Curriculum Vitae Link to heading

Daniel Schaaff Link to heading

Professional Summary Link to heading

Proven DevOps leader looking to leave his mark on the world through technology and relationships.

Professional Experience Link to heading

Lead DevOps Engineer, Cordial - San Diego, CA - February 2019 to Present Link to heading

Lead System Operations Engineer, Verve - Carlsbad, CA - December 2018 to February 2019 Link to heading

Worked to improve software delivery velocity, pay down technical debt, and align operations with product priorities.

• Migrated Clojure and Ruby based servers into Docker orchestrated by AWS ECS
• Utilized lambda to seamlessly autoscale ECS cluster instances in and out as containers scale in and out
• Implemented infrastructure as code using Terraform, replacing a mix of Puppet code, CloudFormation, and standalone scripts giving a single view into the infrastructure
• Designed and built robust continuous delivery pipelines for Clojure, Java Springboot, Golang, React and Rails based microservices, simplifying the path to production
• Modernized the Jenkins infrastructure with pipelines, web hooks, and AWS spot fleet based build agents
• Empowered developers to own their software deployments, reducing reliance on tickets with the ops team
• Built a continuous integration environment, helping developers get early feedback on code changes
• Designed and built a unified logging pipeline with Fluentd, s3, Elasticsearch, and Elastalert
• Used Docker to run scaleable integration tests in isolated environments within software delivery pipelines
• Greatly reduced AWS costs through a mixture of workload rightsizing, spot instance utilization, resource cleanup, and autoscaling
• Developed custom monitoring for a variety of resources, including database migrations and s3 objects
• Greatly improved observability through metrics, application performance monitoring, and centralized logging leading to the resolution of a number of long standing bugs
• Worked directly with software engineering teams to align ops priorities with product priorities
• Designed and deployed on call rotation and incident post mortem processes

Senior DevOps Engineer, Gimbal - San Diego, CA - May 2017 to December 2017 Link to heading

Worked to modernize the Gimbal build and delivery pipeline to increase velocity, reliability, and efficiency.

• Completed migration of Java microservices to Docker and ECS
• Moved from monolithic, all or nothing, deployment methodology to delivering each service independently as needed
• Cut down release and deploy cycle from a full day to under an hour greatly, increasing the speed and simplicity of delivering Gimbal applications
• Redesigned a streamlined CI/CD infrastructure utilizing Jenkins pipelines, Jenkins shared libraries, and dynamic EC2 build slaves leading to lower EC2 costs and faster build/test feedback cycles
• Implemented continuous delivery pipeline for Java and Rails projects with automatic delivery to development and staging environments based on git tags/branches with manual promotion to production environments
• Moved team from configuring AWS manually via the console to terraform code, leading to increased consistency between environments, fewer configuration errors, simple rollback plans, and clear audit trails
• Redesigned Chef cookbook management to utilize independent git repos, tagged releases, integration tests, and auto promotion to AWS OpsWorks stacks
• Modified Gimbal Manager Ruby on Rails application to accept dynamic configuration by environment variables and run in a portable Docker environment
• Automated delivery of iOS SDK releases to Cocoapods.
• Moved monitoring from basic Cloudwatch integrations to in-depth metric collection and reporting with Datadog
• Implemented a highly resilient data pipeline based on Fluentd and Elasticsearch
• Worked directly with developers to ensure infrastructure and application development operated in a lock-step manner while delivering on the product vision

DevOps and IT Operations Manager, KnuEdge - San Diego, CA - September 2014 to May 2017 Link to heading

Led internal IT from a cost centered, reactive orientation to a proactive role in supporting, developing, and deploying KnuEdge products and technologies.

• Led network design and buildout of two remote offices in under three months
• Led move of San Diego office and datacenter to a new location with minimal downtime and business interruption
• Led infrastructure as code initiative bringing faster change, better documentation, reusable components, and clear audit trails
• Automated the deployment of Linux and Windows across bare metal, VMWare, and AWS
• Championed culture of openness, sharing, and empathy while increasing collaboration across the company through knowledge wikis, pull requests, ChatOps, knowledge shares and an open first philosophy
• Implemented Puppet for configuration management across Linux, macOS, and Windows
• Developed both public and private Puppet modules for managing/deploying applications and services
• Designed and implemented testing pipeline for Puppet code utilizing RSpec, Bamboo, and Travis reducing faults and increasing confidence in deployments
• Automated migration from Puppet 3 to new Puppet 4 master with no interruption to services
• Developed CI pipeline for managing macOS software utilizing Munki, AutoPKG, Reposado, and Bamboo ensuring vulnerabilities were patched quickly and software remained up to date
• Designed and deployed central logging infrastructure using syslog-ng, Logstash, Elasticsearch, and Kibana
• Deployed and managed AWS infrastructure using Terraform
• Utilized and supported LXC and Docker containers both for production services and development workflows

Network Administrator, Choose Chicago - Chicago, IL - April 2013 to September 2013 Link to heading

Led key initiatives as Network Administrator at Choose Chicago improving network performance, reliability, and security while providing world class support to end users.

• Implemented VLANs in a multi vendor environment isolating end user and backend server traffic into separate broadcast domains, reducing broadcast traffic in the network core by 50%
• Implemented Cisco Gateway Load Balancing Protocol providing a fully redundant default gateway to clients and servers
• Reconfigured Spanning Tree Protocol on all switches to elect the core network switch as the root bridge and optimize traffic paths
• Designed and implemented an access control list safely securing the guest WiFi VLAN
• Installed and configured SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps Server farms
• Designed and configured a SharePoint workflow to automate the approval process for purchasing and tracking airline tickets company wide
• Migrated web applications from SharePoint 2010 to 2013 and setup external access via HTTPS
• Migrated the Choose Chicago main office LAN to a new IP addressing scheme to address a shortage of free addresses and reconfigured routing company wide
• Installed, configured, and deployed Windows update and deployment services on the server 2012 platform to simplify the management of client machines
• Maintained a highly virtualized environment with VMware ESXi and NexSan SAN storage appliances
• Maintained WAN and LAN networks across 3 office locations
• Performed the day to day operation and maintenance of Active Directory, Exchange 2010, and other key Windows servers

Education and Certifications Link to heading

Most recent certifications available on Credly

• Bachelors of Science in Network Communications Management - DeVry University
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
• Puppet Certified Professional
• CCNA