Jarrett Irons

5138 W Slauson Avenue · Los Angeles, CA 90056 · (310) 876-2327 · jarrett.irons@gmail.com

Systems Engineer experienced with both Microsoft and open-source technologies. Capable of creating and supporting in-house custom applications. Experience in many proof-of-concept projects. Especially strong in front-end applications using Netscaler load balancers, Apache, and Nginx. Recent experience in AWS and Kubernetes. Also good at troubleshooting system and network bugs using tools such as WinDBG or WireShark.

Experience

Senior Systems Engineer

Oath:

Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo and formed Oath. My colleagues and I were absorbed into a DevOps team within AOL that ran production services for media and brands. Main responsibilities at first was to decommission the AWS Gravity account. I was then handed responsibilities to learn about Splunk and to develop a way to easily deploy clusters in various AWS accounts using the tools I have available including Docker, Packer, Terraform, Chef and Screwdriver.

March 2017 - Present

Senior Systems Engineer

AOL.

AOL acquired Gravity in 2014. During this time Gravity needed to move to AWS. It was a AOL initiative and our contracts were expiring with our current hosting service at the time. We migrated several of our tools to adapt to the cloud environment, switching from Icinga to Sensu and updating our graphing front-ends. Migrating to AWS also helped us decide on revamping our server configuration database from Puppet to Chef and adapting the immutable infrastructure philosophy. This approach also introduced us to the ideals of not having to login to machines and being more hands off. Later on we started building a Kubernetes cluster with plans of migrating our services to it, but at this time Gravity, the product, was facing termination.

Accomplishments:

  • Participated in preparation and execution of migrating to AWS.
  • Migrating monitoring service Sensu.
  • Rewriting and simplifying our server orchestration using Chef-Solo.
January 2014 - March 2017

Senior Systems Engineer

Gravity.com

Gravity.com was a native and sponsored recommendation engine for publishers such as Techcrunch.com and Huffingtonpost.com. The tech stack included a service-oriented infrastructure comprising of web front-end, log processing, log streaming and recommendations processors all written in scala. Data was stored in Mysql and Hbase/HDFS with raw/cleansed logs and data marts.

Accomplishments:

  • Rebuilding the puppet infrastructure.
  • Upgrading graphing and monitoring tools using Graphite and Icinga.
  • Built out ELK stack for system and application logs and graphing special log events.
  • Wrote a ruby gem to help automate and manage our server environment.
  • Wrote a image thumbnail proxy service in Ruby/Sinatra.
June 2012 - January 2014

Senior Systems Architect

Myspace.com

I was responsible for 5000+ web servers. Responsibilities included patch/image management, performance tweaks and upgrades. I was also responsible for building out new system applications and provide scripts and apps for the rest of the team to help automate daily tasks. I also administered Citrix Netscalers, where I setup and manage complex Layer 7 switching.

Accomplishments:

  • Writing and implementing server orchestration scripts written in Powershell.
  • Implementing DSR (Direct Server Return) on Netscaler Load Balancer layer.
  • Leading and participating in several data center expansions, migrations and decommission.
June 2006 - June 2012

Systems Administrator

Affinity Internet

Systems Administrator of Windows Production Products. This environment contained over 100 web servers and several MSSQL servers. Was responsible for Active Directory, Backup, Disaster Recovery, Customer Provisioning and Troubleshooting incidents as they arose.

Accomplishments:

  • Implemented and documented remote power management.
  • Consolidated one of our legacy web farms from 48 servers down to one.
  • Was involved in getting the company Microsoft Certified Seal, which involved best practices and security implementations.
January 2005 - June 2006

Education

EdNet Career Institute

2000 MSCE
Microsoft Certification/CCNA track
June 2003

Grover Cleveland High School

June 1997

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
Fundamentals
  • Security-First, Scalability Second.
  • Pet vs. Cattle, try to keep as little pets as possible.
  • If someone needs to login to a system, you are doing it wrong.
  • Always look for something better before doing it yourself.

Interests

Apart from working as a Devops Systems Engineer, I enjoy working out at my crossfit gym. Been doing that for 4 years and still going. I also enjoy the occasional surf in Socal as well as enjoying hikes in the Santa Monica mountains.

My biggest, nerdiest enjoyment is tabletop games. I currently run a D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) campaign at my current office and attend a monthly board game night. I currently enjoy playing Midgard and Small World and am looking forward to a game I kickstarted called "Who Goes There?"