Matthew Mattox
Sterling
Summary
Dynamic Principal Support Engineer at Rancher Labs/SUSE with expertise in Kubernetes storage and Go programming. Achieved a 40% performance boost in Longhorn's snapshot capabilities while enhancing CI/CD systems. A collaborative leader, recognized for exceptional problem-solving and technical guidance, driving success across enterprise environments and open-source initiatives.
Overview
15
15
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Principal Support Engineer
Rancher Labs/SUSE
01.2019 - Current
- Core developer and maintainer for Longhorn, the CNCF-incubated, cloud-native distributed block storage system for Kubernetes.
- Played a pivotal role in rewriting Longhorn from C to Go, modernizing its architecture for scalability, reliability, and maintainability across thousands of clusters.
- Designed and implemented core components including replica management, data path optimization, and volume scheduling, significantly improving performance and stability.
- Led initiatives to enhance snapshot and backup/restore capabilities, improving performance by up to 40% and reducing recovery times for large-scale environments.
- Collaborated with the SUSE and Rancher engineering teams to deliver enterprise-grade features, ensuring seamless integration with CSI, Rancher, and Kubernetes.
- Acted as the Subject Matter Expert for Kubernetes storage and persistent volume troubleshooting, providing deep technical guidance to internal teams and global customers.
- Contributed to open-source and community initiatives, presenting at Kubernetes meetups and authoring technical blogs and training materials on Longhorn and Kubernetes storage.
- Supported 14k+ Kubernetes nodes across GKE, EKS, VMware, and bare metal deployments, optimizing Sev1/2 response times to under 7 minutes.
- Enhanced CI/CD systems using Jenkins, Drone, and GitHub Actions, improving pipeline reliability and developer velocity.
- Recognized with the Bull Fighter Award for exceptional problem-solving, client satisfaction, and technical leadership.
Senior Systems Engineer
Insurance Auto Auctions
Westchester
02.2016 - 01.2019
- Engineered and maintained enterprise-grade VMware clusters supporting hundreds of virtual machines across production and DR environments.
- Managed and optimized Pure Storage arrays and Cisco UCS blade infrastructure, achieving measurable improvements in IOPS performance and fault tolerance.
- Led the migration and integration of on-prem workloads to AWS and Azure, establishing a reliable hybrid-cloud footprint with secure networking and consistent performance baselines.
- Implemented disaster recovery strategies leveraging storage replication and cross-region failover, reducing potential downtime and data loss risk.
- Supported Windows and Linux systems across distributed environments, ensuring OS compliance, patch management, and system hardening standards.
- Designed and enforced infrastructure monitoring and alerting with Grafana, Prometheus, and native VMware tools to proactively identify capacity and performance bottlenecks.
- Partnered with developers and security teams to align infrastructure operations with organizational compliance and uptime SLAs.
UNIX/VMware/SAN Architect
Hyatt Hotels Corp
Chicago
03.2014 - 02.2016
- Led the end-to-end design, build-out, and migration to two new enterprise data centers, delivering fully operational environments ahead of schedule and under budget.
- Architected and deployed the entire infrastructure stack, including SAN and NAS storage systems, VMware clusters, Cisco networking, and enterprise server hardware, ensuring maximum scalability and resiliency.
- Designed and implemented 4PB of shared storage supporting ~17,000 virtual machines across Citrix, Windows, and Red Hat environments.
- Executed a zero-downtime migration for all customer-facing systems, with critical backend services achieving ≤4 hours of application-level disruption.
- Developed custom automation scripts and management tools to streamline provisioning, monitoring, and failover operations across data centers.
- Collaborated closely with global IT, networking, and application teams to validate performance, security, and recovery requirements during the migration process.
UNIX/VMware/SAN Architect
Caterpillar Inc
East Peoria
03.2013 - 03.2014
- Managed global enterprise infrastructure consisting of Red Hat Linux, VMware vSphere, and Windows Server environments across multiple data centers.
- Designed and maintained SAN and NAS storage systems, ensuring high availability, optimized throughput, and fault-tolerant performance for business-critical applications.
- Developed TUX, an internal self-service application that empowered application teams to manage their own servers — including provisioning, reboots, storage expansion, and emergency console access — without system administrator intervention.
- Automated the company’s disaster recovery framework between primary and secondary data centers, achieving zero RPO for all mission-critical workloads within two months.
- Led cross-functional collaboration between networking, storage, and virtualization teams to streamline maintenance, patching, and capacity planning cycles.
- Documented and standardized operational procedures, improving change management and incident response consistency across global IT teams.
System Architect
Semaphore Company LLC
09.2012 - 02.2013
- Architected and delivered 30+ virtualization and infrastructure projects for clients ranging from small startups to large enterprises, with budgets spanning from $20K to over $1M.
- Designed and deployed custom cloud environments leveraging VMware, KVM, and emerging public cloud platforms, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency.
- Led the creation of a cloud-based application platform built entirely on flexible hosting providers such as DigitalOcean, enabling automatic scaling and high availability.
- Engineered the system to scale 4× without human intervention, utilizing automation for provisioning, monitoring, and load balancing.
- Provided consulting and implementation services for storage design, network architecture, and system redundancy tailored to each client’s operational goals.
- Delivered detailed documentation, training, and post-deployment support to ensure long-term maintainability and customer success.
Open Systems SAN Architect
IBM
Dubuque
09.2010 - 09.2012
- Served as a key member of IBM’s Global Technology Services division, specializing in open systems storage and virtualization for enterprise clients.
- Led the transition of customer-supported SAN and virtualized environments into IBM’s managed infrastructure services, achieving a 30% reduction in operational costs with zero service disruption.
- Designed, implemented, and maintained enterprise SAN/NAS solutions supporting multi-petabyte environments with strict uptime and performance SLAs.
- Authored and enforced standard operating procedures for maintenance, patch management, and backup validation, ensuring consistent service delivery across teams.
- Mentored junior engineers on network security, storage configuration, and troubleshooting methodologies, enhancing team efficiency and technical capability.
- Collaborated directly with client stakeholders to audit, document, and optimize storage performance, enabling measurable improvements in throughput and resiliency.
Education
A.A.S. - Systems and Networking Administration
Morrison Institute of Technology
Morrison, IL05.2010
A.A.S. - Computer Information Systems
Sauk Valley Community College
Dixon, IL05.2008
Skills
- Kubernetes storage
- Go programming
- Docker
- VMware
- Linux
- AWS
- GCP
- CI/CD
- DevOps
- Golang
- Bash
- Jenkins
- Drone
- GitLab
- Ansible
- Puppet
- Chef
- Rancher
- Prometheus
- Grafana
Certification
- SUSE Certified Administrator in SUSE Rancher v2.5, SUSE
- SUSE Certified Administrator in SUSE Rancher v2.6, SUSE
- SUSE Certified Administrator in SUSE Rancher v2.7, SUSE
- CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator, The Linux Foundation
- CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer, The Linux Foundation
- CKS: Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist, The Linux Foundation
- AWS: Certified Cloud Practitioner, Amazon Web Services
Languages
English
Personal Information
Title: Principal Support Engineer
Additional Information
Kube-Builder, Created Kube-Builder, a Docker image that includes all the tools needed to build a Kubernetes cluster and its applications. Kube-Builder has been downloaded over 500,000 times on DockerHub. Used by multiple companies, including Rancher Labs, SUSE, and IBM., k8s-ns-purger, Created k8s-ns-purger, a tool that allows deletion of namespaces in Kubernetes with specific labels after a specified time. Downloaded over 1,000 times on GitHub. Used by multiple customers to clean up their Kubernetes clusters and save money., Rancher-Projects, Created a tool for managing Rancher projects via CLI, including kubeconfig file generation. Used by multiple customers to manage Rancher projects and deploy applications. Automates Rancher project creation and kubeconfig file generation., Created and maintained Kubernetes Master Class, a community-driven training program with over 1,000 active members. Authored 'Rancher Deep Dive: Manage enterprise Kubernetes seamlessly with Rancher'. Delivered training sessions on Kubernetes and Rancher to clients and colleagues. Published technical articles on Kubernetes and Rancher on various platforms.
Timeline
Principal Support Engineer
Rancher Labs/SUSE
01.2019 - Current
Senior Systems Engineer
Insurance Auto Auctions
02.2016 - 01.2019
UNIX/VMware/SAN Architect
Hyatt Hotels Corp
03.2014 - 02.2016
UNIX/VMware/SAN Architect
Caterpillar Inc
03.2013 - 03.2014
System Architect
Semaphore Company LLC
09.2012 - 02.2013
Open Systems SAN Architect
IBM
09.2010 - 09.2012
A.A.S. - Systems and Networking Administration
Morrison Institute of Technology
A.A.S. - Computer Information Systems
Sauk Valley Community College