Chris Funderburg
Principal DevOps Engineer / Cloud Architect
About
I'm a senior technologist helping companies around the globe build enterprise grade solutions using AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure public clouds. I specialise in Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, DevSecOps, and reusable infrastructure components.
I'm currently only seeking contract / consulting opportunities.
✔ AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure Certified Engineer / Architect.✔ DevSecOps Practitioner.
✔ Senior Linux/Unix Administrator.
✔ Terraform and Ansible Expert.
✔ Experienced with Kubernetes.
Work Experience
September 2017 – Present (5 years)
Director / Freelance DevSecOps Engineer
At Cloud Cauldron® we specialise in DevSecOps best practice at scale. Specifically, building enterprise-grade infrastructure and software delivery pipelines with code - particularly using Terraform and Ansible on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure; and Helm on EKS, GKE, and AKS
Specialising In
- Cloud Infrastructure, Pipelines, and Security as code.
- Cloud migration and adoption.
- Docker, Kubernetes, and other container platforms.
- Microservices and architectural evolution.
- Observability (logging, metrics, events, tooling, etc).
- AWS Lambda and serverless.
- Site reliability engineering and Operational support.
- Database Administration.
October 2023 – Current
Consultant Platform Engineer
Working with a third-party consultancy, I'm responsible for ensuring Element receives a new platform that's both supportable, sustainable, and that fulfils their business requirements. This means that I'll be sure to provide a platform as a product, using best-practice DevSecOps engineering techniques, industry standard tooling, security and observability by design, and strong agile planning.
April 2023 – October 2023
Lead Platform Engineer, Containers Team
At Tesco Bank I was the (hands-on) technical lead (and product owner) for the Containers team. We supported various other banking groups as tenants, allowing them to provision their applications within a secure and resilient environment.
September 2022 – January 2023
Consultant Cloud Architect
I worked with Pitchup to improve resilience in their Kubernetes application platform and Cloud SQL Postgres databases. It was mostly Kubernetes (via Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)), Helm, Gitlab CI/CD, and Terraform work.
September 2021 – September 2022 (1 year exactly)
Senior DevOps Engineer
I worked with Deko to improve, rationalise, document, secure, and lower costs around their legacy DevOps technology stack, and also building a next generation environment framework to take them into the future. It's mostly Kubernetes (via AWS EKS), Helm, Jenkins, ArgoCD, Ansible, and Terraform work.
Global Payments - via Amazon Professional Services
March 2021 – September 2021 (6 months)
Senior Consultant DevOps Architect
Through AWS Professional Services, I worked on a massive cloud migration project for Global Payments. We were building the observability stack: consisting of InfluxDB, Prometheus, Thanos, and Grafana - all on top of AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), using Helm charts (some wrapped with Terraform) and deployed via ArgoCD.
Deutsche Bank
September 2020 – March 2021 (6 months)
DevOps Lead
At Deutsche Bank, I found myself the sole DevOps engineer of a large development team, working in an Openshift Kubernetes environment and tasked with:
Highlights
- Standardising the build process and enforcing Sonarqube scanning via the pipelines.
- Creating CI/CD pipelines on Jenkins for Maven and Gradle based java microservices.
- Advising on DevSecOps best practice.
Tide
September 2019 – June 2020 (9 months)
Senior DevSecOps Engineer
Worked on a project to:
- • Migrate all java spring micro-services from Docker Swarm into AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS).
- • Migrate the Jenkins CI/CD pipelines to fully utilise homogenised Bitbucket Pipelines.
- • Architect and build a fully end-to-end encrypted API Gateway for Tide's banking providers that stores incoming data in SQS queues for processing by microservices.
nubeGO
June 2019 – September 2019 (3 months)
Senior Cloud Consultant
Working with nubeGO consultancy as a cloud consultant, I completed a three month project to develop a Terraform Framework for providing best practice account structure for new clients along with a bit of Terraform 0.12 conversion.
HSBC
February 2019 – June 2019 (4 months)
Senior Cloud Consultant
A 5 month project with HSBC bank, organised by Google. This time as DevSecOps Lead where I was a team lead of three devops engineers - and also getting hands-on building CI/CD and compliance tooling with Terraform and Ansible talking to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) API.
TSB Bank
January 2019 – February 2019 (6 weeks)
Senior Cloud Consultant
This was a brief 6 week project for TSB specifically providing both cloud architectural best-practice and hands-on engineering assistance in building native cloud infrastructure with Terraform and Ansible on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
PrePay Solutions
November 2017 – January 2019 (around 1 year)
Cloud Systems Architect
As an AWS cloud expert in the DevSecOps / Infrastructure team, I was responsible for architecting, developing, and deploying all cloud-based infrastructure in a PCI DSS compliant work environment using Terraform and Bitbucket pipelines. I also had the opportunity to build and architect an amount of on-site containerised architecture using Docker Swarm – monitored by both Nagios and Prometheus and an ELK stack for the Development team.
Friday Labs
September 2017 – August 2018 (11 months)
Cloud Engineer
At Friday I developed and supported an Infrastructure as Code solution using Ansible and Bitbucket to automate the deployment of resources to AWS. I was responsible for the deployment of new website code with Elastic Beanstalk and I both designed and implemented a monitoring system using Cloudwatch, Prometheus, and Grafana.
Cognito iQ
May 2011 – November 2017 (over 6 years)
Senior Cloud Architect
Automating the server provisioning process to reduce the labour of our networking engineering and data centre operations teams. Using Amazon Web Services and various tooling such as Jenkins, we push a button, a new server comes in, it walks itself through all aspects of provisioning to join the fleet without any human involvement. I was also deeply involved in both the ISO9001 and ISO27001 preparation and subsequent successful certification. (Technologies: Terraform, Puppet, Ansible, Packer, and Jenkins)
Volunteer
The Druid Network
June 2008 – Present
Charity Trustee, Webmaster
The Druid Network is a registered charity in England and Wales (1138265) and I'm one of the volunteer trustees that run the day to day operations. I'm also the webmaster for the WordPress powered public site and ELGG powered private user forum.
Highlights
- Support and administer volunteer's email through Google services.
- Developed and maintain various membership databases in MySQL.
- Maintain public security hardening practices for our Ubuntu web server.
- Installed, customised, and supports WordPress based public website.
- Installed, customised, and supports an ELGG based social network.
Contact
Newbury
United Kingdom
+44 (0)7778 501102
Education
-
2020
The Open University
BSc (Honours) Environmental Management and Technology
Courses- Renewable energy (T313)
- Environmental management 2 (T319)
- Innovation: designing for change (T317)
- Environment: sharing a dynamic planet (DST206)
- Environmental management 1 (T219)
- Energy and sustainability (T213)
- Exploring science (S104)
-
2013
The Open University
Certificate of Higher Education in Social Sciences
Courses- Introducing the social sciences - part two (DD132)
- Introducing the social sciences - part one (DD131)
- Environment: journeys through a changing world (U116)
-
1991 1992
Texas State Technical College
Informational Technology
Skills
Cloud Computing
Expert
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Microsoft Azure
Infrastructure as Code
Expert
Terraform
OpenTofu
Ansible
Helm
Kustomize
Container Orchestration
Very Proficient
Docker Compose
Docker Swarm
Kubernetes
Continuous Integration
Very Proficient
Gitlab CI
GitHub Actions
Jenkins
Git Hooks
Bitbucke
Continuous Deliver / Deployment
Very Proficient
GitOps
ArgoCD
FluxCD
Software Engineering
Very Proficient
Agile
Unit Testing
End-to-End Testing
Code Coverage Scanning
Dependency Scanning
Architecture
Access Controls
Documentation
Database Administration
Very Proficient
PostgreSQL
MySQL
Sqlite
Informix
Redis
Memcache
Applied Cryptography
Proficient
E2E Encryption
GnuPG
Yubico
PKCS#11
System Administration
Expert
Linux
Alpine
CoreOS
Debian
RedHat
Solaris
AIX
Nginx
Apache
RabbitMQ
haproxy
SystemD
Scripting
Expert
Bash
Zsh
Make
Awk
Sed
Curl
Jq
Language Experience
Varied
Python
CSS
HTML
Go
PHP
Java Spring
Perl
C
Compliance
Moderate
ISO 27001
PCI
Interests
Environmental Management
Sustainable Energy
Biodiversity
Sustainability
Environmental protection
Integrated landscape management
Natural resource management
Fisheries, Forest, and Waste management
Digital Sovereignty
Self Hosting
Decentralisation
Federation
Learning
Hackerspaces
Workshops
Mentoring
Documentation
Homesteading
Allotment Gardening
Hydroponics
Homebrew
Beekeeping
Engineering
Raspberry Pi Clusters
Open Source
Audio
Electronics
Mechanical
References
Chris is one of the most inspiring tech guys I have met! Also he is a natural Developer Advocate and really cares for his colleagues and for the community. He is also a master tennis player with JIRA tickets and developer requests in Slack. However he really helps in tasks when we need to design something and make a smart tech plan. He always has teaching stories from his decades of tech experience and adventures. Working and striving with him has been inspiring and fun.
I've worked with Chris for about 8 months in CognitoiQ when was the inceptions of the Cloud Team. He helped me to shape the team, but also he played a really important place in the team. He was the Sr. resource I had by that time and took the big task of embedding himself onto the Support Team, making them change the way they've been working for ages, playing as a role model for that team. He helped the team understand the message I was proposing. For this and many more, I think Chris is a must have resource for any company thinking on moving or supporting cloud technologies.I've worked with Chris for about 8 months in CognitoiQ when was the inceptions of the Cloud Team. He helped me to shape the team, but also he played a really important place in the team. He was the Sr. resource I had by that time and took the big task of embedding himself onto the Support Team, making them change the way they've been working for ages, playing as a role model for that team. He helped the team understand the message I was proposing. For this and many more, I think Chris is a must have resource for any company thinking on moving or supporting cloud technologies.
Chris has been both a fantastic manager as well as a great mentor. As a manager he successfully lead our team, was a great source for system administration knowledge as well as being a hoot to be around. I found Chris to be extremely dependable and at no point did I not feel supported. It would be very hard to find a manager of that calibre.
I had the pleasure of working with Chris whilst he was the manger of Infrastructure. He was always willing to assist and share is vast knowledge regardless of the pressure he was under at the time. A diligent colleague and one I heartily recommend.
I have worked with Chris Funderburg for over two years. Chris has unrivalled technical expertise and works diligently and tirelessly to resolve issues. He is a great technical resource. Chris should be one of your first recruits when building a technical team. He is dedicated to growing his technical knowledge and skills. He works hard to design and create the 'proper' solution. He enjoys leading and inspiring his team to evolve and deliver results.
Chris never lost sight of business requirements whilst ensuring his team were fully supported and au fait with their objectives and personal development goals. In summary Chris is a manager who can cope with whatever is thrown at him. I worked for Chris for just over a year. Chris is consistently efficient, well organised and very supportive. Overall a very good manager who always backed his staff 100%.
"Chris is a very analytical person, looking at problems and always eager to turn them into solutions. It was never the problem that Chris looked at, he always tried to resolve the root issue - and on numerous occasions attacked them head on. The best way to ensure that a problem didn’t resurrect itself was to tackle the root cause. I gladly recommend Chris to anyone."