Joel Merrick

DevOps Engineer / Cloud Architect

Contact: [email protected] | My Website | My GitHub

Location: Lancaster, UK

Arctic Code Vault Contributor 2020

Professional Summary

As an accomplished Systems Administrator and DevOps Engineer, I have extensive experience across server builds, maintenance, security, DevOps, Machine Learning/AI, and LLMs. My proven expertise spans telecommunications, ISP, hardware/software consultancy, pharmaceutical, service provision, and public sector environments. I possess strong technical awareness combined with excellent communication and negotiation skills to ensure service delivery and customer satisfaction. I am a self-motivated professional, equally comfortable with technical implementation and explaining complex matters in clear, concise terms.

Key Skills

• Cloud Architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Kubernetes & Containerization
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
• CI/CD & DevOps Automation
• Linux Systems Administration
• Python & Scripting

Core Competencies

• Cloud Platforms: AWS (9 years), Azure (3 years), GCP (6 years)
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes (5 years), IaC (6 years), Configuration Management (12 years), Cloud (12 years)
• Automation: CI/CD (11 years), DevOps (7 years), Virtualisation (15 years)
• Programming: Python (10 years), Ruby (14 years), Bash (17 years), Java (3 years)
• Databases: MySQL (15 years), PostgreSQL (10 years)
• Systems: Linux (20+ years), Networking (20+ years), Storage (15 years)

Professional Experience

Barclays (via Clearroute) | Senior Platform Engineer (Contract) Feb 2025 – May 2025

• Built a migration tool for migrating Barclays Chef IaC to Ansible using a novel system prompt generation loop for use with Artificial Intelligence and LLMs like Claude
• Released tool via Clearroute at https://github.com/clear-route/chef-to-ansible-converter
• Designed a developer pattern for GitLab pipelines, leveraging Barclays existing GitLab infrastructure to replace a legacy Nolio based workflow

Origami Energy | Senior Platform Engineer October 2023 – Feb 2025

• Provided support to squads by delivering a robust platform for developers
• Migrated Kubernetes clusters and infrastructure from kops and other disparate systems to EKS
• Utilised cdktf with TypeScript to manage Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Developed and maintained applications using Java and Spring Boot
• Designed and optimised GitLab CI/CD pipelines
• Managed OpenSearch and Kafka (via Confluent Cloud)
• Acted as Technical Authority for the IdP replacement, transitioning from Keycloak to Zitadel, enabling SSO and multi-tenancy support
• Worked extensively with Postgres, DynamoDB, and MongoDB databases

The Sporting News | Site Reliability Engineer Jan 2023 – Sep 2023

• Created Jenkins pipelines and GitHub Actions for management of CI/CD process and maintained Groovy scripts used by pipelines
• Managed EKS and Cloudflare at ingress using Terraform
• Deployed ECS clusters using Terraform
• Migrated Drupal PHP to Django Python
• Set up security scanning for code repositories and Jenkins pipelines/GitHub Actions
• Maintained PostgreSQL clusters, including making the existing cluster fault tolerant

Clinigen | DevOps Engineer (Contract) Dec 2021 - Aug 2022

• Created a plan and training documentation to migrate from SVN to Git (Bitbucket based) for multiple development partners and delivered multiple training sessions to developers
• Built CI/CD system based upon Jenkins on AWS
• Implemented deployment hooks to integrate a Jenkins pipeline with EBS deployment
• Created Prometheus monitoring backend and deployed targets for JVM/Oracle and AWS specifics
• Generated Grafana dashboards to display the metrics collated from Prometheus
• Wrote Ansible playbooks for complete service deployment coverage
• Built ETL system for internal HR administration utilising Apache Airflow

Sky UK | Senior DevOps Engineer (Contract) Oct 2020 - May 2021

• Conducted deployment of Video on Demand architecture from a US broadcaster to be built in EU
• Deployed multiple environments and regions in AWS, using Terraform/Puppet and Ansible
• Refactored existing Terraform code to work with newer versions and reduce code complexity
• Built scrapers for CloudWatch to ingest metrics into Prometheus
• Built visibility dashboards for ALBs/ELBs/EBS/RDS within Grafana
• Conducted security audits and increased overall estate security through encrypted AMIs, better logging, and key rotation
• Built registry servers for Docker container hosting
• Improved the CI/CD pipeline with quality gates for identifying bad practices and security vulnerable patterns in Terraform and Puppet code
• Added CVE scanning mechanisms and static analysis tools to the code pipelines

ESL Gaming | DevOps Engineer (Contract) Feb 2020 - Jun 2020

• Built multiple Kubernetes clusters for use within an eSports gaming prototype, whereby statistics from gameplay was aggregated, processed and consumed by various clients
• Created clients including a Twitch extension, VR/AR tiles overlay, and website widget
• Utilised GitLab’s CI/CD for all projects, allowing developers to create review environments from repository branches
• Created custom build pack for Elixir and Phoenix Framework which would automatically build an environment, package and deploy to a given environment
• Built pipelines to deploy a Twitch Extension, including full testing and integration within the Twitch ecosystem
• Deployed clusters using Google Cloud Platform via GKE
• Utilised Google’s CDN to create an event sourced pipeline with tick updates across the globe
• Managed Atlassian product stack (Jira and Confluence)
• Used Grafana with Prometheus to monitor the Kubernetes clusters and wrote custom collectors for application metrics

WSP | Engineering Lead / Solution Architect April 2018 – Aug 2019

• Built a full CI/CD system for Smart Consulting, transitioning from manual builds to automated and Docker-based builds for greater portability and consistency
• Managed AWS-based deployments for over 20 active projects
• Managed a wide range of applications, including Machine Learning for Flood Prediction and GIS based systems
• Built and maintained a Kubernetes based platform, enabling full self service and granular control for users to manage their own projects
• Deployed Serverless architecture via Serverless Framework on AWS Lambda for ChatOps integration and general management
• Utilised Kubernetes native workload types within legacy products
• Secured the Kubernetes stack and ran regular penetration testing
• Ensured cost-optimisation across the cluster, helping reduce cloud expenditure threefold
• Built an OpenShift cluster, utilising the latest Kubernetes tooling
• Made legacy systems more robust by adding redundancy, additional processes and gaining higher uptime
• Increased security through DevSecOps processes
• Wrote and published IT standards that were used across the company
• Introduced coding tools and standards for developers
• Prototyped against Azure Cloud and Google Cloud (GCP), including GCP course at Google Offices in London
• Used InfluxDB/Grafana/Telegraf to monitor infrastructure deployed into the cloud

Datacentred | Cloud Platform Engineer May 2016 – Oct 2017

• Managed and maintained a public cloud using OpenStack
• Part of G-Cloud government initiative, a marketplace designed to allow gov.uk customers access to UK based cloud providers
• Gained security clearance and screening for working with government clients
• Worked with high profile clients, such as HMRC, to improve the quality of service and performance of their cloud based applications
• Troubleshot and diagnosed issues with the deployment on OpenStack for Gigaspaces, a customer producing multi-cloud deployment software
• Met with stakeholders for large profile customers to improve the efficiency of their services
• Planned and executed an OpenStack upgrade whilst customers were still running on the platform
• Rolled out immutable infrastructure based containerisation of backend OpenStack services for greater consistency across nodes
• Attended KubeCon 2017 in Berlin for rolling out Kubernetes on OpenStack as a service for customers
• Managed an InfluxDB backed monitoring solution for gathering millions of datapoints from network, compute and storage systems
• Wrote a libvirt plugin for Telegraph, which gained extra insights into a hypervisor’s processes
• Created and collated Grafana Dashboards, integrated with SSO solution

BBC | Senior System Administrator Sept 2011 – Apr 2016

• Built and maintained R&D cloud platforms and a multi-site cluster using OpenNebula middleware with Ceph-based block storage and local SSD storage
• Integrated systems into BBC R&D’s authentication and core service backends
• Built a Packer based build pipeline for virtual machine image generation and Docker/LXC containers with Kitchen/ServerSpec/BATS test suite
• Delivered images for internal consumption and to 3rd party hardware/software manufacturers
• Created EC2 and S3 compatible endpoints attached to private cloud infrastructure
• Built and maintained continuous integration for internal software build, testing, software packaging, repository management and image creation using Jenkins
• Managed master and build slaves across varied build targets, distributions and architectures including i386/ amd64/armhf
• Developed and managed configuration management implementation for R&D using Puppet
• Managed full system bootstrap for generic developer systems, internal core services and highly specialised infrastructure such as IP Studio
• Developed a system management tool for end users to self-service and automatically configure their assets
• Wrote a CMDB system and several microservice APIs using Ruby’s Sinatra and Grape
• Provided consultancy work and advice to colleagues across R&D
• Spoke at conferences, including OpenNebula Berlin 2013
• Implemented new help-desk and monitoring system for R&D
• Acted as Network Controller, supported successful delivery of London 2012 Super Hi-Vision, Glastonbury 2013 Online streams, Radio Academy 2012/13/14, ‘Little Sun’ R&D/Tate-Modern collaboration platform, R&D Installation at Manchester MakerFaire
• Successfully completed in-role promotion
• Created a monitoring solution for the Commonwealth Games 2014 using InfluxDB and Grafana

Public Speaking

• Invited Speaker - OpenNebula, Berlin “Adventures In Research” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1bsHFrSaAk

Technical Skills

• Network Services: DHCP and DNS (BIND and Unbound), SMTP (exim, postfix & qmail) and IMAP/POP3 (courier and dovecot), HTTP (Apache with mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, passenger phusion), Nginx, Squid, NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, FC, LDAP (AD and OpenLDAP) and Radius (Freeradius), SNMP, SVN, git, Syslog (syslog-ng, rsyslog and logstash), Message Queues (ActiveMQ, ZeroMQ, RabbitMQ), Route53, API Gateway
• Server Management & Monitoring: FAI, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Foreman, MCollective, Fabric, Rundeck, Nagios, Sensu, OpenNMS, Cacti, Monit, Munin, cPanel, Telegraf, Prometheus, Grafana, Kibana
• Build Tools / CI: Terraform, Jenkins / Hudson, Packer, Drone, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Code Build, Code Deploy
• Database Technology: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Microsoft SQL 7.0 & 2000, ElasticSearch, MongoDB, ActiveRecord, DataMapper, RDS, Cloud Spanner, Google Cloud Database, InfluxDB, TimescaleDB, DynamoDB, Clickhouse
• Virtualisation/Cloud: KVM, VMware vSphere, VirtualBox, Vagrant, Docker, Rocket, OpenNebula, OpenStack, OpenShift, Ganeti, Proxmox, AWS – Amazon Web Services, GCP – Google Cloud, Azure, AWS Lambda, Serverless Framework, Kata Containers
• Container Management: Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, K3S, OpenShift (3 & 4), Rancher, RKE
• Unix: Linux (build, deployment of most major distributions – Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, SuSE), Solaris, FreeBSD, AWS Linux, CoreOS, Google Container Optimised Linux
• Security: IPTables, Firewall Setup, VPNs using OpenVPN, PPTP and IPSEC, IDS (Snort and OSSEC), Kernel Hardening (lsm, selinux, apparmor, grsecurity, pax) MAC/RBAC
• Scripting: Python, Perl, Ruby, Typescript, PHP, Bash, Java

Languages

• English (Native)
• French (GCSE - A*)
• Spanish (GCSE - A)