Major's CV

Professional Summary #

I love digging into problems that involve people, processes, and technology. When someone says “it can’t be done” or “it’s too complicated”, I jump at the opportunity (especially when it means learning something new in the process).

Once I learn something new, I write about it and teach as many people as I can. This blog started in 2007 and it covers a broad spectrum of topics from system administration to software development to personal career growth.

Skills #

• Software development: I spend most of my time writing Python and shell scripts.
• Systems engineering: I use Ansible, Terraform, and Packer to manage my cloud deployments and local systems at home. My monitoring setup includes Prometheus, Grafana, and various exporters that Prometheus scrapes.
• Networking: Most of my networking experience involves Linux-based routers and firewalls, but I frequently use Mikrotik RouterOS and EdgeRouter/VyOS devices. I maintain several Wireguard network links in addition to some Tailscale meshes. There’s still a little OpenVPN around, too.
• Open source contributions: I served on the Fedora Project Board from 2012-2014, participated in the OpenStack project, and I maintain lots of packages in Fedora. I launched the ansible-hardening project within OpenStack. You can find plenty of open source work over at GitHub. I built icanhazip.com and recently transferred ownership to Cloudflare.
• Leadership: My experience includes director-level roles responsible for budgets, people management, and mentoring. I love helping others find a way to level up in the technical capabilities and in their job role.

Work experience #

Red Hat (2018) #

I work at Red Hat now as a RHEL Cloud Architect. My main focus is to make the RHEL on cloud experience as good, if not better, than the on-premises experience.

In the past, I worked with the Image Builder team as we build a robust platform for building and deploying RHEL cloud images to various public clouds. Before that, I worked on the Continuous Kernel Integration team to provide CI/CD for the Linux kernel inside and outside of Red Hat.

Rackspace (2006-2018) #

I wore plenty of hats at Rackspace (and sometimes more than one at the same time):

• Chief Security Architect, Director
• Principal Architect - OpenStack
• Cloud Architect - Cloud Servers
• Linux Engineer, OpenStack
• Engineering Manager, Cloud Servers Operations
• Senior Systems Engineer
• Linux Systems Administrator

SecureTrust Corporation (2004-2006) #

SecureTrust Corporation now is a wholly owned subsidiary of TrustWave Holdings, Inc.

• VP of Operations
• Lead Developer

American Medical Response (2002-2003) #

• Field Medic / EMT

Education #

I earned a Bachelors of Science in Biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio in December 2004. 🤙🏻

Certifications #

I hold several industry certifications from GIAC and Red Hat.

GIAC #

• GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC)
• GIAC Certified UNIX Security Administrator (GCUX)¹
  • GIAC Gold Certification via Securing Linux Containers Gold Paper

Red Hat #

To verify my Red Hat certifications, visit my certification page.

• Red Hat Certified Engineer
• Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator
• Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation

I previously held more certifications from Red Hat, but these have expired:

• Red Hat Certified Architect Level II 💀
• Red Hat Certified Datacenter Specialist 💀
• Red Hat Certified Architect Level II 💀
• Red Hat Certified Datacenter Specialist 💀