Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2023)

The DevOps Guru - Consulting, Training, Mentoring

I design & build anti-fragile, reliable sysadmin / SRE/ DevOps stuff; anything from Python monitoring scripts to cloud-based infrastructure design and implementations.

I usually work with customers who have urgent operational needs that require an immediate short-term (1-5 days) engagement.

I also provide mentoring and training services for clients who want to productionalise their DevOps implementations to achieve better reliability, stability, scalability and automation of their projects.

My expertise is based on 30 years of hands-on technical experience in all areas of IT, but particularly in architecting, building and managing data-driven enterprise platforms.

Recent examples of my work:

  - Organisational-level DevOps tooling and security implementations
  - Global Azure infrastructure deployment, management and security (Terraform, DevOps, KMS, AppGw)
  - Python-based SRE scripting for monitoring custom federated clusters using Consul, Vault, Nomad
  - Productionalising Kafka and Confluent clusters (SSL, SASL, ACLs, Debezium)
  - Tracking down performance bottlenecks in Elasticsearch and Solr
  - Stabilisation of complex Java-based containerised applications
  - Validation of greenfield project designs
  - Single-pane-of-glass dashboard design in Datadog, Splunk and Azure
  - Deploying a global, multi-cloud, Kubernetes-based PaaS (AWS and Azure)

You can find out more or get in touch here: https://www.nonstopops.io/?sid=hnf2302

Portfolio: https://www.seanw.org/

Location: Edinburgh, UK and remote (I’m used to time zone differences and async work)

Email: sw@seanw.org

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I help startups with the UX/UI and web design of their products. This includes web apps, websites, landing pages, screenshots and copywriting, and I can assist with some frontend development where needed. My background as a startup founder and full stack developer helps me create practical design solutions that balance usability, aesthetics, development effort and performance. I work to fixed price quotes when projects are self-contained.

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The best live example of my work is Checkbot (https://www.checkbot.io/), a browser extension that tests websites for SEO, speed and performance problems. The entire project is my own work including coding the extension itself, UX/UI design, website design (the homepage is optimised to load in 0.7 seconds, 0.3MB data transferred), website copy, and website articles on web best practices.

[ Rated 4.9/5, 50K+ active users, 100s of paying subscribers ]

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I have 10+ years of experience, including a PhD in software verification and 5+ years working for myself helping over 20 companies including Just Eat, Triumph Motorcycles and Fogbender (YC W22). See my website for testimonials, portfolio and more:

https://www.seanw.org

Skills: Figma, Sketch, TypeScript, JavaScript, Vue, Hugo, Jekyll, WordPress, HTML/CSS, Bootstrap, Tailwind, OCaml, Java, Python, C, analytics, website SEO and speed optimisation.

Note: For larger projects, I usually have my partner assist alongside me in the background (I’m working towards starting a design studio with her in the future).

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Email sw@seanw.org with a short description of 1) your project 2) how you think I can help 3) the business outcome you’re looking for and 4) any deadlines. I can get back to you within one working day to arrange a call to discuss a quote and how we can work together.

I am a backend expert, having built and maintained highly available systems for several companies over the last 5 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience.

The ideal engagement at this point would be with a firm that expects to need team-level help and wants to try me out as the lead for that on a smaller initial project.

You will like working with me because I:

* hold your goals as my priorities

* communicate verbosely yet synthesize well

* my rates are reasonable in exchange for the value I deliver

* I guarantee I will get the job done

Concrete examples:

* built realtime stats and the enterprise-wide developer portal for one of the top 3 major US sports leagues (golang/pyspark/docker/azure/kafka)

* portfolio management process replatforming for a midsize hedge fund (bespoke->dockerized python aws lambda architecture)

* built a ~50 node, Dockerized, Terraform-deployed distributed system to provide realtime, transformed trade data from crypto exchanges to a Kafka pipeline and data lake (fodder for an analytics platform). Met 5000msec SLA across arbitrarily many exchanges and ticker symbols. Blue-green deployment for complete CICD safety. Cloudwatch metrics proved SLA was met and provided general system oversight.

* built a framework to collapse dozens of singleton ETL programs into one config-driven, simple C# application performing the same functionality at ~80% reduction in maintenance cost year over year.

* built and managed a team of 8 engineers operating against multiple streams of work to meet business needs, with ~12 active projects at a time.

Contact: jon.north@adiuvat-consulting.com More: www.adiuvat-consulting.com

Keywords: Python, C++, SQL, NoSQL, Go, Golang, Git, SVN, Subversion, Linux, Bash, Windows, Kafka, Terraform, AWS, Docker, Redis, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, LDAP, Active Directory, OAuth2