Barry Walker

I'm

About

I've been a professional software engineer for over 20 years, doing development in everything from Perl, Java, Python, Objective-C and C# to Ruby on Rails. I started my career working on Honeywell DPS-6 mini computers for the U.S. Marine Corps in the early 90s. In the mid 90s I found myself at a small ISP working as a systems administrator dealing with a mix of Linux and DEC machines as well as dial-up users. These two experiences taught me a lot about managing shared infrastructure.

In 2008 I discovered a service called Amazon S3 which allowed me to back my important documents up to what was then the early cloud. In 2009/2010 I helped to develop a Ruby on Rails web app coupled with an iPad app (this was before the iPad shipped! We developed with the simulator) that would go on to be acquired by Autodesk. Shortly after the acquisition, I took on the role of DevOps Engineer for this application and learned a ton about managing the infrastructure and deployment of an enterprise-grade application.

I have a passion for automating infrastructure, and by using tools like Packer, Terraform, Kubernetes and Jenkins, it's possible to make infrastructure and code deployments nearly painless. My software engineering experience combined with my systems administrator/operations experience allows me to work with engineering and operations teams to build sophisticated CI/CD pipelines.

Facts

Years building and deploying applications.

Years of production AWS experience.

Terraform Module Installs from my modules available on the official Terraform Registry.

Unhappy clients

Resume

PDF

Professional Experience

Senior Systems Engineer

Sep 2020 - Present

Rocket Mortgage, Remote

Rocket Mortgage is the largest retail lender in the country.

I work with the product teams to build the infrastructure and deployment pipelines that they need to get their products deployed to AWS. Currently I work in the Client Communications & Engagement group, which has very high visibility. My team is responsible for the quickenloans.com and rocketmortgage.com landing pages.
Built the initial version of the Global Preference Center, which enables customers to manage their contact preferences across the Family of Companies.
Volunteered every year for the team that manages the systems during the SuperBowl. This group keeps the systems running smoothly during the company's many SuperBowl advertising spots.

Senior Software Architect

Feb 2017 - Sep 2020

ZeroNorth, Boston, MA (acquired by Harness)

ZeroNorth was a security automation and orchestration platform that enabled companies to introduce security into every portion of their SDLC from code commit to application delivery.

Fully integrated DataDog into all aspects of our platform to gain full observability. This included many custom log processing pipelines.
Built Terraform scripts from the ground up to deploy 15 Python/NodeJS micro-services into Mesosphere DC/OS running on Amazon AWS.
Converted the platform fully from DC/OS to Kubernetes using Helm as our package manager, and Terraform as the infrastructure provisioner. Drastically simplified a full platform deployment to just a handful of ‘make’ commands.
Built a Packer script to package up the entirety of our platform to run on microk8s (Kubernetes built for appliances) inside of a VMWare OVA. This was to enable on-premise deployments for larger customers.
Completely stood up a 3 node ELK cluster to ingest metrics and logs from all of our platform deployments.
Installed and managed our Jenkins build server which includes 8 build pipelines across 80+ GitHub repositories.
Built the first version of our platform's integration agent which allows customers to scan their artifacts as part of their build pipeline, and fail the build if vulnerabilities are found.
Configured the Kubernetes horizontal pod autoscaler and the cluster autoscaler in all of our environments to allow full autoscaling.

Senior Software Engineer

Jun 2012 - Feb 2017

Autodesk, Boston, MA

Autodesk makes software for people who make things. They build world-class products which are used across many industries. I came to Autodesk through the acquisition of Vela Systems.

Continued to add features to BIM 360 Field as a Ruby on Rails engineer until 2013.
Took over SRE responsibility in 2013. The product was deployed in AWS using Capistrano, and CM was done with Chef.

Senior Software Engineer

Feb 2008 - Jun 2012

Vela Systems, Burlington, MA (acquired by Autodesk)

Vela Systems built applications to modernize construction job sites by using purpose built mobile applications. They started off writing applications that ran on Windows Tablets, but shifted to applications running on Apple iPads. They were acquired by Autodesk in June of 2012.

Key member of the team that built the Vela Field Manager Ruby on Rails web application. This was a field management application for construction that would be rebranded as BIM 360 Field after the Autodesk acquisition.
Developed key pieces of the VFM RoR web app including reporting system interfaces and mobile REST API.
Part of a 2 man team that built the first several versions of the VFM mobile application running on the iPad using Objective-C. My responsibility was device-to-backend communication with REST APIs and managing storage on the device using SQLite.
Implemented the first versions of the VFM reporting system which ran Jasper Reports Server.

AWS/Kubernetes/Terraform Consultant

Dec 2015 - Present

Self Employeed

Assisted the following companies with lift-and-shift deployments, containerization of existing applications, or deployment of cloud-native applications:

Equip Health: Automated their serverless infrastructure for their next-gen platform using Terraform and Serverless framework.
Autodesk: Led the effort to containerize their BIM 360 Ops product. It was migrated from AWS OpsWorks.
BuildingEngines: Performed a complete lift-and-shift of their legacy application from RackSpace to AWS. Also built EKS infrastructure for their newer cloud-native products using Terraform and Helm. Deployments are done using Bitbucket Pipelines.
Polis: They came out of the Tech Stars incubator and needed help provisioning their infrastructure. I helped them build out their infrastructure and build pipeline.
Tenant Technologies: I helped them migrate 5 PHP applications from an on-premise data center into AWS. While we did that, I showed them how to take advantage of autoscaling and auto-healing. They deploy today using AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Portfolio

My personal projects reflect my curious nature and aren't tied to any particular technology. I do have a passion for retro technology and Commodore computers in particular. My professional engagements have been mostly lift-and-shift of applications of varying complexity from on-prem environments into AWS, or building AWS infrastructure for V2 products.

All
Personal
Professional

terraform-aws-rds-scheduler

A custom Terraform module that you can use to schedule on and off times for your RDS instances/clusters.

terraform-aws-zookeeper

A custom Terraform module that you can use to build a Zookeeper ensemble.

terraform-aws-rds-asg

A custom Terraform module that you can use to turn your RDS instances/clusters on and off based on the size of an AWS Autoscaling Group.

SIM6502

A custom tool for running unit tests against 6502 assembly language programs. I built a custom DSL using ANTLR that works very similarly to how modern unit test tools work.

C128 Quad Kernal

This is a cool piece of hardware for the Commodore 128 that lets you switch between 4 different Kernals by tapping the 128's RESTORE key. No case modifications required. I designed the circuit using Autodesk EagleCAD, had the boards built by PCBWay and built a PIC version and an Atmel version.

BJR (Barry's Job Runner)

A job scheduler/runner that I built using Ruby on Rails and React (a separate repo).

Equip Health

Built out AWS infrastructure for their next-gen platform using Terraform and the Serverless framework. Backend was built entirely on API Gateway and Lambdas.

Building Engines

Brought on as a consultant tasked with migrating their primary Java/Tomcat application from Rack Space to AWS, and also acting as interim Director of Cloud Operations until they find somebody permanent. As Director of Cloud Operations, I'm instututing best practices around AWS deployments which includes tool standardization, security, auditability/logging, and secrets management. Acquired by JLL

Zeronorth

Brought on initially as a consultant tasked with getting their infrastructure and deployments ironed out, but wound up accepting a full-time position as Sr. Software Architect/DevOps engineer. We have a full CI/CD pipeline using Docker, Jenkins and Kubernetes. The infrastructure is managed by Terraform, and the application is packaged with Helm. Acquired by Harness

Polis

For their v1 product, I cleaned up and secured their AWS infrastructure and built a CI/CD pipeline using Travis and Elastic Beanstalk. For their v2 product, I moved them to containerized deployments using Travis and Rancher. Acquired by Ad Practitioners

Autodesk

I was brought on to assist a transition of the BIM 360 Ops product from AWS Ops Works to a container based, standardized deployment model.

Tenant Technologies

I migrated several PHP applications from an on-prem environment into AWS using Elastic Beanstalk.

Services

This isn't a comprehensive list, so if you need something not covered here, please reach out to me.

Contact

Location:

Quincy, Massachusetts

Email:

my firstnamelastname at gmail

Call:

(781) 817-3094