About Michael

What I Do Professionally

I am a Software Engineer focused in platforms like Kubernetes. My focus and passion has always been around writing code to automate the termoil and solve practical problems for developers.

I’m incredibly quick to pick up new technologies and am a life long learner in the field. This combined with my strong interpersonal skills make me a solid addition to any team.

What I do Personally

Linux

In my free time I am enthusiastic about Linux. I’ve been using Linux as my primary operating system on my personal computers for about a decade now. It began with a homelab I set up while I was still in university and eventually took over as my favorite OS for “just getting things done”.

Keyboards

In 2013 I bought my first mechnical keyboard which was a pre-built steelseries with black switches. Ever since then I’ve never gone back to non-mechanical for my personal setups. The more and more years go by the more I’ve learned about all the interesting odds and ends of mechanical keyboards. At this point in time I have more than I can keep track of in my head and have had the joy of even getting to build some of them. More details about all of my keyboards can be found in my post HERE.

Neovim

I’ve been a big fan of Vim for as long as I’ve been using Linux and it has always been my go to. But recently I’ve switched to using Neovim and exploring all the functionality it can gather from plugins. I find a lot of joy in getting the “full IDE experience” while opting into the features I care about only. You can see my current configuration on Github

Where I Went to School

I received a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Northern Iowa in 2019.

Who I’ve Worked For

Northwestern Mutual

Systems Software Engineer (2022 - Present)

• Write code to make using Kubernetes secure, reliable, and easy
• Design and implement solutions to accelerate the business and our developers.
• Support large multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters running 1000’s of applications supporting 100’s of dev teams.
• Educate the development community on how to use Kubernetes and container services
• Partner with vendors and enterprise teams on emerging best practices, patterns and technology.
• Proactively learn emerging platforms and related technology.
• Solve complex technical issues and enable/instruct peers to be self-sufficient.
• Establish and maintain best practices as it relates to compliance, security, privacy and legal requirements.

Fidelity National Information Services (FIS)

Systems Administrator Specialist (2021 - 2022)

• Administrate zero downtime production OpenShift 3.11 cluster (10,000+ pods)
• Create automation to replace tasks that were being done repeatedly and manually by team members
• Begin learning golang for working on in house Kubernetes operators
• Create documentation of processes for other teammates to utilize as part of their daily work
• Interface with application teams regularly to innovate on ways to optimize the environment and solve problems as they arise

Federated Mutual Insurance

Systems Engineer II (2019 - 2021)

• Administrate OpenShift clusters (1000+ pods) and act as the primary OpenShift expert
• Administrative Linux tasks including debugging, optimizing, and patching (400+ RHEL VMs)
• Write Bash, Python, and Ansible scripts to support OpenShift and Linux servers at scale
• Support developers in tuning and debugging issues related to both OpenShift and Linux servers
• Step up and absorb all senior tasks that were not being handled when two senior teammates left their position with no one to fill their roles
• Identify improvement opportunities for my team, architect solutions, then implement them in conjunction with other teams in the company
• Preserve personal knowledge and promote redundancy among teammates with a mixture of verbose documentation and training sessions

University of Northern Iowa

IT Assistant (2017 - 2019)

• Handle intake and prioritization of tickets
• Troubleshoot user issues in a Windows 7/10 environment
• Upgrade hardware in the field for labs and individual users
• Imaging of new hardware to use standardized installations of Windows

Notable Professional Projects I’ve Lead

• Act as the technical lead for migrating multiple existing OpenShift 3.x virtual clusters to a converged bare metal OpenShift 4.x cluster
• Architect and Implement a CI/CD pipeline to allow developers to deploy code to an OpenShift cluster from Azure DevOps
• Bring products such as Ansible Tower and Red Hat Satellite into the company, design best practices while using the product for automation, and act as the primary expert
• Train group of three new hires with zero experience and bring them up to the level of competent contributing team members to solve a knowledge gap in our team