Steven Rice
Tunnel Hill,GA
Summary
Results-driven DevOps Engineer specializing in Kafka architecture, deployment automation, security compliance, and scalability at scale. Proven track record of optimizing complex systems and leading high-stakes projects in secure environments.
Overview
19
19
years of professional experience
Work History
Kafka Architect / DevSecOps Engineer
Shore Point Inc
10.2024 - Current
- Led the architecture and deployment of Confluent Kafka for Kubernetes into an AWS Federal environment.
- Created automated deployment processes using Terraform, Helm Charts, GitHub Actions, and Python to deploy Confluent CFK and all supporting operators. Partnered with infrastructure & security to deploy to production.
- Configured Kafka to support mTLS v1.3 & OAUTH authentication, FIPS 140-3 compliance, and to meet Federal security requirements.
- Conducted benchmarks to validate scalability for hundreds of terabytes and trillions of messages.
- Ran benchmarks to ensure the ability to scale capacity to support 100's of terabytes and trillions of messages.
- Managed all topic settings and data schemas to support hundreds of independent agencies.
- Documented Kafka architecture, topics, schemas, testing methods, and compliance processes to ensure adherence to Federal security requirements.
- Configured monitoring dashboards in Kibana, Grafana, and Confluent Control Center to track resource usage, errors, and transfer rates, enabling capacity forecasting.
- Configured monitoring dashboards and tools in Kibana, Grafana, and Confluent Control Center to report on resource usage, errors, transfer rates, and predict future capacity.
Staff Site Reliability Engineer
Zscaler
06.2021 - 08.2024
- Primary operational support person for production Kafka clusters of about 280 brokers and roughly 4PB of data.
- Managed Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, and provided expert support migrating to Apache Flink.
- Operated short-lived production Kafka clusters using Strimzi on EKS (Kubernetes) for data synchronization from production clusters and local Kafka Stream/Flink processing.
- Resolved Kafka reliability and performance issues by optimizing OS configurations, selecting appropriate AWS instance types, migrating to faster storage, rebuilding AMI images, and upgrading Kafka.
- Redesigned Ansible Kafka automation to support advanced settings, security, TLS, ACLs, broker scaling, topic balancing, storage management, and a smoother upgrade process. Reduced Kafka upgrades from weeks to hours.
- Created disaster recovery Kafka clusters and replicated data across clusters to enhance data protection.
- Managed settings for thousands of topics per cluster. Created reports to compare settings across all clusters.
- Supported Zscaler application and Kafka brokers in the AWS GovCloud FedRAMP Moderate/High and DOD air-gapped environments.
Automation Consultant
Beacon Hill Solutions Group
11.2020 - 11.2020
- Converted very large Kafka clusters from Ambari Kafka to Confluent Kafka (~180 total physical nodes), with the largest cluster processing over 700 billion messages an hour and 2.4 petabytes of total storage.
- Completed the project with zero data loss or downtime, and without incident
- Refactored existing CI/CD Jenkins pipelines and Docker images supporting Kafka applications(800+), to manage configuration, reduce deployment time, and improve standardization.
- Worked with various teams to convert and test Go applications to use mTLS.
- Collaborated with team members to define requirements and establish project goals.
- Managed project goals, allocated resources efficiently, and communicated daily progress to stakeholders.
- Configured Prometheus and automated Grafana dashboards to monitor performance.
- Drove project goals, allocated resources, and reported daily progress to stakeholders.
- Created comprehensive documentation for Kafka clusters, applications, inventory, and onboarding processes.
Automation Engineer
Cedar Document Technology
11.2015 - 10.2020
- Led the development of an automation system to deploy applications, integrating new and existing deployment processes into a complete, end-to-end, user-managed process.
- Collaborated with systems, networking, security, development, database, marketing, and business teams to integrate products into a comprehensive deployment package.
- Developed a self-service interface in Jenkins, enabling end users to easily configure deployments that would otherwise require complex on-demand or CI deployments.
- Developed Oracle database for inventory, app configuration, security, and system settings, integrating with Ansible via Python Flask-based web service and custom Ansible modules.
- Created an Oracle database to store inventory, app configuration, security, and other system settings, feeding them into Ansible via a Python Flask-based web service and custom Ansible modules.
- Established and maintained Kafka and Elasticsearch clusters for efficient data processing.
- Set up and managed Kafka and Elasticsearch clusters (ELK).
- Managed cert trust and key stores for web (TLS), Kafka, ELK, Oracle (NNE), Elasticsearch, & other core applications, enabling encrypted network traffic across the network.
Automation Engineer
Symphony Performance Health
11.2013 - 10.2015
- Performed various roles in development, automation, production support, DevOps, and SQL performance tuning. – Development, Automation, Production Support, DevOps, and SQL Performance tuning. Automated Windows server setup, code deployments, and IIS configs.
- Created IIS Web.config translations, PowerShell scripts, and MS Build solutions to streamline deployment processes.
- Assigned to multiple roles – Development, Automation, Production Support, DevOps, and SQL Performance tuning. Automated Windows server setup, code deployments, and IIS configs.
- Enhanced complex Java-based medical application hosted on AWS by automating AWS deployments, reducing deployment time from days to minutes.
Automation Engineer
United Package Service
09.2010 - 10.2013
- Developed web applications for field techs to simplify network device management by automating common tasks for switches, routers, wireless APs, and vehicle telematics collection devices.
- Created an application to track every node on the UPS global network in near real time. The system tracked over two million devices worldwide. The data mart was used to find devices anywhere on the network using IP, MAC, location, and Active Directory login data.
- Automated AP hardware refreshes using a web application that allowed on-site personnel to focus on hands-on tasks while configurations were executed in the background.
ETL Developer
Turner Broadcasting Systems
05.2007 - 09.2010
- Led ETL development for a data mart supporting Cartoon Network MMO Game, ensuring seamless data integration.
- The well-designed and self-healing ETL jobs ran without failure or manual intervention for 4+ years. Admins only needed to send game activity logs to the system.
- Designed and implemented self-healing ETL jobs that ran without failure or manual intervention for over 4 years. Admins only needed to send game activity logs to the system.
- • Managed a web analytics system that processed web logs from 2400 Apache servers, which produced roughly 700 gigabytes of uncompressed logs daily that ran on a distributed SunGrid Engine of 64 CPU cores.
- Optimized end-to-end processing time from 22 hours to 2 hours and reduced support time from 16 hours to 1 hour daily.
- Created detailed documentation for ETL workflows, enhancing team knowledge sharing and process consistency.
Education
High School Diploma -
Stockbridge High School
Stockbridge, GA05-1996
Skills
- Operating Systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Windows
- Virtualization Software: VMware ESX, VirtualBox, Proxmox, oVirt
- Kubernetes: Amazon EKS, Rancher 3KS, OpenShift, Minikube, Docker, Linux LXC
- Programming Languages: Python, Shell scripting (KSH/Bash), PowerShell, Net, Java Spring
- Database Servers: Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL
- Database Programming: T-SQL, PL/SQL
- In-memory key–value database: Redis, Valkey
- Kafka: Brokers, Kraft, Zookeeper, Schema Registry, Topics, Consumer/Producer development, Kafka Streams, Flink, Upgrading, Managing Datalogs, Strimzi, Confluent
- Big Data: Lucene, Spark, Elasticsearch, Hadoop
- Web Servers: Nginx, Flask, FastAPI, Apache, IIS, Glassfish
- Networking: Cisco routers, HP switches, Motorola Wireless AP, F5 load balancers, Netscaler
- Automation tools: Jenkins, Puppet, Terraform, Ansible, Helm
- Security: mTLS, TLS 13v, FIPS 140-3, FedRAMP MOD/HIGH, Scanning containers
Timeline
Kafka Architect / DevSecOps Engineer
Shore Point Inc
10.2024 - Current
Staff Site Reliability Engineer
Zscaler
06.2021 - 08.2024
Automation Consultant
Beacon Hill Solutions Group
11.2020 - 11.2020
Automation Engineer
Cedar Document Technology
11.2015 - 10.2020
Automation Engineer
Symphony Performance Health
11.2013 - 10.2015
Automation Engineer
United Package Service
09.2010 - 10.2013
ETL Developer
Turner Broadcasting Systems
05.2007 - 09.2010
High School Diploma -
Stockbridge High School