Chad Hirsch 🐧

Profile

Experienced IT engineer, with out-of-the-box thinking and a get-er-done attitude, searching for a role where he can benefit a team of IT engineers to provide value for the customer. Specializes in Linux and Open source, with an eye towards automation to reduce repetative tasks, streamlining productivity, and reducing mean-time to value. Familiar with build systems, Orchestration Technologies, Containers, the Cloud, Infrastructure as Code, and Configuration Management. Always searching for ways to do more with less.

Work Experience

2021-Present

Senior DevOps Engineer * Rearchitected the CDN, consolidating and increasing reliability. * Migrated the application to K8S on GKE * Wrote helm charts and gitlab CI/CD pipelines * Improved developer productivity by reducing build times

2019-Present

Developer/Architect at Guidestar Attendance (Remote)

• Architected a python web application using flask for attendance and meal tracking for daycare systems.
• Wrote reporting and import system using Celery and Amazon SQS for long-running processes with realtime user feedback.
• Designed a postgres database schema using Alembic to manage schema migrations.
• Modified the application such that the database automatically shuts down during periods of inactivity without an outage, saving thousands every month.
• Quickly pivoted to add new features to aid the adoption of the system during a pandemic, and provide useful features to the clients to help them re-open.
• Efficiently reduced costs during closures to provide relief to closed daycares, reduced cloud spend from $800 a month to $120 without any outage or percieved loss of functionality.

2013-2021

Senior DevOps Engineer – AKA Manager at Allegiant Air (Las Vegas, NV)

• Cultivates a team which provides automated solutions to build, package, and deploy code and configurations.
• Solves complex problems to ensure repeatability, redundancy and scalability of deployment methodologies.
• Writes and maintaines Ansible automation for on-prem deployments
• Designs Infrastructure as code using Terraform to automate AWS infrastructure lifecycle.
• Designs and maintains a code build, scan, deployment pipeline with automated gates.
• Writes python applications to bridge specific gaps minimizing the need for human intervention.
• Designs flexible, repeatable and scalable architectures using private and public cloud, and multi-cloud solutions.
• Guides developer best practice for packaging, security, and repeatable designs.
• Migrated over 200 applications from on-prem, to AWS ec2, to containers in kubernetes within one year

2012-2013

Linux Engineer at OnPoint Corp in contract with the Department of Energy (Las Vegas, NV)

• Maintained uptime of various RedHat services on 1000+ servers internationally in a set of non-interconnected networks.
• Provided security monitoring to some of Americas most closely guarded systems in contract with the Department of Energy.
• Built complex configuration management, and automated repetitive tasks.
• Maintained operational integrity under extreme security measures.

2012

Linux Systems Administrator at New Era Recruiting in contract with FNMOC (Monterey, CA)

• Devloped CFEngine configurations which aligned over 5000 nodes to meet over 200 DoD security objectives without affecting production
• Prevented production outage by resolving an input/output issue that was filling logs accross the entire.
• Resolved a crippling production cluster outage due to inode shortage on filesystems with file-heavy workloads.
• Resolved multiple configuration issues on Linux clusters which improved performance and security.

2011-2012

Systems Administrator at Northrop Grumman Corp (Nellis AFB, NV)

• Provided systems support for USAF RedFlag war games
• AV/System support for Briefings and Excercises and Conferences
• Wrote an automated system to track training requirements, send email reminders to users, and provide reports to Unit Commander.

2007-2011, 2016 (Part time 2011-2016, 2017-Present)

Systems Administrator at US Air Force (May ANGB, NV)

• Managed Operations of Multiple Classified Networks including the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (AF-DCGS)
• Administered Solaris Unix Systems, automating backups and repetative tasks in bash scripts
• Maintained and troubleshot network infrastructure, cryptographic equipment, and switching systems.
• Coordinated outage resolutions with sources on local, national and international levels.
• Delivered optimal connectivity in mission-critical environment. Sudden downtime could cause mission failure, and possibly loss of life in overseas contingency operations.