Allan West

Allan West - SO15 7TY -https://west.ar/ Experience TSEW Ltd. DevSecOps Consultant Aug 2011 – Present Southampton As a DevSecOps Consultant with expertise in cloud technologies, infrastructure and operating systems, I have extensive experience using Azure, AWS, Ansible, Kubernetes and Terraform to design and implement highly efficient and reliable infrastructure and deployment processes on both Linux and Windows operating systems. My strong knowledge of these platforms allows me to effectively troubleshoot and resolve issues, ensuring that projects are delivered on time and to the highest quality standards. In addition, I have a proven track record of successfully delivering complex projects, leveraging my deep understanding of best practices and my ability to effectively communicate with cross-functional teams including technical documentation and training material. Overall, my hands-on experience with a variety of tools and technologies positions me as a valuable asset to any organisation seeking to optimise their infrastructure and deployment processes. Key highlights: • Created WHSClamAV (C#), the second-most downloaded Windows Home Server add-in (100k+ downloads), also wrote the MSI installer and user documentation • Maintain personal tech blog https://blog.tsew.com/ with an average of 5k unique views/month – covering IaC, IT, DevOps, SDN and network programmability • Developed DimeMachine, an Apple Time Machine clone that can run on any Linux operating system Clients in: ■ Defence ■ Government ■ Education ■ Finance ■ Online Gaming ■ Oil and Gas ■ Broadcast TV ■ Security ■ Retail ■ Cloud ■ Energy Symetrica DevOps Consultant Dec 2024 - Jun 2025 Southampton This role is based around CNBRE detection where I designed and deployed Kubernetes deployments in airgapped networks, optimising enterprise software deployment for security-sensitive environments. Using GitLab CI/CD pipelines, Terraform, Ansible and BASH scripting, I automated infrastructure provisioning and deployment processes, ensuring seamless installation across standalone equipment, cloud, and onpremise clusters. I implemented Helm charts, Kubernetes networking, and offline deployments, including Longhorn and MetalLB, making it possible for engineers without DevOps experience to deploy applications easily. I also evaluated and enhanced software architectures, improving scalability, maintainability, and security. Through well-documented and streamlined deployment solutions, I delivered efficient, productionready systems for mission-critical applications. I built a Python toolchain to inject RPMs, Wheels and a Kickstart file into RHEL-based ISOs, cutting deployment time by 75%. I authored operator guides and technical information in Markdown and created video content explaining how platform is installed. Most importantly I reduced the time of deployment from a day to 30 minutes in an automatic and error-free way. Hostman Open-Source Contributor Jun 2025 Southampton Sole author of the Terraform Provider for Hostman written in Go. Implementing CRUD for Virtual Servers and IP addresses. Comprehensive README examples and automated documentation. Logicalis UK&I HPC DevOps Consultant Oct 2024 - Apr 2025 Maidenhead In my role as an HPC DevOps Consultant at Logicalis UK&I, I deployed a turnkey HPC platform, automated cluster provisioning, and integrated workload management tools for efficient job scheduling and resource allocation. I also orchestrated the application stack through ArgoCD using GitOps, ensuring seamless deployments and scalability. Using Slurm on Rancher K3S and backed by MetalLB and Longhorn the customer can easily scale their cluster to any number of nodes. NEOM DevOps Technical Lead Sep 2024 - Dec 2024 Jeddah, SA As a Lead DevOps Engineer at NEOM, I spearheaded the migration of our CI/CD pipelines from Jenkins to Drone CI - streamlining our build, test, and deployment cycles while drastically reducing maintenance overhead. In parallel, I established best practices for leveraging Terraform and Terragrunt on Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE), ensuring that our infrastructure as code approach remained robust, scalable, and secure. De La Rue DevSecOps Consultant Jan 2024 - Oct 2024 Basingstoke Investigated and compared various K8s solutions to recommend a Kubernetes platform to be adopted company wide. I designed and commissioned a multi-environment pipeline in Azure DevOps using Terraform, Terragrunt and Cloud-init. Much time was spent in digesting very technical information into digestible content that management could use to make business decisions. KodeKloud Online Support Specialist Mar 2023 - Aug 2024 Online I resolved over 5000 learner queries across Slack, Discord, Udemy, their community forum and KodeKloud Engineer portals, consistently receiving positive ratings. I helped create a number of guides for deploying Kubernetes in the KodeKloud playgrounds reducing the number of questions on the topic by 80%. I gave feedback to the engineering team on how to improve course material and increase user engagement Department for Education DevOps Consultant Aug 2022 - Mar 2023 London Working in Azure using Terraform and GitHub actions including RBAC and PIM to manage and deploy a training portal. I undertook the automation of the complete flow of CI/CD with GitHub from code check-in, through test to deployment. National Grid ESO Site Reliability Engineer Oct 2023 - Jan 2024 Wokingham Working on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) for electricity generation in the UK. Specifically automated and monitoring the load balancing mechanism running in RedHat OpenShift 4. Used git, Ansible and Terraform along with TekTon pipelines and ArgoCD to automate the deployment of the application. HM Revenue & Customs DevOps Consultant Nov 2022 – Apr 2023 London Managing a complex platform on AWS using Ansible and Terraform under control of GitLab Enterprise and HashiCorp Vault. Exposure to vault for secrets management and using packer to create custom AMIs for CI and Production using Python and Go. GlobalLogic UK&I Delivery Consultant Aug 2021 - Nov 2022 London Worked on a number of projects for clients in Banking, Fintech and Oil & Gas. Specialising in Azure, ADO and Kubernetes. Was responsible for producing gold standard pipeline and automating many manual processes. Agora Senior Platform Engineer Apr 2021 - Aug 2021 London I helped Agora deliver a digitally driven end-to-end solution for holistically managing pre and post trade functions in fixed income markets, powered by distributed ledger technology. The platform is running on Kubernetes in two locations and utilises Helm and Flux to provide an IaC solution. Other aspects involved writing Bash, Python and Ansible for system administration and deploying Postgres and Longhorn. UK Home Office DevSecOps Consultant May 2021 - Jul 2021 Croydon Working on gathering metrics from systems in DSAB and EBSA using Prometheus to be used in Grafana dashboards to show information on the status of the system. Using Terraform and scripting to provision dashboards automatically from the input data. Providing detailed technical documentation and training resources to enable the department to manage and deploy Grafana dashboards. Royal Navy Lead DevOps Consultant Mar 2020 - Mar 2021 Portsmouth Working on a Data Collection project for the Royal Navy through BAE Systems. Primarily using Ansible and Jenkins to provision the infrastructure based around Docker, Kubernetes and Rancher. Managed a team of 8 including mentoring, training and team building. Synamedia DevOps Consultant Oct 2018 - Mar 2020 Chandler's Ford Actively monitored and maintained the VMware infrastructure and created automation of vSphere and ESX using Ansible. Deployed Kubernetes using Ansible on both AWS and VMware platforms including the bundling of company software repos. Built several pipelines in Jenkins using the groovy language and BASH for continuous integration, delivery and deployment. Contributed to the Ansible repositories used to deploy company products and services on premises and offsite in production. Using GitHub Enterprise as source code repository for various pipelines and builds for Jenkins CI/CD of the full platform Roke Manor Research DevOps Consultant Apr 2018 - Oct 2018 Romsey Working with various open source software to provide a bespoke web application written in Python, JavaScript and MongoDB. Provisioning of Virtual Machines in VMware using PowerShell and Ansible, including monitoring using LibreNMS and Veeam. Using Packer, Vagrant, Bash & Ansible to provision Docker images including bundling for easy customer deployment. Creation of reverse and forward proxies including transparent modes - SSL/TLS offloading using PKI infrastructure. Kingfisher plc DevOps Consultant Nov 2017 - Mar 2018 Chandler's Ford Providing infrastructure and platform configuration of test and development environments based around Oracle ATG, deployed on AWS using Ansible. Day to day work with Jenkins as a task executor and orchestration of complex deployments to virtualised and physical platforms. Working in an agile environment using Jira for Kanban and issue tracking. Created automated tasks in Bash to update Confluence with metrics pulled from Jira. NATS DevOps Engineer May 2017 - Nov 2017 Whiteley Responsible for the development of puppet modules to support the deployment of services into the NATS environment. Carried out hardening of Windows Server 2012R2 using CIS benchmark and Microsoft Security Compliance Manager. Generated High Level Design Documentation for the Continuous Integration Platform to be used within the project. Responsible for the generation and use of operating systems images generated using Packer via Jenkins. Developing technical drawings showing the interaction between Continuous Integration and the rest of the platform Office for National Statistics DevOps Specialist Oct 2016 - Apr 2017 Titchfield Installed and configured Jenkins to run the CI/CD pipeline for a triple-tier web application including HTML tests. Assisting with the generation of Make files for C-Libraries and JNI interface including cross compiling for Windows on Linux OS. Writing and deploying Selenium tests in Java that are then run by Jenkins on successful deployment in SauceLabs cloud. Configuring, diagnosing and fixing issues with Elasticsearch clusters. Running multiple application versions within Cloud Foundry and BlueMix including automated blue/green deployments. Managing git repositories and looking after the git-flow process within the team Configuring and running spark jobs on Cloudera Hadoop platform. Multiplay DevOps Specialist Jul 2016 - Sep 2016 Blackfield Working with Puppet, Vagrant and Jenkins CI to provide configuration management and artefacts for a diverse set of OpenSource tools in a hybrid cloud environment to support an online computer gaming environment of tens of thousands of servers. Exposure to databases including MySQL, PostgresSQL, InfluxDB and Elasticsearch. Completed configuration of Curator and Kapacitor. Working with Git, Jira, Gerrit and Slack on an hourly basis to provide configuration under tight control, review and in a high pressure environment. Also I was responsible for provisioning VMs in VMware ESX/vSphere and producing containers for Docker. University of Bristol Senior DevOps Engineer Mar 2016 - May 2016 Bristol Documented in full and made recommendations with regard to the Development and Hosting Systems for all of the University. Worked with Jenkins in a CD and CI environment whilst optimising key systems to support developers and sysadmins. V-Nova Ltd. Head of IT & Security Nov 2014 - Jan 2016 London I designed and implemented a secure Linux platform for video encoding/decoding products provisioned through automation in Bash. Preparation of images for Server and Desktop use leveraging SCCM, WAIK and WDT for Windows 7/8/10 and Server 2012R2. Responsible for maintaining a number of Linux operating system images using Buildroot in a git repository system. Hardened Windows Server 2012R2 images used for a number of embedded systems for production and demonstration. Configured Buildbot and custom Python scripts to provide app/OS images under tight configuration control in CI environment. Creation of a number of custom Bash scripts and packages some of which have been pushed to the upstream OSS projects. Integration of TPM to encrypt the Linux rootfs in a way that prevents tampering from any user (inc. Physical Presence). Responsible for all IT and Information Systems in the company – including security, HP networks, Cisco firewall, access control and IP addressing. Implemented Buildbot and custom git hooks to provide a fully automated end-to-end CI platform for Development and QA Cisco Systems Systems Engineering Manager Jan 2011 - Nov 2014 Chandler's Ford I was responsible for providing reference systems and streams to aid the advances in video delivery technology to change the way people are entertained, informed and communicate. Specialising in engineering infrastructure, operations management and processes facilitation to provide solutions to tight deadlines, under budget and within operational constraints. Represented the company at CableLabs® on Advanced Advertising InterOp. Responsible for development management and issue tracking within the group. A provider of key knowledge within Cisco promoting automation methodologies and providing initial system seeding. A champion of agile working methodologies including Scrum and Kanban. Hired and mentored 11 employees into highly effective company assets. Division Security Advocate NDS Limited Systems Specialist Jul 2009 - Jan 2011 Chandler's Ford A senior role with responsibility for management and delivery of applications and client projects, liaising with multidisciplinary teams and stakeholders to ensure the smooth implementation of robust and sophisticated solutions. I was the lead engineer responsible for the design and development of bespoke products, systems, and applications for NDS and its clients, supported by comprehensive user training, process development and documentation. Subject matter specialist for DSS, US Cable, Broadcast Systems and Virtualization software. Business consultant for UK and global clients, and external and internal colleagues from multiple business units. Developed strong relationships with colleagues, internal and external, national and international, to better manage projects and ensure successful delivery across sites in the UK and abroad. Investigated and assessed new and emerging technologies, recommending new products in line with business and client requirements. Negotiated directly with suppliers, procuring best-value costeffective services and products. NDS Limited Systems Engineer May 2007 - Jul 2009 Chandler’s Ford Managed a high value project for DirecTV (a key account for NDS), taking on and managing a 2 year subproject from start to finish. This involved responsibility for the development of the project team, project brief, solution development and budget control. Introduced new technology to NDS, using vritualisation to support and enable the design and development of a fault-free and cost-effective solution critical to DirecTV. Supported US Cable projects by flying out to NDS divisions to expedite the deployment and set-up of multiple components, including complex bespoke IP systems using TCP/IP technologies. Opened up market opportunities for NDS in a $Billions market, by using expertise built throughout previous projects to support the successful tender for a high net worth account with COX (a leading US Cable Franchise). Vosper Thornycroft Support Engineer 2006 – 2007 Portsmouth Contracted as an on-site support engineer for survey vessels. Responsibilities included support and maintenance of all equipment - specialising in IT and communications. Thales Underwater Systems Human Factors Engineer 2002 – 2003 Cheadle A key role, with responsibility for the management and co-ordination of specification, preparation, certification and documentation for the layout and design of computer display systems for equipment. BAE Systems R&D Systems Engineer 1993 – 2002 Warton An intense and respected undergraduate/graduate development programme in full-cycle Systems Engineering. Specialising in High Performance Computing (HPC), Man Machine Interfaces (MMI) and Safety. Education Loughborough University M.Eng, Systems Engineering 1993 - 1998 Somerset College of Arts and Technology 1991 – 1993 GCE A-Levels, Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Maths with Mechanics, Physics Certificates Academy Accreditation - Databricks Fundamentals Academy Accreditation - Generative AI Fundamentals LFEL1001: Understanding the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate AZ-900 - Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Exam 480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Microsoft Partner Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner Red Hat Certified Technician Training Cisco CCNAX Cisco Security Ninja Green Belt VMware VCP5 Basic Sea Survival Course Innerworkings 625 Drills Loughborough Taunton