calebolson.space

Resume

Summary

  • Name: Caleb Olson
  • Contact: scoutscott13@gmail.com
  • Location: Greater Seattle Area, WA
  • Arrangement: Remote/Hybrid Work Preferred

Accomplished Senior DevOps Engineer adept at delivering business value through technology. Proven track record in cloud cost optimization, automation, continuous deployment, and security best practices. Skilled in AWS, Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, scripting, development and leading cross-functional initiatives. Strong communicator and collaborator with a passion for mentoring, knowledge sharing and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Experience

  • Senior DevOps Engineer (Aug 2023 - Present)

    • Company: Dispatch

    • Location: Boston, MA (Remote)

    • Responsibilities:

      • InfoSec: Spearheaded SOC2/PCI compliance initiatives, led access control improvements, and conducted policy reviews.
      • Team Development: Onboarded and mentored junior DevOps engineers, fostered a collaborative knowledge-sharing environment and provided technical training on various technologies.
      • Strategic Planning: Partnered with stakeholders to develop and prioritize the product roadmap, ensuring alignment with company objectives and driving continuous improvement.
      • Technical Debt Reduction: Proactively identified and documented technical debt, formulated optimization strategies, and led re-architecture efforts for improved performance and scalability.
      • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Served as the DevOps team representative in critical meetings, participated in company-wide committees, and collaborated with external teams to achieve shared goals.
      • Operational Excellence: Led production system maintenance, meticulously planned and executed changes, and ensured rigorous testing in lower environments to minimize downtime and risk.
      • Pipeline Optimization: Troubleshot and optimized build pipelines, enhanced pipeline security, and successfully migrated CI/CD processes from Travis CI to GitHub Actions.
      • Cost Optimization: Implemented cost-conscious development practices, spearheaded initiatives to reduce cloud infrastructure costs, and championed long-term optimization projects.
      • Kubernetes Expertise: Established comprehensive monitoring for resource usage, fine-tuned Kubernetes deployments and nodes, and led discussions on optimization strategies to maximize efficiency.
      • Incident Management: Participated in on-call rotation and assisted in incident mitigation.
      • Golang for Infrastructure and Security: Learned and leveraged Go for infrastructure-focused tasks, including building proof-of-concept implementations for backend services, testing service account integrations, improving service-infrastructure interactions, and maintaining Go-based deployment tools.

  • DevOps Engineer (Aug 2022 - Aug 2023)

    • Company: Dispatch

    • Location: Boston, MA (Remote)

    • Responsibilities:

      • Developed and maintain AWS infrastructure using Terraform and Kubernetes, ensuring optimal performance, low cost and security.
      • Improved IAM policies and user management, segregated permissions by environment and service which increased security and auditability.
      • Reconfigured Lambdas to run within VPCs, enhancing the security posture of the company.
      • Participates in on-call rotation, promptly addressing and mitigating incidents, ensuring system stability, and minimizing downtime.
      • Led the migration of multiple microservices to Kubernetes ServiceAccount authentication, reducing reliance on AWS IAM access keys.
      • Streamlined and automates RDS snapshot management, optimizing resource usage and lowering costs.
      • Conducted security reviews of team repositories, ensuring compliance with best practices and company standards.
      • Collaborated with the team to plan and implement migration strategies for environment secrets to AWS Secrets Manager.
      • Implemented external secrets provider in Kubernetes environments, syncing secrets with AWS Secrets Manager and improving security posture.

  • DevOps Engineer (Jan 2021 - Aug 2022)

    • Company: Pedigree Technologies

    • Location: Fargo, ND (Remote)

    • Responsibilities:

      • Demonstrated AWS, Linux, OOP, and scripting proficiency.
      • Built secure and scalable services in AWS.
      • Wrote dynamic infrastructure as code in Ansible.
      • Participated in on-call rotation, promptly addressing and mitigating incidents, ensuring system stability, and minimizing downtime.
      • Automated deployments using Jenkins.
      • Performed zero downtime security and usability upgrades.
      • Miscellaneous automation scripting.
      • Built custom Microsoft Teams and Slack integrations.

  • Software Engineer (Jan 2020 - Jan 2021)

    • Company: Pedigree Technologies

    • Location: Fargo, ND (Remote)

    • Responsibilities:

      • Backend Java Developer - Developed business logic, database change sets, APIs, and automated testing tools.
      • Participated in on-call rotation, promptly addressing and mitigating incidents, ensuring system stability and minimizing downtime.

  • Software Engineer Intern (Jan 2019 - Jan 2020)

    • Company: Pedigree Technologies

    • Location: Fargo, ND

    • Responsibilities:

      • Backend Java Developer - Wrote selunium UI tests, ensuring streamlined automated testing and the stability of our UI.

  • Technology Consultant (Aug 2016 - Dec 2018)

    • Company: Geek Squad

    • Location: Bismarck, ND

    • Responsibilities:

      • Knowledge of advanced computer repair relating to hardware and software.
      • Explained services and technology to help meet client needs.
      • Coached the sales team on how to best deliver technological solutions.

Skills

  • Cloud Technologies

    • Expertise in Amazon Web Services (AWS) including services like EC2, S3, AWS SecretsManager, Route53, IAM, RDS, and Lambda.
    • Profienct in Kubernetes Cluster Management including tuning nodes and deployments for optimal efficiency.

  • Infrastructure as Code

    • Proficient in using Terraform and Ansible.
    • Experience with AWS CloudFormation.

  • Continuous Integration/Delivery

    • Proficient in Jenkins, Travis CI, and GitHub Actions.

  • Containerization

    • Skilled in Docker, Docker Compose, and Portainer for creating and managing containers.

  • Programming and Scripting

    • Proficient in Java.
    • Proficient in Python and Bash.
    • Comfortable with Golang.
    • Experienced in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP).

  • Monitoring and Security

    • Proficient with CloudWatch, Kibana, Datadog, Loggly, and PagerDuty for system monitoring.
    • Expertise in security best practices and an InfoSec participant.

  • Database Management

    • Proficient with RDS & DocDB snapshot management
    • Comfortable with MySQL.

  • Communication and Collaboration

    • Excellent communication skills with a proven track record of collaborating with cross-functional teams.
    • Proficient in developing custom integrations for Microsoft Teams and Slack.

  • Other

    • Knowledge of advanced computer repair related to hardware and software.
    • Experience with FreeNAS and TrueNAS
    • Expertise in Linux OS
    • Proficient in ZFS
    • Experience with using Angular and Nginx for web development.
    • Experience with OpenStack for managing cloud computing platforms.

Certificates & Achievements

  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

    • Awarder: Amazon Web Services Training and Certification
    • Criteria: >= 70%
    • Summary: Has a fundamental understanding of IT services and their uses in the AWS Cloud. Demonstrate cloud fluency and foundational AWS knowledge. Able to identify essential AWS services necessary to set up AWS-focused projects.

    • Dates Awarded

  • Hackathon Winner (2023)

    • Winner - “Most Technically Satisfying” - Company-Wide Hackathon
    • As a key contributor in a cross-company team between Dispatch and Youreka, we architected a AWS solution to improve the frontend user experience during image uploads to Salesforce. Led the design and implementation of a system leveraging AWS Lambda and S3 for image decompression and storage, utilizing Terraform for infrastructure code. Despite challenging circumstances, we successfully delivered the project and won the “Most Technically Satisfying” award at the Hackathon, leading to further discussions about moving the project into production.

  • NDSU Dean’s List

    • Awarder: Michael R. Kessler, Dean
    • Criteria: Average semester GPA >= 3.5
    • Summary: Caleb S. Olson has been named to the Dean’s list in the College of Engineering at North Dakota State University.

    • Semesters Awarded

  • BSC President’s Honor Roll

    • Awarder: Dr. Larry C. Skogen, President
    • Criteria: Average semester GPA >= 3.5
    • Summary: Caleb Olson has been named to the President’s Honor Roll at Bismarck State College.

    • Semesters Awarded

  • ICPC Participant (Spring 2019)

    • Participated in the prestigious International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), showcasing problem-solving skills and programming proficiency.

Projects

  • Citizen Science Aerial Image Aggregation

    • Web application that supports drone flight uploads, extracts metadata from drone images, stores data for efficient querying, and supports building composite images.
    • Keywords: Python, MySQL, Flask, Angular, OpenStack

  • Personal Website

    • A simple portfolio website that showcases my technical ability. This website is developed, deployed in AWS, and maintained by myself.
    • Keywords: Golang, AWS, Hugo

  • Community Relations

    • A simple algorithm for detecting relationships between communities in network datasets.
    • Keywords: Python

Education

  • North Dakota State University (Fall 2018 - Spring 2021)

    • Location: Fargo, ND
    • Degree: BS, Computer Science
    • GPA: 3.7

  • Bismarck State University (Fall 2016 - Spring 2018)

    • Location: Bismarck, ND
    • Degree: ASSOC, Science
    • GPA: 3.7