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London, UK
mail@riweston.io

Richard Weston

Principal Cloud Systems Developer

A Principal Cloud Systems Developer with over 10 years of experience in the IT industry. I have a strong background in developing and maintaining cloud-native applications, and I am passionate about cloud computing, DevOps culture and platform engineering. I am a strong advocate for automation and quality engineering practices, and as a technical leader, supporting and mentoring teams so that we all grow together.

Skills

I already know

AzureAzure
Google CloudGoogle Cloud
TerraformTerraform
GitHub ActionsGitHub Actions
BashBash
GoGo
PythonPython
KubernetesKubernetes

I want to learn

NixNix
CueCue
CiliumCilium

Certificates

CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator

CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator

The Linux Foundation

2022-10-23

CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer

CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer

The Linux Foundation

2021-10-23

Professional Cloud Architect Certification

Professional Cloud Architect Certification

Google Cloud

2024-01-22

Professional Cloud Developer Certification

Professional Cloud Developer Certification

Google Cloud

2023-04-13

Work Experience

Cloudreach

Principal Cloud Systems Developer

Cloudreach

October 2018 - now

As a Principal Cloud Systems Engineer, I was responsible for leading the design and implementation of cloud-native applications for our clients. I was also responsible for mentoring and supporting the development team, ensuring that we delivered high-quality solutions that met our clients' requirements.

Previous Roles


Transport for London

Infrastructure Engineer (Cloud & Automation)

Transport for London

April 2018 - October 2018

In my role at TFL, I was responsible for supporting the cloud infrastructure and automation of the Azure platform. I was responsible for building CI/CD pipelines and process to build IaC environments using Azure DevOps, cost analysis and cloud resource consolidation using cloud governance and compliance tooling, and developed Azure native automation tools using DSC/Runbooks/Managed Service Catalogues.


Rackspace

Windows Systems Administrator

Rackspace

March 2015 - April 2018

At Rackspace, I was a member of the Windows Systems Administration team in the enterprise support team. I was responsible for providing technical support for Windows Server typically hosted on VMware infrastructure. I also provided support for public cloud hosted on Openstack platform, health monitoring with SCOM and New Relic, and developed reusable Powershell functions for large scale execution across Rackspace managed services.

Projects

Self-Service Developer Landing Zone

A self-service platform for creating and lifecycling GCP landing zones. In my role I put together an initial design and proposal for a platform that helps teams to easily provision a GCP environment so that they can focus on delivering value to the organisation. I also led the development of the platform, which was built using a combination of cloud-native technologies delivered by GCP, Github Actions and Terraform.

Technology:


GitOps Developer Enablement Platform

A well architected pattern for deploying and managing AKS clusters using GitOps. In my role I was responsible for the initial technical pre-sales and discovery which led to the design and implementation of a Kubernetes platform on Azure with a view to shifting the organisation to a GitOps model. Additional features included canary deployments, automated testing and ephemeral environments to support UAT and QA.

Technology:


Shared Services Platform

A Kubernetes platform for shared services and applications. In my role I was responsible for planning and implementing a Kubernetes platform on Azure to host shared services and required to support a new SaaS product from the development team. These features included Vault, Consul, Keycloak, Jenkins and Artifactory. A large degree of focus was placed on standardisation and automation to ensure the platform was easy to operate and maintain. To achieve this I designed a number of deployment patterns to facilitate workload identity, automated DNS and global load balancing.

Technology:


Service Mesh PoC

A proof of concept for a service mesh on Kubernetes. In my role I played a supporting role during the technical pre-sales and discovery phase to produce supporting documentation and a high-level design for a highly technical client. After the completion of the discovery phase I was responsible for the delivery of the chosen service mesh, Istio, and the development of a deployment pattern that could be used to evaluate the viability of Istio as a global load balancing solution.

Technology: