Author Image

Hi, I am Billy

Billy McChristian

Linux Systems Engineer / DevOps Engineer

I am a well-rounded Linux systems engineer and DevOps engineer with 20+ years of experience in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. I also have many years of experience migrating infrastructure and applications to cloud environments. My education was in a software engineering program in the late 90s and early 2000s but, before completing that degree I started down the Linux administration path. I progressed through admininstration to engineering roles with several security and big data roles along the way. My roles the past 5 years have been mainly DevOps focused, AWS, AZURE, Ansible, Terraform, and Jenkins specifically.

Experience
Diverse Skillset
Leadership

Skills

Linux
Linux

Linux administrator and systems engineer for more than 20 years. Managed bare metal, virtual, and cloud servers in environments of several hundred to tens of thousands of servers. Comfortable writing large, complex shell scripts in Bash and Korn shells.

DevOps
DevOps

5 plus years of experience with modern DevOps methodologies and years more automating server deployments, patching, and apllication deployments. Experience with tools, Jenkins(Hudson), Maven, Bamboo, Artifactory, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Terraform, Vagrant, Packer, GitHub, GitLab, Gitlab Runner, BitBucket, Azure Devops.

Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing

Years of Experience with all three of the major cloud platfortms, AWS, GCP, and Azure. I have experience building infrastructure from scratch, maintaining and expanding large environments, and migrating from physical to cloud and migrating from one cloud platform to another. Years of experience per vendor: AWS 6 years, Azure 5 years, GCP 2 years

Docker
Docker

Experience containerizing applications and supporting Docker environments. Training in Docker and Rancher.

Git
Git

10 years of experience with git use for source control. Mostly, use Github but also, have experience in working with GitLab, BitBucket, and Stash.

Coding
Coding

University major in Software Engineering (1998-2000), working in Visual Basic, Java, C++, Javascript, VBScript, Perl. Years of experience using bash and korn shell scripting for automation, monitoring, logging, and managing servers. Have some experience in Powershell, Python, Ruby, Rust as well. I have used each of them to some extent in my carrer.

Experiences

1
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
Wendy's (Contract)

Mar 2024 - Present, Remote

Working several projects, Splunk architecture and deployment, cloud infrastructure, remote OS updates.

Responsibilities:
  • Design, deploy, and implement Splunk infrastructure
  • Creating Splunk dashboards/monitoring
  • Remote OS update, Centos 7.0 to Rocky Linux 9.0
  • Redesign/deployment of cloud infrastructure
  • Updating/maintaining legacy infrastructure
Systems Engineer 4
PNC Bank (Contract)

Oct 2022 - Sept 2023, Remote

Worked in the enterprise Ansible group, supporting Ansible AWX instances company wide

Responsibilities:
  • Enterprise Ansible team supporting Ansible (AWX) deployments, operations, and training
  • Creating/Maintaining Ansible playbooks
  • RHEL 7/8, Ansible, AWX, Docker, OpenShift, PostgreSQL, Jenkins
2
3
Senior Devops Engineer
Orion Advisors (Contract)

March 2022 - June 2022, Remote

Project based work, migrating legacy applications physical and virtual to Azure

Responsibilities:
  • Projects migrating legacy applications to AWS using Terraform/Azure DevOps pipeline
  • AWS, Terraform, Windows Server 2016, Azure DevOps, git, Docker
Software Developer/DevOps Engineer
Acxiom (Contract)

Sept 2021 - Jan 2022, Remote

Project based work, bringing VMware environment into complaiance and migrating applications to AWS

Responsibilities:
  • Project to bring legacy VMware environment into compliance
  • Project to migrate several legacy apps from VMware to AWS
  • AWS, VMWare, Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, Stash
4
5
Senior DevOps Engineer
Arizona State University

Aug 2020 - Sept 2021, Hybrid (Tempe, AZ / Remote)

DevOps group supporting server and application pipelines in AWS. Participated in several migration projects and building net new infrastructure in GCP

Responsibilities:
  • Supported cloud infrastructure AWS, GCP, Patching
  • Created new, maintained existing, CD pipelines
  • Supported GCP migration for Vulcan project, university research project to monitor coral reefs worldwide
  • AWS, GCP, Terraform, Ansible, AWS Linux, Red Hat 6.x, 7.x, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub, Splunk
Senior Devops Engineer
AMPS

May 2020 - Aug 2020, Hybrid (Phoenix, AZ / Remote)

Project based work, completing build out of Azure Kubernetes cluster

Responsibilities:
  • Projects migrating legacy applications to AWS using Terraform/Azure DevOps pipeline
  • AWS, Terraform, Windows Server 2016, Azure DevOps, git, Docker
6
7
Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer
CGI (Contract)

Nov 2019 - May 2020, Hybrid (Tempe, AZ / Remote)

Responsibilities:
  • Supporting existing client cloud environments and CD/CI pipelines
  • Migrating client applications to AWS, building and supporting new pipelines
  • AWS, Azure, VMWare, Salt, Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, Rancher, SumoLogic
Principal Systems Engineer
Honeywell Aerospace (Contract)

Feb 2019 - Nov 2010, Tempe, AZ

Project based work, assisting teams with automation and compliance, Oracle RAC to Oracle ExaCC migration

Responsibilities:
  • Automated ISO creation of RHEL 7.x, automated Nagios monitoring additions, deletions, disabling
  • Created hardened Vagrant box from standard RHEL ISO for testing purposes, used by multiple teams
  • Linux SME for Oracle migration project, from individual physical servers to Exacc clusters, 8x8x2
  • Red Hat 7.5-8.0, Ubuntu 18.10, Git, GitLFS, GitLab CE, Packer, Vagrant, Chef, Ruby, Oracle ExaCC
8

Education

University of Advancing Technology
1998-2000
Software Engineering
CGPA: 3.4 out of 4
Ozark High School
1993
Diploma
CGPA: 3.6 out of 4