Michael Olson | Infrastructure Engineer
Cloud Architecture • Automation • Infrastructure • Distributed Systems
About Me
Infrastructure engineer with 3 years of experience focused on automation, platform reliability, and scalable systems design. I enjoy reducing operational complexity, improving system resilience, and building tooling that helps engineering teams work more efficiently.
Technical Skills
Solution Architecture
Infrastructure as Code
Automation
Container Orchestration
Network Engineering
Incident Response
Solution Architecture
- Certified AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (Expiration Date: September 2025)
- Provided a solution for Strimzi Kafka supporting certificate chain of trust, integrating TLS with FreeIPA, Cert-Manager, and Kafka.
- Managed the build-out and configuration of a test system consisting of 2 RHEL hypervisors, 12 Rocky Linux VMs, replicated DNS and NTP, RPM repos, Cisco switch configuration for 3 VLANs, troubleshot FPGA issues at the operating system level.
- Documented, produced and maintained the full build-out of a test-bed for developers consisting of rke2, Rancher (Fleet), Cert-Manager, Trident, Helm and FreeIPA on Rocky Linux hosts; onboarded and delegated tasks to 5 team members.
- Configured and Deployed CI/CD pipelines for my personal blog and portfolio, utilized CircleCI AWS orb to automatically push updates to S3 buckets.
- Developed a project which consisted of a Wails desktop application, authentication via AWS API Gateway and AWS Cognito, MongoDB Atlas for storage, and AWS Lambda for serverless queries to MongoDB Atlas.
- Developed a feature in Django and React.js that would fetch user’s profile pictures from Azure REST API and display them on the dashboard when the user was logged in.
Infrastructure as Code
- Automated Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
- Developed Ansible roles for automating tasks, such as installation/configuration of in-house software and creating compute profiles for Foreman incorporating hashing values to generate names and reduce duplicate profiles.
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Configured, documented and automated the process of connecting 2 servers via Wireguard over the internet through a bastion host.
Automation
- Automated Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
- Developed Ansible roles for automating tasks, such as installation/configuration of in-house software and creating compute profiles for Foreman incorporating hashing values to generate names and reduce duplicate profiles.
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Configured and Deployed CI/CD pipelines for my personal blog and portfolio, utilized CircleCI AWS orb to automatically push updates to S3 buckets.
- Developed and implemented a Python utility leveraging AWS S3 APIs, regex-based filename parsing, and date-range analysis to detect missing weekday data artifacts while excluding non-business days across 1000's of S3 objects.
- Developed a Python utility that would connect to hypervisors and gather VM metadata, format the data into tables and post it to a Confluence page, reducing toil for engineers when looking for what servers their VMs are physically running on.
- Configured an Ansible role capable of configuring a host to act as a collector for IPFIX protocol, granting the user a lot of flexibility including log rotation and the ability to run a service capable of outputting that data to be viewed via a metrics dashboard.
Container Orchestration
- Automating Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
- Deployed, maintained and troubleshot Kubernetes clusters for development teams, including FIPS-compliant rke2 and k3s deployments.
- Documented, produced and maintained the full build-out of a test-bed for developers consisting of rke2, Rancher (Fleet), Cert-Manager, Trident, Helm and FreeIPA on Rocky Linux hosts; onboarded and delegated tasks to 5 team members.
- Provided a solution for Strimzi Kafka supporting certificate chain of trust, integrating TLS with FreeIPA, Cert-Manager, and Kafka.
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Developed a Python utility that would connect to hypervisors and gather VM metadata, format the data into tables and post it to a Confluence page, reducing toil for engineers when looking for what servers their VMs are physically running on.
Network Engineering
- Managed the build-out and configuration of a test system consisting of 2 RHEL hypervisors, 12 Rocky Linux VMs, replicated DNS and NTP, RPM repos, Cisco switch configuration for 3 VLANs, troubleshot FPGA issues at the operating system level.
- Designated maintainer of the on-site lab network; consisting of onboarding team members, troubleshooting network issues, deploying Rocky Linux and Windows 10 VMs, creating and documenting processes for consistency, installing and configuring Cisco switches and Dell servers, on call due to lab overheating issues.
- Configured an Ansible role capable of configuring a host to act as a collector for IPFIX protocol, granting the user a lot of flexibility including log rotation and the ability to run a service capable of outputting that data to be viewed via a metrics dashboard.
- Configured, documented and automated the process of connecting 2 servers via Wireguard over the internet through a bastion host.
Incident Response
- Monitored production systems during critical operating hours and documented post-incident root causes, failures, and resolutions.
- Managed the build-out and configuration of a test system consisting of 2 RHEL hypervisors, 12 Rocky Linux VMs, replicated DNS and NTP, RPM repos, Cisco switch configuration for 3 VLANs, troubleshot FPGA issues at the operating system level.
- Designated maintainer of the on-site lab network; consisting of onboarding team members, troubleshooting network issues, deploying Rocky Linux and Windows 10 VMs, creating and documenting processes for consistency, installing and configuring Cisco switches and Dell servers, on call due to lab overheating issues.
Tools
AWS
Terraform
Kubernetes
Ansible
Rancher
Helm
Linux
Python
Libvirt
AWS
- Certified AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (Expiration Date: September 2025)
- Developed a project which consisted of a Wails desktop application, authentication via AWS API Gateway and AWS Cognito, MongoDB Atlas for storage, and AWS Lambda for serverless queries to MongoDB Atlas.
- Configured and Deployed CI/CD pipelines for my personal blog and portfolio, utilized CircleCI AWS orb to automatically push updates to S3 buckets.
- Developed and implemented a Python utility leveraging AWS S3 APIs, regex-based filename parsing, and date-range analysis to detect missing weekday data artifacts while excluding non-business days across 1000's of S3 objects.
Terraform
- Automated Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
Kubernetes
- Provided a solution for Strimzi Kafka supporting certificate chain of trust, integrating TLS with FreeIPA, Cert-Manager, and Kafka.
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Documented, produced and maintained the full build-out of a test-bed for developers consisting of rke2, Rancher (Fleet), Cert-Manager, Trident, Helm and FreeIPA on Rocky Linux hosts; onboarded and delegated tasks to 5 team members.
Ansible
- Automated Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
- Developed Ansible roles for automating tasks, such as installation/configuration of in-house software and creating compute profiles for Foreman incorporating hashing values to generate names and reduce duplicate profiles.
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Configured, documented and automated the process of connecting 2 servers via Wireguard over the internet through a bastion host.
Rancher
- Documented, produced and maintained the full build-out of a test-bed for developers consisting of rke2, Rancher (Fleet), Cert-Manager, Trident, Helm and FreeIPA on Rocky Linux hosts; onboarded and delegated tasks to 5 team members.
Helm
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Provided a solution for Strimzi Kafka supporting certificate chain of trust, integrating TLS with FreeIPA, Cert-Manager, and Kafka.
- Documented, produced and maintained the full build-out of a test-bed for developers consisting of rke2, Rancher (Fleet), Cert-Manager, Trident, Helm and FreeIPA on Rocky Linux hosts; onboarded and delegated tasks to 5 team members.
Linux
- 4 years experience daily Linux usage on personal devices, 2 years experience performing administrative functions in a company environment.
- Automating Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
- Configured, documented and automated the process of connecting 2 servers via Wireguard over the internet through a bastion host.
- Managed the build-out and configuration of a test system consisting of 2 RHEL hypervisors, 12 Rocky Linux VMs, replicated DNS and NTP, RPM repos, Cisco switch configuration for 3 VLANs, troubleshot FPGA issues at the operating system level.
- Designated maintainer of the on-site lab network; consisting of onboarding team members, troubleshooting network issues, deploying Rocky Linux and Windows 10 VMs, creating and documenting processes for consistency, installing and configuring Cisco switches and Dell servers, on call due to lab overheating issues.
Python
- Developed and implemented a Python utility leveraging AWS S3 APIs, regex-based filename parsing, and date-range analysis to detect missing weekday data artifacts while excluding non-business days across 1000's of S3 objects.
- Developed a Python utility that would connect to hypervisors and gather VM metadata, format the data into tables and post it to a Confluence page, reducing toil for engineers when looking for what servers their VMs are physically running on.
- Developed a feature in Django and React.js that would fetch user’s profile pictures from Azure REST API and display them on the dashboard when the user was logged in.
Libvirt
- Automating Linux from Scratch with Terraform for IaC and Ansible for automation, utilized libvirt provider to install and deploy an overlay image based on a Rocky 10 cloud image.
- Managed the build-out and configuration of a test system consisting of 2 RHEL hypervisors, 12 Rocky Linux VMs, replicated DNS and NTP, RPM repos, Cisco switch configuration for 3 VLANs, troubleshot FPGA issues at the operating system level.
- Designated maintainer of the on-site lab network; consisting of onboarding team members, troubleshooting network issues, deploying Rocky Linux and Windows 10 VMs, creating and documenting processes for consistency, installing and configuring Cisco switches and Dell servers, on call due to lab overheating issues.
- Developed a Python utility that would connect to hypervisors and gather VM metadata, format the data into tables and post it to a Confluence page, reducing toil for engineers when looking for what servers their VMs are physically running on.
Past Experience
Goldman Sachs
April 2025 - June 2025
Goldman Sachs
- Developed and implemented a Python utility leveraging AWS S3 APIs, regex-based filename parsing, and date-range analysis to detect missing weekday data artifacts while excluding non-business days across 1000's of S3 objects.
- Designed the tool as a reusable CLI with documentation and configurable flags for use across multiple environments.
- Monitored production systems during critical operating hours and documented post-incident root causes, failures, and resolutions.
Raytheon
January 2023 - April 2025
Raytheon
- Provided a solution for Strimzi Kafka supporting certificate chain of trust, integrating TLS with FreeIPA, Cert-Manager, and Kafka.
- Developed a solution to simplify deploying Helm charts via Ansible, significantly reducing complexity and 70 lines of code per role.
- Managed the build-out and configuration of a test system consisting of 2 RHEL hypervisors, 12 Rocky Linux VMs, replicated DNS and NTP, RPM repos, Cisco switch configuration for 3 VLANs, troubleshot FPGA issues at the operating system level.
- Designated maintainer of the on-site lab network; consisting of onboarding team members, troubleshooting network issues, deploying Rocky Linux and Windows 10 VMs, creating and documenting processes for consistency, installing and configuring Cisco switches and Dell servers, on call due to lab overheating issues.
- Documented, produced and maintained the full build-out of a test-bed for developers consisting of rke2, Rancher (Fleet), Cert-Manager, Trident, Helm and FreeIPA on Rocky Linux hosts; onboarded and delegated tasks to 5 team members.
- Developed a Python utility that would connect to hypervisors and gather VM metadata, format the data into tables and post it to a Confluence page, reducing toil for engineers when looking for what servers their VMs are physically running on.
- Developed Ansible roles for automating tasks, such as installation/configuration of in-house software and creating compute profiles for Foreman incorporating hashing values to generate names and reduce duplicate profiles.
- Configured an Ansible role capable of configuring a host to act as a collector for IPFIX protocol, granting the user a lot of flexibility including log rotation and the ability to run a service capable of outputting that data to be viewed via a metrics dashboard.
- Configured, documented and automated the process of connecting 2 servers via Wireguard over the internet through a bastion host.
AdvancedMD
October 2022 - December 2022
AdvancedMD
- Assisted in converting an in-house monitoring application from being a static website into a single page application, notably adding the functionality of switching between light and dark mode based on user's preference.
- Added the functionality for users to alternate between light and dark mode based on already created themes in React via the MaterialUI library, utilizing React State and Props as well as persistent cookies to store user preferences.
- Developed a feature in Django and React.js that would fetch user's profile pictures from Azure REST API and display them on the dashboard when the user was logged in.
Pure Storage
June 2022 - September 2022
Pure Storage
- Performed pre-checks and automated hardware testing prior to software upgrades on customer hardware.
- Collaborated with team members to ensure procedural steps were followed and to take ownership of tasks.
- Monitored ticketing system and acted on alerts requesting host firmware upgrades, communicated with customers to ensure minimal impact on production systems.