Jay Adkisson

Hacker, Systems dude, lover of beautiful code

916-402-8948 | [email protected] | github.com/jayferd | twitter.com/jayferd | linkedin

What I'm looking for

I'm looking for a team that is a joy to work with on a daily basis. I thrive in an environment where I can learn lots of new things, solve real problems, and come home at the end of the day thinking "We did something today!" I want to work on a team that works together, overcomes challenges together, and grows together.

Education

• University of California, Berkeley. Double major in Mathematics (Pure) and Music. 3.57 UC GPA, 4.0 Mathematics GPA. Graduated: December 2009

Relevant Experience

Causes.com

Causes is a large-scale Facebook application that connects people to things they care about. With about 30 million MAUs and a team of only 8 engineers, automation and predictability were mission-critical.

Software Engineer

During the first few months, I worked on wishes.causes.com with a team of two other engineers, a designer, and a product lead. My responsibilities spanned the whole stack: provisioning/configuring app machines and database servers, writing models, integrating with Facebook, realizing mockups in html/css, and creating nifty UI elements with jQuery.

Systems Engineer

Based on the needs of the company and my insatiable curiosity, I decided to pivot to the operations team. I was responsible for the automation of machine provisioning and configuration, from the initial machine image to the first 200 OK. This included automation and monitoring of the full build cycle: remote power-cycle, dhcp/dns, PXE, kickstart, puppet, and all the way through gem provisioning and deploy. I eventually also became responsible for managing the configuring the A10 loadbalancers. I was also responsible for provisioning and configuring a myriad of different internal services, including the static assets cluster with a squid reverse-proxy, and moving from a single memcache instance to a consistently-hashed cluster using Dalli.

Technologies

• I can code in: ruby, javascript (node + browser), bash, puppet, python

• I have intimate knowledge of: puppet, dns (bind), dhcp, A10 loadbalancer configuration, redis, nginx, browser mumbo jumbo (html/css/js/jquery), rspec, rails, rubygems and gem provisioning

• I have worked with / configured: squid, memcached, mysql, syslog(-ng)

• I have strong opinions on / have poked around about: riak, mcollective

• I am willing and able to learn about: anything. No really, anything at all.

Code I am proud of

• iplogic, an IPv4 swiss army chainsaw in ruby.
• truth (probably open source soon), a library to define and manage truth in a datacenter (WIP). It's got a sweet declarative ruby DSL. And it's extensible.
• mathquill, gui editable math in the browser. Also, awesomesauce.
• rpgem, an admittedly hacky cli tool to turn gems into binary rpms, with specified exterrnal dependencies, and no dependencies on a compiler, development headers, or development gems.

References

• Scott Baker, was VP of Operations at Causes.
• Kevin Ball, coworker at Causes.

Non-sequitur interests

• Rock piano. Yeah, you heard me.
• Nonviolence and conflict resolution
• Meditation as a means to growth
• Collecting and identifying wild mushrooms
• Skipping