Robertas Reiciunas

Knowledge w/o sharing is nothing!

Hi, I’m Robertas Reiciunas

DevOps Consultant // AWS Solution Architect

Linux Guru // Consultant

Photography and Blender Enthusiast

Soft skills

  • AWS certified solutions architect and developer.
  • Problem solving and analytical view.
  • Critical Thinking.
  • Active Learning.
  • Flexibility.
  • Self-management.
  • Confidence.
  • Collaborative and team player.

Technical skills

  • Automation: CI/CD: GitLab CI, Ansible, Jenkins.
  • Cloud: AWS, Azure.
  • Containers: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm.
  • Databases: AWS RDS, MySQL, MongoDB, MSSQL
  • Documentation: “wake up at 3am and follow”
  • Identity and Access Management: AWS IAM, Keycloak, Microsoft AD and ADFS, OpenLDAP.
  • Infrastructure-as-Code, Configuration Management: Terraform, Ansible, Ansible Tower.
  • Languages: Bash, Python, PHP, Perl.
  • Networking: AWS VPC, Transit Gateways, VPC Peering, Cisco, Fortinet, Tinc mesh VPN, Firewalls
  • Observability: Elastic Stack, Grafana, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch
  • Security: always in mind, from developer to end-user and everything in between
  • Tools and OS: Packer, OpenSCAP, RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows Server.

About me

Hi!

My name is Robertas and I am an “IT guy” 😉

Since my first job in 2008, which I was invited after my internship during 3rd year of Bachelor’s degree, all I ever wanted to work with was IT. In the beginning it was more hardware stuff, preparing desktops (laptops were not there yet then) for new joiners, sorting out power and network cables, managing physical servers, changing disks, power supplies, even “fixing” printer problems. Been there, done that.

I quickly grew out of it and was ready for more sophisticated tasks. During my first 7 years of career I’ve managed to put my hands on and learn so much it’s even difficult comprehend (there is a short summary below). This was also the time that I was first introduced to Linux/Unix (professionally) and I fell in love instantly. If I remember correctly, it was Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS version) and FreeBSD… A lot of manual configurations were required at that time to install it from scratch. It evolved so much since.

Spent my first 7 years like that – installing and configuring DNS, LDAP, Database, Web and Email servers, managing, building custom services for ISP, learning to script Bash and Perl, programming in PHP, changing disks and printers in between, until I came in contact with a recruiter for my next role.

This contact, and the next job, brought me to the Cloud – AWS specifically. It was a beast that I’ve only heard faint rumours before and never actually seen one… It shown me endless capabilities and possibilities that I’ve never seen before – and boy I was intrigued… I couldn’t grasp how I’ve never used before, I thought that everyone should ditch their own hardware and just go to the cloud. So much easier, no disk changing, no RAID issues, no FREE SPACE issues… Need more RAM, more CPU – here, take it, use it, don’t forget to pay at the end of the month 😂

I could go on and on about how much easier it looked to me at the time to use cloud, but I’d rather like to bring a more important point, a point about myself – this job, this role, this introduction to cloud, to AWS – it sparked a huge interest in me in new technologies, better ways of working, automation, continuous improvements, etc. And this interest is still holding, still growing stronger!

Since then, in every task I take I have always pushed myself to improve what ever can be, to automate as much as possible, to reduce manual repetitive work were possible and feasible, so that there is time left for research of better ways, more suitable technologies and services.

To be continued…

Work experience

Freelance

Websites

Build, integrate, maintain, and support websites for private individuals and smaller businesses.

K8s

CI/CD pipeline setup, integration, deployments, and support.

DevOps / Tech Lead

HMRC Contract / 2021-2023

Outline

Facilitate continuous delivery of quality software, design and support robust build, deployment and configuration management systems for multi-tier applications, cloud provisioning and taking a lead on automation.

Responsibilities
  • Design and support robust build, deployment, and configuration management systems.
  • Support and maintain Jira and Confluence clustered installations.
  • Enhancing security for multi-tier applications.
  • CIS hardening for AMI using OpenSCAP, Syft and Grype.
  • Monitoring and logging of supported systems using AWS CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch, Filebeat and Kibana.
  • Technical support for team members.
  • Documentation of procedures and policies.
  • Working within strict governance policies.
Achievements
  • Migration of Jira and Confluence Data Center clusters from a manual setup to automated deployments with Gitlab CI pipelines in multiple AWS environments using Terraform and Gitlab CI with monitoring solution using AWS CloudWatch, Prometheus and Grafana.
  • Automated process to provision, test and verify custom service AWS AMIs, hardened to CIS Level 2, based on RHEL 8 using Packer, Gitlab CI and Terraform.
  • Creation and development of a unified versions dashboard (Python, Gitlab Pages/MkDocs) across multiple environments providing insights into service versions running on estate and comparison to the latest available versions from providers with certificate chain expiry information for each service. Security insights into AWS AMI versions for each service providing all available custom built AMIs, their versions and build artifacts for review including reports for OpenSCAP CIS Level 1 and 2, Grype/Syft and Software Bill of Materials (SBOM).
  • Introduction and implementation of Gitlab security scanning tools: SAST, IaC, Secret Detection, License Scanning, DAST, Container and Dependency Scanning.

Senior System Engineer

Buddi Ltd / 2019-2021

Outline

Reporting to CTO, managing IT infrastructure on multiple datacentres and in cloud, managing IT team, providing 2nd line IT support for the company.

Responsibilities
  • Management of IT team.
  • Build, setup, monitoring and support of multiple application environments in AWS and on-premises datacentres.
  • Look at new technologies to help the company grow (Ansible / Terraform / Docker / Kubernetes).
  • Administer live database systems (MySQL / MongoDB / Linux).
  • Management of the IT ticket queue.
  • Documentation of procedures / policies.
  • Management of Buddi Servers / Network / Infrastructure (Linux / Windows).
  • Implementation of security policies.
  • Member of ISMS Board.
  • Support the company’s obligations regarding Data Protection and Information Security.
  • Support the company’s ISO/quality management activities as they may relate to the areas of IT.
  • Provide support escalation.
Achievements
  • Created and implemented new environment setup procedure in AWS with Terraform (VPC, IGW, Route tables, EC2 instances, Security Groups, EIPs, ELB, ALB, WAF).
  • Created new CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments to multiple environments using Ansible Tower, GitLab, Bash, Python.
  • IT maintenance task automation with Ansible, like security updates.
  • Created secrets storage with Hashicorp Vault and Consul for application configuration.
  • Restructured management network spanning across 3 offices and multiple environments globally using AWS Transit Gateways, AWS VPC Peering and Tinc mesh VPN.
  • ISO 27001 certification for the company.

System Administrator

Precedent Systems Ltd / 2017-2019

Outline

Build, manage and maintain infrastructure required for internal and external use including physical servers and network devices. Facilitate continuous delivery of web applications for in-house developers. Provide support and escalation for clients.

Responsibilities
  • Level 2/3 support for internal and client infrastructure located in on premise datacentres, AWS, and Azure cloud.
  • Support for open-source hypervisors running Proxmox with NFS, ZFS and Ceph storage, setup, maintenance, balancing.
  • Support for production, development and staging/UAT environments and agile development including Continuous Integration and Release Management (Jenkins / TeamCity / GIT), Deployment (Octopus Deploy / Jenkins) and High Availability (HAproxy / Microsoft ARR, AWS ELB).
  • Infrastructure automation with Ansible (Linux and Windows).
  • VPN mesh solution aggregating AWS, Azure, remote datacentres, and local office into one local network using Tinc and SoftEther VPN servers, iptables and ansible.
  • Continuous monitoring using Check_MK/Nagios and development of plugins using Python, Bash, and Perl.
  • Database administration and management including MSSQL, MySQL and MongoDB.
  • Datacentre management, networking, and servers.
  • Support for Hyper-V and VMware hypervisors with Veeam backup solution.
  • Web servers and load balancing (Windows/IIS, Linux Apache / HAproxy / Varnish / Memcached).
  • SOLR servers’ setup for search services.
  • MongoDB clusters.
  • Support for Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Debian, Centos, Amazon Linux.
  • Support for Windows Servers 2008, 2012 and 2016.
  • Internal systems management (AD, Office 365, LAN, laptops, printers).

CloudOps Engineer

LayerV Ltd / 2015-2017

Outline

Manage deployments for clients into multiple environments across on-premise datacentres and AWS cloud, assuring high availability and high resiliency, provide out-of-hours support and escalation.

Responsibilities
  • Level 2 support for client infrastructure located in AWS and personal datacentres.
  • Linux distributions supported: Amazon Linux, Centos, Ubuntu, Debian.
  • AWS infrastructure and network creation, development, and administration.
  • AWS services used daily: EC2, S3, CloudFront, Glacier, RDS, ElastiCache, Redshift, VPC, Route53, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, IAM.
  • Internal and client facing Service Desk software ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus administration including request, problem and change process adaptation and improvements.
  • Monitoring software Solarwinds administration and management.
  • JumpBox software Wallix Admin Bastion administration and management.
  • Local DNS and DHCP administration and management.

Senior Systems Administrator

SC Lithuanian Radio and Television Center / 2008-2015

Outline

Manage a wide range of services for internal and client use, including but not limited to AD, DHCP, DNS, Email, Web, built on top of physical and VMware virtual servers.

Responsibilities
  • DNS administration (Bind9, OpenLDAP / Linux, Unix).
  • Email administration (Cyrus, Dovecot, Postfix / Linux, Unix, Mac OS X).
  • Email technical support, client configuration, delisting from RBL blacklists.
  • Web server administration (apache2, Parallels Plesk Panel / Linux, Unix, MacOS X).
  • MySQL server administration and replication (mysqld / Linux).
  • DHCP configuration and administration (DHCPd / Linux).
  • Windows Domain configuration and administration (Samba, OpenLDAP /Linux, Mac OS X).
  • Network devices monitoring (Cacti, Nagios / Linux).
  • VMware server virtualisation.
  • Server backup using Veeam.

Qualifications

Education

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University

Master’s degree, Telecommunications engineer / 2009 – 2011