Andy Suderman
andy@suderman.dev
I began my career as a self-taught engineer who was willing and able to learn
new skills quickly. I am proficient in Bash, Python, Go, Docker and Kubernetes,
as well as a myriad of other technologies. My passions include running
distributed, resilient, secure systems and automating the surrounding tasks.
Since transitioning into leadership roles, I have learned to take the skills and
rapid understanding of technology that I had as an individual contributor and
translate them into meaningful strategic thinking. Where I previously sought
simply to be the most skilled engineer possible, I now understand how the
underlying technologies that we work with affect the decisions that the business
is making. Couple this understanding with high-level thinking and the ability to
make meaningful compromise, and you will find that I am a valuable leader for a
highly technical engineering and/or operations organization.
Chief Technology Officer
Fairwinds, Remote
April 2022–Present
- Set strategic technical direction for company
- Served as security officer and security architect
- Managed and nurtured a growing open source community which became the source of
sales leads and established the company as Kubernetes experts
- Led our SOC2 compliance program which enabled the company to land larger clients more quickly
- Managed technical leadership team, growing and enabling new leaders within the company
Director, R&D and Technology
Fairwinds, Remote
April 2021–April 2022
- Managed a team of SREs responsible for maintaining highly-available Kubernetes infrastucture
across many clients with 24x7 support
- Particpated in hiring engineering management that produced a high-performing
SRE team
- Managed the engineering manager for the SRE Operations team responsible for
routine maintenance of client Kubernentes infrastructure
Principal Engineer
Fairwinds, Remote
October 2020–April 2021
- Participated in strategic technological discussions in the absence of a CTO
- Continued evaluation of the impact of new technologies on business outcomes
Lead Research and Development Engineer
Fairwinds, Remote
October 2019–October 2020
- Explored new technologies relevant to the business and evaluated them for
potential use or partnership
- Developed and maintained open source projects to secure company recognition in the Kubernetes landscape
- Continued to serve as a lead technical resource for the engineering department
- Participated in a council to guide the technical direction of the company in a rapidly
changing Kubernets and CNCF landscape
Lead Site Reliability Engineer
ReactiveOps/Fairwinds, Remote
March 2019–October 2019
All of the same responsibilities of the SRE role, plus:
- Participated in a council to guide the technical direction of the company
- Developed and maintained internal tooling and processes to assist the SRE team
- Developed and maintained open source projects
Site Reliability Engineer
ReactiveOps/Fairwinds, Remote
May 2018–March 2019
- Maintained several customer infrastructures running in Kubernetes with 24x7
support and high availability
- Assisted clients in migrating to Kubernetes in order to accelerate their business goals
- Advised clients on best practices regarding CI/CD, security, and general
operations in Kubernetes in order to ensure smooth transition to Cloud Native technologies
Site Reliability Engineer
ReadyTalk, Denver CO
May 2017–May 2018
- Developed and implemented Kubernetes for internal services
- Assisted in the architecture of services running in Kubernetes
- Developed metrics and alerting for Kubernetes clusters
- Led the design and deployment of a global WebRTC audio gateway in Kubernetes
Systems Administrator
ReadyTalk, Denver CO
June 2016–May 2017
- Responsible for Linux systems running development, staging, and production
infrastructure that supported all business operations
- Maintained and improved Puppet/Foreman infrastructure to ensure consistent configuration
and reliability in business-critical infrastructure
- Maintained and improved Nagios/PagerDuty infrastructure
Systems Administrator
Dairy Engineering Company, Arvada CO
June 2016–May 2017
- Managed all elements of IT infrastructure from desktops to servers
ensuring smooth operations day-to-day
- Maintained proprietary database application that backed all company
operations
- Performed software deployments and automated many IT tasks
- Implemented and migrated to an open source email solution, enabling the company
to save money and have reliable communications
- Designed and wrote new website using MVC architecture in order to enhance company
brand and showcase used equipment listings
BS Engineering, Mechanical Specialty
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO