Duncan Ward

Directed a team in setting strategic goals aligned with business objectives, breaking down quarterly goals into specific, measurable milestones. As hiring manager, crafted interview processes and collaborated closely with HR. Instituted agile processes, provided regular 1:1 coaching, and set career development goals, enhancing team retention.

Negotiated a 30% reduction in AWS infrastructure spending through detailed reviews and automated manual processes, freeing up 25% of the team for strategic initiatives. Ensured SOC2 compliance and improved security posture using various AWS tools.

Led technical architecture reviews, simplifying systems and enhancing reliability. Spearheaded development of NestJS REST API services and Typescript & Next.JS electron desktop applications. Implemented Cucumber BDD with Typescript to improve alignment between QA and product development teams.

Managed infrastructure to achieve over 99.999% uptime, demonstrating meticulous oversight and operational excellence.

Managed successful proof of concept implementation of application hosting on Google Cloud Platform using Kubernetes, Cloud SQL, and Stack Driver. Initial aim was to load test equivalent requests per second, but reached 10x that without any performance degradation.

Revolutionized the Continuous Integration platform enabling developers to see results of user acceptance and unit tests on submission of pull requests using AWS EC2, Docker, and Jenkins.

Worked within the National Hosting Services team to evaluate and prototype an Infrastructure as a Service product using Citrix CloudPortal and Apache CloudStack controlling a VMWare vSphere cluster on Cisco UCS and NEXUS hardware.

Principal responsibility was integrating Zabbix monitoring to provide up-to-date data for both NOC and customers. Automated systems management tasks with Puppet to provide reliable, repeatable builds across production, development, and test infrastructure.

Managed Linux Operating System builds and open source applications for the Symantec.cloud estate. Applied bug fixes, contributed to customer security audits, developed yum plugins in Python, and negotiated upgrades within the product roadmap.

Identified a particular upgrade that reduced $5 million CAPEX spend annually and managed the implementation plan, shrinking the initial timescale from 3 years to 12 months. Recognized as a RedHat guru within the organization.

Led a team of 5 staff developing monitoring systems, customer support portals, and systems management tools for Network Operators. Established ITIL-compliant framework for managing the team, starting with writing a service catalogue and implementing key performance indicators.

The team worked the full service lifecycle: requirement gathering, system design (LAMP/LAPP stack), development, quality assurance, deployment management, and ongoing support.

Prior role: Level 3 Support Engineer providing third-line support for a global network spanning 13 sites with Linux & Windows machines and Cisco infrastructure.

Technical member of a small team managing OpenBSD Apache web servers, Sendmail email servers, BIND DNS and supporting servers. Implemented BGP managed network and new DSL service.