Nathan Glover

AWS IoT/Community Hero

Passionate and empathetic Cloud Engineer with a strong background in AWS and DevOps.

Dedicated to empowering teams to deliver faster and more reliably.

Career

Senior Platform & Data Engineer II

July 2022 – Current
First Mode (Perth, Western Australia)

A member of the Data Platform team, I work across the organisation to help teams effectively move their data to our data lake. Our team implements proven and reliable data ingestion patterns modified to suit the needs of any team that wants to share data internally or externally. A strong focus on security and governance is baked into our designs - leveraging our strong AWS background; we have built a set of highly configurable ingestion patterns to help teams ship data fast and cheap!

Taking an empathetic approach with any teams we engage with, we always strive to meet teams where they are and help them get where they want to be.

Selected accomplishments:
  • High-standard or maintained documentation across all projects and systems I work on
  • Implementing Apache Iceberg as our data lake on AWS
  • Designed, built and maintained a high volume, high-frequency data ingestion and processing pipelines
  • Self-service patterns for the creation and distribution of shared terraform modules across our organisation
  • Built our internal least privilege library so that teams can build quickly without compromising on security
Technical competencies: Amazon Athena Glue Lambda SQS EventBridge Step Functions S3 Hive Apache Iceberg Terraform

Platform Engineer

April 2021 – July 2022
First Mode (Perth, Western Australia)

"IT for Developers" - My role at First Mode was to support any and all developer needs and make sure that they always have the best tools and infrastructure to do their work effectively. I worked remotely to support our Seattle, South African and UK developers and removing any technical blockers they may have.

Developing vetted and tested patterns in the form of Ansible playbooks, CloudFormation templates and highly detailed user-guides was a key part of my role. I was responsible for First Mode's global Cloud networking project that brought together our offices digitally and allowed us to work more effectively as a distributed team.

Selected accomplishments:
  • Designed our companies global networking architecture via AWS Transit Gateway and Site-to-site links at each point of presence
  • Built tooling to improve developer experience across internal and customer-facing projects
  • Created an AWS account vending process with secure governance and user onboarding
  • "IT for Developers" - Supported any and all developer needs with respect to AWS, Azure and on-premises infrastructure
  • Designed the CI/CD for Ansible playbooks that reliably and frequently pushed changes to vehicle systems
  • Ansible playbooks for provisioning of RHEL development servers equipped to support Xilinx/Vivado development for 20+ developers
Technical competencies: AWS ECS CodeBuild Kubernetes Podman / Docker RHEL Transit Gateway Ansible Governance

Senior DevOps Consultant

March 2019 – March 2021
Mechanical Rock (Perth, Western Australia)

As a Senior DevOps consultant, I passionately work with customers around Perth and help guide them on their cloud journeys. With customer value in mind, we utilise modern methodologies such as Continuous Delivery, Infrastructure-as-code and behaviour-driven development to accelerate teams to the next level.

Selected accomplishments:
  • Qualified and have run several AWS Well-Architected reviews for production workloads.
  • Architecting & implementing numerous AWS & GCP projects
  • Communicate closely with businesses and ensure we deliver exactly what they need.
  • Mentoring clients and bringing everyone along for the journey during development
  • End-to-end Infrastructure-as-Code to encourage faster and more frequent deployments to production
Technical competencies: AWS GCP Kubernetes DevOps Test-driven development Infrastructure-as-Code

Hardware Systems Design & Development SME

August 2017 – March 2019
BHP (Perth, Western Australia)

Working as an energetic member of the Digital Tribe, I work with a variety of people with a diverse backgrounds on big problems as we drive a Digital Transformation within the Decision automation space. More recently I've moved into a DevOp support role where I ensure that Cloud deployments for various services are standardized and automated (using tools like CloudFormation and Terraform).

Selected accomplishments:
  • Accustomed to an agile deliver, and adding value through software and hardware sprints
  • Embedded software and hardware design and implementation
  • Continuous integration across infrustructure and software pipelines.
  • AWS orchastration of developer workflows through the targeted usage of AWS Cloudformation & Terraform.
Technical competencies: Cloudformation CodeBuild / GoCD Docker Kubernetes ReactJS Springboot

Software/Network Engineer (Intern)

February 2017 – August 2017
Cisco IoE Innovation Centre (Perth, Western Australia)

Worked as a motivated team member on Software/Network engineering projects exposing myself to the design process of platforms and systems in the emerging IoT space. I worked alongside a team of developers and on a number of software and hardware development projects.

Selected accomplishments:
  • Design dynamic and flexible frontends with Python web frameworks (Flask & Django).
  • Network hardware design and configuration.
  • Container deployment and management on a broad range of architectures.
  • Mobile application development using typical package/build management methods (Gradle, Maven)
  • Concise workflow documentation
Technical competencies: Python Flask Javascript / Bootstrap Cisco IOS RPi / IoT Docker Jenkins Nagios

Network and System Administrator

December 2014 – November 2016
Galati Group (Perth, Western Australia)

Worked as part of a motivated IT Team, servicing and managing 15+ sites across WA. Regular tasks included maintaining backup systems, improving DR solutions, researching and investigating new technologies and managing a variety of server platforms and POS systems. I worked directly on a number of Infrastructure projects that had me assist in the design and implementation of a large upgrade to our existing core business systems. I managed the majority of service request that came through that requiring changes to be made to our virtualization platform and storage cluster.

Selected accomplishments:
  • Administration and Installation of 300+ Windows Desktop/Server based systems.
  • Thorough documentation of new and current hardware and software processes.
  • Experienced at dealing with users on a daily basis for any IT needs.
  • POS and EFTPOS installation and management.
  • ESXi / vCenter implementation and servicing.
  • Veeam & ShadowProtect backup scheduling & maintainence.
  • Managing and Administering project documentation.
  • Task automation when applicable.
  • Responsible for upgrading and managing our support desks ticketing system.
Technical competencies: ESXi / vCenter Redmine Veeam / ShadowProtect N-able PC-EFTPOS

Support Technician

November 2012 – November 2014
Command IT (Perth, Western Australia)

Design, configure, install and support Networking and Server solutions to a number of Small/Medium businesses across Perth and The Pilbara Region both Remotely and on site. I task myself to troubleshoot, diagnose and resolve any issues that our customers might be having. My role requires me to work and solve issues independently; but also offer my skills and knowledge to the other Technicians in my team.

Selected accomplishments:
  • Documentation (Work Instructions, Network topology Diagrams).
  • Monitoring and site management for over 70 businesses across Western Australia through SolarWinds N-able Technologies.
  • Proper phone etiquette and strong relationships with my clients.
  • Design and implementation of Server 2008/2012 solutions in offices ranging from 5-70 users.
  • Implementation of Visualized Server solutions.
  • Experience with a range of Netgear solutions including UTM's, ReadyNAS/Data, WAP's and Switching.
Technical competencies: Hyper-V ShadowProtect N-able SMB Architecture

Technical skills

Cloud & DevOps

AWS Cloud
Kubernetes & Docker
CI/CD Pipelines/Patterns
Terraform & Infrastructure as Code

Programming Languages

Python
Java
Typescript

Data & Analytics

Apache Iceberg
Data Warehousing
dbt

Key competencies:

  • Cloud Architecture: Design and implementation of scalable and secure cloud infrastructure
  • DevOps Practices: Implementing efficient development pipelines and automation
  • Data Engineering: Building and managing data pipelines, data lakes, and analytics platforms
  • Programming: Proficient in Python, Java, and Typescript for backend development and automation scripts

Side Projects

DevOpStar

https://devopstar.com/
Primary blogging platform where I write about my experiences with AWS, DevOps and Cloud Engineering.

Hand Map

https://handmap.github.io/
Github pages site that I use to blog on while I progress through my final year University project on 3D hand scan/mapping.

Serverless Apps for Social Good 2018

https://devpost.com/software/traffic-cop
WiFi Beacon & Client sniffing pipeline for analysing the movements of Human Traffickers.

Smackathon 2018

https://devpost.com/software/stubber
Digitally traceable ticket sales on the Ethereum blockchain. I was a finalist and pitched my solution to a number of high profile judges in Miami (Armando Christian Pérez; aka Pitbull)

AWS IoT App Challenge 2017

https://devpost.com/software/aws-iot-hackathon
MediSense is a Software/Hardware hybrid, that aims to make medical research highly affordable and available to anyone.

Education

Bachelor of Technology

Computer Systems and Networking (2014 – 2017)
http://www.curtin.edu.au/, Curtin University

Diploma of IT

Networking (2011 – 2012)
https://central.wa.edu.au, eCentral Tafe

Certification

AWS Certified Developer - Associate

AWS Certified Developer - Associate (2019 – 2022)
Verification Number: C62D1Q31JJF1QNWV

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (2020 – 2023)
Verification Number: DQWD3YD2P2F41BSB

AWS Certified Security - Specialty

AWS Certified Security - Specialty (2020 – 2023)
Verification Number: WHV0CPF1P1Q1Q1C8

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) (2020)
Verification Number: CKA-2000-007504-0100