Oct 2016 – Feb 2019 · 2 yrs 4 mos · San Francisco, CA

• Most consulting groups focus on being all things to all people.
• I focus on solving exactly one problem: fixing horrifying AWS bills.
• From lowering the bill, to allocating costs more accurately, to helping construct detailed financial models for infrastructure cost forecasting, I'm someone you should chat with. If this sounds like a problem you're feeling, please feel free to reach out; I'd love to chat with you about how I can help.

Sep 2016 – Present · 9 yrs 8 mos · San Francisco, California

• The Duckbill Group helps companies fix their horrifying AWS bill by making it both smaller and easier to understand.

Aug 2015 – Sep 2016 · 1 yr 1 mo · San Francisco

• Not just "prophecy as a service." Acquired by BlackRock during my tenure, FutureAdvisor's mission was to make retirement accessible to the middle class via intelligent asset allocation, automatic rebalancing, and tax-loss harvesting for their clients.
• Operations is important. Combine that with close to $1 billion in assets under management, and "important"​ escalates to "critical" very quickly. Operating in a regulated industry at scale takes a certain gumption, willingness to try new things, and ability to balance velocity with risk. Hiring, retaining, and maintaining a highly skilled team to do that was my focus.

Jun 2013 – Apr 2015 · 1 yr 10 mos · San Francisco

• Taos is an infrastructure consulting organization with twenty-five years of experience in solving problems that transcend technology, people, and process. We did that by deploying people like me-- strong technologists who can speak to business requirements. As a result, my engagements were broad and varied; I've been a technical trainer for Puppet Labs, a management advisor at a publicly traded bank, a hybrid cloud architect at a multinational semiconductor company, and (due to a misunderstanding about "stand-up meetings") an improvisational comic at company strategy sessions.
• When I wasn't helping our clients slay various operational dragons, I spent significant energy helping to make Taos better. That included recruiting top-flight consultants, performing technical evaluations of our existing staff, creating and conducting internal training on a variety of topics, and speaking publicly about my experiences in the field.

Nov 2011 – Nov 2012 · 1 yr · San Francisco

• Expensify was founded to address a recurring problem-- the horrific quality of most companies' expense reporting systems. I was brought aboard first to bring order to the chaos of a multitude of different systems-- and later, to build out a team to take ownership of the day to day operation of the environment.
• I take no responsibility for the clownshoes things the CEO would go on to both say and do in public, apparently unaware that other people could read them.

May 2010 – Apr 2011 · 11 mos

• (mt) Media Temple, Inc. is a web hosting and virtualization service provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since 1998, the company has provided businesses around the world with reliable, professional-class services to host websites, email, business applications, and other rich Internet content.

Apr 2010 – Jul 2013 · 3 yrs 3 mos

• Consulting for a variety of small businesses in the web / ecommerce sector.

Jan 2010 – Apr 2010 · 3 mos · Chicago, IL

• A four month whirlwind project to migrate 1.2 million users from a hosted platform to an internal Zimbra based solution. While a valuable learning experience and a highly successful project, I would think twice before agreeing to spend another winter in Iowa.

Dec 2007 – Oct 2009 · 1 yr 10 mos

• Provided 24/7 support for a clustered LAMP farm across multiple datacenters in support of a custom application; key technologies included perl, MySQL, Apache httpd, and shared storage (NetApp based)
• Re-architected email infrastructure to replace aging AtMail / Exim based solution with a Zimbra server and redundant Postfix based mailgates
• Re-factored Nagios configuration to eliminate false positives and simplify administration
• Virtualized existing hardware nodes onto a Xen platform to gain added flexibility for server deployments
• Managed approximately 200 heterogenous systems via a combination of kickstart/PXE, as well as CFengine

Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 · 1 yr

• Managed a hybrid CentOS / FreeBSD environment for a private university. Rebuilt and managed email system. Implemented monitoring solutions.

Jul 2003 – Jul 2006 · 3 yrs

• Dedicated to providing IT expertise to a variety of small businesses, including capacity planning, growth projections, and disaster recovery preparation.