Updated Step Function and its constituent Lambda functions such that successfully processed events read from a Simple Queue Service queue would be written to a Kinesis stream. Added API key authorization to existing API to enable access via an API Gateway to create the CMDB Client API. Automated the deployment of DynamoDB tables and previously mentioned Kinesis stream with Faro. Wrote Python to acquire statistics and publish them to a Grafana endpoint. Implemented GitLab Continuous Integration for testing and deployment.

DevOps Engineer

Creative Artists Agency•  September 2015 - April 2016

Implemented CI/CD for an internal project that had failed to deliver anything in the year since its original deadline had passed and enabled the developers to deliver bug fixes and new features daily with Jenkins, Ansible, Python, Web2Py, and Ansible Tower. Managed and monitored the cloud infrastructure of roughly 30 EC2 instances using Ansible, Ansible Tower, BASH, CentOS (RHEL), Docker, Ubuntu, and New Relic. Alerted stakeholders to failing jobs in Ansible Tower or non-functional infrastructure with New Relic, PagerDuty, Python, and Ansible. Trained and guided the Workday migration team in the use of Python, Pandas, and JupyterHub through the completion of their project.

Lead Python Developer

Toyota Motor Sales•  November 2014 - August 2015

Automated deployment of Customer 360 services to reduce time to deploy from several weeks to less than an hour with Ansible, BASH, Java, Ant, Maven, Tomcat, and Scala Build Tool. Managed configuration and maintenance of Customer 360 cloud infrastructure consisting of roughly 10 Red Hat Linux EC2 instances using Ansible, BASH, and Python. Designed, deployed, and implemented automated tests and deployment of Customer 360 code written in Java, Scala, and Python with Ansible, BASH, Ant, Maven, and Jenkins. Supported a team of 25 developers with Jenkins CI, Bitbucket, and Ansible to ensure they were able to release on time. Provided instruction on the use of git, gitflow, Bitbucket, and best practices for commits and merges to Customer 360 developers after gaining consensus and approval of Customer 360 management with an A3 presentation. Refactored and developed web scraping software using ScraPY, Python, and Ansible. Wrote and implemented a Python style guide and provided instruction on compliance to team of remote Python developers. Participated in sprint planning and review cycle with Customer 360 team of 25 developers.