Intro

Intro

Hi, I'm Matt!

I'm an Engineer with over a decade of experience in IT, specializing in infrastructure management and automation. My expertise spans a diverse range of technologies encompassing Python, Ansible, Docker, and Terraform in on-prem Linux and AWS environments.

During my 10-year career at Apple, I played a pivotal role in automating and optimizing infrastructure operations. By designing innovative solutions to address deeply complex technical challenges, I have improved operations across the AppleCare, Finance, and IS&T organizations within Apple, ensuring prompt and effective resolutions to uphold peak operational performance. I engineered automated deployment solutions that reduced deployment times from 10 hours to 30 minutes, developed critical monitoring applications, and published comprehensive runbooks to enhance operational efficiency. My efforts significantly reduced manual workloads and improved system reliability, benefiting internal services used by 26,000 employees.

In 2022, I joined the Northwest Education Association (NWEA), later acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, as a DevOps Engineer and Site Reliability Engineer. My dedication to supporting developers and removing toil led to increased operational efficiency through faster deployment times, comprehensive runbooks, streamlined triage process, and reduced on-call alerts.

Currently pursuing the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification, I am dedicated to continuous learning and professional growth. I actively mentor junior engineers, fostering a collaborative and knowledge-sharing environment. Driven by a passion for technology and innovation, I am eager to contribute my skills and expertise to a dynamic team, ensuring the reliability and performance of complex systems.

Projects

Projects

Terraform-AutoMatt

GitHub repo: terraform-automatt

As a way to test my AWS and Terraform knowledge, I built my primarily AWS infrastructure for AutoMatt.sh using Infrastructure as Code (IAC) with Terraform.

While the project was ultimately successful, it was full of its own unique challenges, such as switching from ACLs to Origin Access Control, and learning that Origin Access Identity is not the same thing.

Technologies used: Terraform, CloudFlare, cf-terraforming, AWS (S3, Origin Access Control, Certificate Manager, CloudFront CDN


AutoMatt.sh

Inspired by the Cloud Resume Challenge, I built this website to host my portfolio, resume, and contact information. I decided to take it a step further than the simple S3 static website by adding the use of OAC (Origin Access Control) for additional security, Certificate Manager for SSL/TLS certs, combined with Lambda and SES (Simple Email Service) for handling the contact form and some extra security layers within.

Admittedly, using all of these AWS services was entirely overkill, but the experience was still enjoyable to learn from and helped further strengthen my knowledge in AWS.

Technologies used: AWS (S3, Origin Access Control, Certificate Manager, CloudFront CDN, Lambda, Simple Email Service)


Dimension-11ty

GitHub repo: dimension-11ty

My first foray into using the Eleventy (11ty) project and the Nunjucks templating engine by converting the Dimension theme from https://html5up.net for use with 11ty.

Technologies used: 11ty, NodeJS, HTML, CSS, JS, Nunjucks


Ansible-Doom-Emacs

GitHub repo: ansible-doom-emacs

For a short time I tested out using Fedora as my daily driver, and I wanted a quick way to deploy Doom Emacs to that system. Given my love for automation, I decided to write Ansible playbooks to automate the installation process of Emacs, Doom Emacs, Nerd Fonts, and handling secrets using Ansible Vault.

Technologies used: Ansible, Ansible Vault, Doom Emacs, Emacs, Fedora