Hello! I'm Cariad Eccleston.

I'm a freelance DevOps engineer and technical author.

Let's build something awesome together!

History

• March - May 2020

  Contract DevOps Engineer at Freyda. Led the development of platform infrastructure and CI/CD pipeline.

• February - March 2020

  Contract Software Engineer at NHS Digital. Migrated a healthcare provider-facing SOAP service to .NET Core, with added functional tests.

• 2019

  Software Team Lead at Thomson Reuters. Led a global DevOps effort to support all Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting cloud applications.

• 2016

  Senior DevOps Engineer at Thomson Reuters. Built a global cloud accounting platform with my friends.

Infrastructure Engineering

• Infrastructure as Code

  Designed and built infrastructure as code for a scaling, resilient, multi region financial platform in Amazon Web Services.

• Languages

  Golang, Python + boto3, TypeScript / JavaScript in Node.js, and .NET Core. Templating with CloudFormation. Scripting with Bash and PowerShell.

• Quality

  Self-documented code. High unit test coverage. Love style guidelines. Advocate for peer code review.

• Manual Changes

  They're unavoidable sometimes. Engaged with co-pilots to verify my work in real-time. Ensured documentation for the change was complete, correct and shared.

Continuous Integration / Deployment

• Orchestration

  GitLab CI, Jenkins, Travis CI and AWS CodePipeline. Orchestrated with Gulp, Grunt, Bash, PowerShell and Python.

• Source control

  Love GitHub and GitLab. Experience with Team Foundation Server / Azure DevOps.

• Code pipelines

  Created pipelines for .NET, Golang, TypeScript, Python, and Lambda Functions.

• Database pipelines

  Developed Python scripts to deploy secure databases and schema updates. Developed SQL scripts and strategies for multi-tenancy.

• Baking Amazon Machine Images

  Built a Node.js service in TypeScript for baking build artefacts into AMIs. Wrapper around Packer. Automatically disabled exploitable features like remote logins.

Security

• Code Reviews

  Encouraged my team to think like a hacker during code reviews. Don't just ask “Does this work?” Ask “How could I abuse this to ruin someone's day?"

• Network Routing

  Deployed code to public and private networks with respect to the minimum required connectivity.

• IAM Policies and Roles

  Passionate about crafting IAM Policies with minimal surface area; giving identities minimal permissions and having them assume IAM Roles as-and-when they need escalated privileges.

• Secret, No-Human Credentials

  Built infrastructure for encrypting, storing and rotating database credentials in Amazon Web Services Secrets Manager. Automated the deployment of databases with IAM authentication.

• KMS Key Lifecycle Management

  Contributed to a corporate toolbox for ensuring that encryption keys are created with appropriate permissions, changes require gatekeeper approval, and alerts when a key is scheduled for deletion.

Site Reliability Engineering

• Monitoring

  Kibana and Datadog for logging and metrics. Icinga dashboards with custom plugins. CloudWatch alarms for urgent notifications. Built a public API for third-parties to monitor our platform.

• Quality

  Evangelised quality of log messages to aid troubleshooting. Promoted a common set of metrics for the platform so that requests could be tracked and services compared.

• Self-healing

  Deployed services with application health checks. Unhealthy instances are automatically terminated and replaced while spare capacity keeps the platform available. High uptime without human intervention.

• Investigations

  Took responsibility for reviewing post-mortem alerts from unhealthy services and investigating failures. Collaborated with development teams to share information and fix problems. Wrote and published incident reports.

Open Source Projects

• aws-hugo

  Infrastructure as code and pipeline for deploying Hugo-based websites to Amazon Web Services. Golang and CloudFormation. Static hosting in S3 behind CloudFront. Lambda@Edge functions handle directories and enforce HTTPS. CodePipeline to build, test and deploy when site code is pushed to GitHub.

  aws-hugo homepage

• s3headersetter

  Cross-platform CLI application & Golang module for setting HTTP headers on S3 objects. Great for setting Cache-Control and Content-Type in static hosting.

  s3headersetter (executable) homepage

  gos3headersetter (Golang module) homepage

• Golang Lambda Functions

  A collection of Golang Lambda Functions for deploying databases with secret credentials and rotating credentials.

  gordsplus-createlambda homepage

  gordsplus-deletelambda homepage

  gordsplus-rotatepasswordlambda homepage

• WordPress database management

  Python packages for deploying WordPress databases and backing-up + restoring entire WordPress state. Supports secret credentials if deploying to Amazon Web Services.

  py-wordpress-database homepage

  py-wordpress-backup homepage

Talks

• PRISM Exeter, 2020

  “LGBTQ+ support on the unfriendly Internet”

• Digital Exeter, 2020

  “My favourite hack: Tupper's Self-Referential Formula”

• TechExeter Annual Conference, 2019

  “Strong, secure & human-free database credentials in Amazon Web Services”

• Nottingham AWS User Group, 2017

  “ONESOURCE Statutory Reporting: The Pipeline to Production”

• Thomson Reuters AWS User Group, 2017

  “Redeveloping ONESOURCE Statutory Reporting for Amazon Web Services”

• Out & Equal Workplace Summit, 2013

  “Virtual Employee Resource Groups: Connect Your Global Membership Using Social Media”

Let's build something together!

Could I be a good fit for your project? Let's have a chat!

Email me at cariad@hey.com or say hey to me on Twitter at @cariadeccleston.

• Yes, I enjoy remote working with global teams. I have many years of experience working with teams across the UK, USA and India, and a mindset for collaborating across Slack, shared code and documentation.
• Yes, I'd love to work on-site if you're within reach of public transport from Exeter. Travel is always negotiable.
• No, I cannot work for startup equity. My landlord only accepts cash for keeping a roof over my head.