Chas Berndt
Senior DevOps Engineer in Atlanta, GA.
Summary
Experienced DevOps engineer with over a decade of experience architecting and maintaining scalable and composable systems and processes. Experience in managing requirements and integrations as well as writing software, shipping software, architecting infrastucture on-prem and on cloud with a particular focus on observability and tools/processes involved in the SDLC.
Technical Skills
| PoSH | Bash | Python | Golang |
| Terraform | Ansible | Azure | DigitalOcean |
| Flux | Kubernetes | Grafana | Prometheus |
| Loki | Git | CI/CD | Linux |
| Networking | TLS | Cloudflare |
Work History
DevOps Engineer
Airia
July 2024 – Present
Airia is an enterprise AI full-stack platform to quickly and securely modernize all workflows, deploy industry-leading models, provide instant time to value, and create impactful ROI. Airia provides complete AI lifecycle integration, protects corporate data, and simplifies AI adoption across the enterprise.Sr. Member of Technical Staff, Central Engineering
VMware
Aug 2017 – June 2024
- Responsible for creation, maintenance, and security of build infrastructure leveraged by thousands of engineers and associated tools such as SCM, build orchestrators, artifact repository managers, etc. Collaborate with teams on best practices implementing CI and leveraging Git effectively. Act as a mentor and trusted consultant to fellow engineers.
- Built dashboards and alerts for internal applications using Wavefront increasing insight into application health, reducing MTTR and unscheduled outages by <50%.
- Led management, documentation, and best practices for multiple internal applications including Bamboo, Bitbucket, and Artifactory.
- Designed multiple application architecture overhauls of internal applications including database migrations, storage migrations, and network cutovers.
- Automated dozens of manual processes for handling common alerts and issues encountered across internal applications as a series of Jenkins jobs which can be invoked by fellow team mates or via REST, allowing alerting to trigger clean up processes without direct involvement to on-call administrators.
- Built comprehensive reporting tools for managing Github user activity, allowing the reclamation of hundreds of license seats across multiple enterprise accounts, reducing license cost by several hundred thousand dollars a year.
- Built custom Prometheus exporter that was designed to run within build data centers to monitor for availability of dependent resources such as source control, file shares, DNS, etc. that cause builds to fail intermittently, aiming to reduce MTTR and more quickly pinpoint whether issues are isolated to one or more data centers or are common across the entire organization.
Member of Technical Staff, EUC Engineering Services
VMware
May 2014 – Aug 2017
- Responsible for creation, maintenance, and security of build infrastructure leveraged by thousands of engineers and associated tools such as SCM, build orchestrators, artifact repository managers, etc. Collaborate with teams on best practices implementing CI and leveraging Git effectively.
- Designed and implemented automated process to create, validate, and replace large scale deployment Windows Servers, reducing time to make changes to cluster from multiple days to <6 hours and entirely seamlessly from end users perspective.
- Build code review process for the largest repository ensuring that all code paths had coverage and SMEs were alerted to incoming changes.
- Designed process to make adhoc changes to large Windows Server clusters, reducing time to apply break-fixes and patches from multiple hours to <30 minutes.
- Drove multiple migrations to Git including repository migration, training, CI/CD pipeline cutovers from TFS, Perforce, and Subversion. Wrote custom tools where needed to ensure migrations were well tested, repeatable, and reversible.
- Standardized documentation and worked with the team to ensure they were comprehensive, searchable, and digestible to new team members.
- Evangelized standards on code review process, ensuring that changes are tested, reviewed, and approved by fellow engineers, increasing velocity and trust within the teams.
Product Management
VMware
Jun 2013 – Jul 2013
- Led technical integrations with third-party identity and security infrastructure partners.
- Invented and patented a novel approach to securely distribe mobile certificates via SCEP.
- Collaborated with customers and partners to deliver and support robust technical solutions.
- Defined and documented solution designs, workflows, and training materials to support implementation.
- Conducted research and translated customer needs into actionable requirements and project plans.
Quality Assurance Engineer
AirWatch
Jul 2012 – Jun 2013
- Managed software quality through comprehensive test planning, bug tracking, and process documentation.
- Contributed to internal knowledge sharing by building documentation and evaluating company-wide tools.
- Developed scripts and automation tools to streamline test environments and deployment workflows.
- Performed integration and security testing across various enterprise systems and mobile platforms.
- Facilitated shift from waterfall to agile by assisting with implementation and team training.