Rick Davis
Summary

Comprehensive leadership experience in architecture, design, and development of large-scale data center and edge infrastructure for highly performant, resilient, and distributed applications within Telco/Service Provider, Video Streaming, and FinTech/Blockchain industries.

  • Comprehensive leadership experience in architecture, design, automation, and AI-enabled operations of large-scale distributed infrastructure for highly performant, resilient applications within Telco/Service Provider, Video Streaming, and FinTech/Blockchain industries.
  • Accomplished technical leader known for building high-performing teams, optimizing workflows, and fostering innovation. Demonstrated expertise in team management & motivation, talent acquisition, and capital budgeting in alignment with organizational goals.
  • Proven leadership track record of building strong internal/external customer relationships, driving cross-functional collaboration, forging strategic vendor partnerships, and delivering exceptional results.
  • Proven ability to leverage hands-on cross-domain expertise to quickly comprehend complex landscapes and develop innovative solutions tailored to the unique challenges and requirements of new domains and industries.
Experience

Head of Nodes

Nirvana Labs
Jun 2025 – Apr 2026
  • Established AI standards with reusable agents, skills, MCP integrations, observability/agent tracing, and AI-assisted PR reviews; drove near-complete team adoption, 5x faster new-chain role development, and reduction of MTTR from 4+ hours to <15 minutes.
  • Led global blockchain node DevOps team of 5 supporting 50+ L1 and 75+ L2 blockchains across 1000+ servers in 13+ regions.
  • Designed standardized Ansible/Terraform platform with structured inventories, reusable roles, and runbooks for large-scale node deployment, upgrades, and operations.
  • Built end-to-end GitHub Actions CI/CD with PR preview environments validating sync, OS/chain metrics, and dashboards before production deployment.
  • Reduced new chain deployment from 15+ days to <24 hours; enabled full rebuilds or new region/provider rollouts in <1 hour; made fleet-wide routine upgrades deployable in <1 hour.
  • Deployed Kubernetes clusters with GitHub Actions Runner Controller for autoscaling runners, improving pipeline parallelism, isolation, and reliability while reducing maintenance overhead.
  • Automated upgrades, monitoring, OS/blockchain telemetry ingestion, user management, load balancer/TLS certificate workflows, and firewall rules; standardized ZFS-based snapshot/restore with NVMe 4K tuning plus Terraform across AWS, DigitalOcean, Latitude, OVH, Servers.com, and Nirvana Cloud.
  • Improved execution by defining migration priorities, restructuring Linear for clearer ownership and milestone tracking, building internal Grafana dashboards for support/SRE/leadership/account teams, and hiring 3 senior engineers while strengthening documentation, onboarding, and code review.

Assoc. Director, Software Engineering for Product Analytics

Verizon
Nov 2024 – Jun 2025

Assoc. Director, Software Engineering for Product Analytics

Mar 2025 – Jun 2025
  • Led software and data engineering team defining requirements, design, and architecture for Product Analytics Cloud, a Verizon FiOS and 5G Home router telemetry platform designed for 20M routers, 200M Wi-Fi clients, 1.5M TPS, and 120TB/day ingest.
  • Designed hot/cold data architecture for Product Analytics Cloud, including 600TB compressed hot data in Postgres/Citus and 11PB cold data in Dremio over S3.
  • Designed and deployed Dremio to replace Amazon Redshift for router telemetry analytics, federating Redshift with Iceberg/Parquet datasets in S3 and planning migration to self-hosted Dremio/MinIO on OpenShift.
  • Led planning and implementation to migrate analytics platform components from AWS-managed services to self-hosted OpenShift infrastructure.
  • Led data modeling review with development and database administration teams, producing a star schema and CDC enrichment pipeline redesign for Product Analytics Cloud router telemetry.
  • Built Streamlit-based analytics chatbot prototype using LLM text-to-SQL, with schema and telemetry metric context designed around AWS OpenSearch vector search.

Data Engineer (Contract via Insight Global)

Nov 2024 – Mar 2025
  • Designed and developed Jupyter notebooks for exploration and analysis of Amazon Redshift data using Pandas and Matplotlib.
  • Created performance testing scripts for Redshift queries, establishing benchmarks for database optimization.
  • Analyzed Redshift schema and query patterns with development and DBA teams, identifying dimensional modeling changes for future analytics performance improvements.
  • Implemented exploratory ML models for telemetry data analysis and prototyped NLP-based data exploration workflows.
  • Evaluated big data systems, comparing cloud vs. on-premises architectures for pipeline scalability and cost efficiency.

Head of DevOps

Cube.Exchange
Jun 2023 – Oct 2024
  • Developed Python/Ansible framework for PostgreSQL management — backup, restoration, scaling, tuning, and migrations.
  • Developed Ansible roles and playbooks to initialize and manage HA clusters for PostgreSQL & HashiCorp Vault, KVM virtualization hosts, and blockchain RPC nodes.
  • Implemented Datadog monitoring with Vector for enhanced data pipeline management using Ansible and Terraform.
  • Designed secure architecture/integration of Tableau & Metabase for customer analytics.
  • Designed and deployed a high-security production environment from scratch for a high-speed, low-latency hybrid decentralized crypto exchange, with zero-touch provisioning via Terraform and Ansible.
  • Developed GitHub Actions pipelines for Rust applications with unit testing and static analysis.
  • Developed open source Ansible Galaxy Collection enabling partners to launch self-hosted Cube Guardian instances with zero-touch provisioning of HashiCorp Vault clusters.

DevOps Engineering Manager

Figment.io
Oct 2021 – May 2023

DevOps - Principal Engineer

Nov 2022 – May 2023
  • Co-founded the Sensitive Operations team to enhance security and efficiency for sensitive infrastructure and onboarding new blockchain validators.
  • Developed due diligence guidelines for evaluating blockchain networks, and automated cost reporting processes for tracking infrastructure sprawl and optimizing server usage.
  • Optimized blockchain API access architecture, troubleshooting and remediation of performance issues, and developed data models for standardized configuration & simplified automation.
  • Led security incident discovery, assessment, remediation, and post-mortem analysis in collaboration with SecOps.

Sr Engineering Manager - Blockchain Automation

Oct 2021 – Nov 2022
  • Led automation of deployment, configuration, and maintenance of 60+ blockchain networks on 13 cloud/COLO providers, spanning 1,300+ servers.
  • Led architecture and design for COLO/cloud environment onboarding and optimized Ansible role designs.
  • Interview process optimizations, hired 10 engineers, and provided coaching to successfully promote 5 engineers.
  • Revamped team workflows in JIRA and collaborated with cross-functional teams to align roadmap and OKRs with organizational objectives.
  • Developed custom Python analytics to monitor spare capacity & developed roadmap for infrastructure consolidation.
  • Developed operational dashboards for time series analysis of infrastructure metrics & application logs with DataDog.

DevOps Engineer & Director

Dell Technologies
Oct 2018 – Oct 2021

Director of DevOps

Feb 2020 – Oct 2021
  • Led a team of DevOps engineers through the design, development, implementation, delivery, and cross-training of server and network infrastructure automation solutions for strategic Enterprise, Telco, and Service Provider customers in EMEA.
  • Qualified sales opportunities from technical and competitive perspectives, presented Dell EMC solutions to customers, and supported RFI/RFQ responses and business case creation.
  • Drove customer technical discussions to capture requirements, design and architect enterprise infrastructure solutions, and develop automation pipelines for deployment and management in customer environments.
  • Led initiative to develop Terraform modules for automated configuration and deployment of Dell servers via Redfish REST APIs.
  • Led initiative to review and approve usage of the Folding@Home distributed computing project in Dell lab environments and on employee laptops in support of COVID-19 research.
  • Led automated installation and configuration of Folding@Home in coordination with strategic partners willing to donate available computing resources.

Advisory Systems Engineer

Oct 2018 – Feb 2020
  • Advised and mentored internal teams and customers on DevOps best practices in IaaS/CaaS, Hybrid Cloud, and Telco/Service Provider environments.
  • Designed, deployed, and managed a customer-like lab environment for development and demonstration of server and network automation solutions to internal teams and customers.

Infrastructure Architecture, Technical Manager

Verizon
May 2007 – Oct 2018

DevOps Manager, Verizon Connect

May 2016 – Oct 2018
  • Led the creation of the first DevOps team in Telematics. Hired, trained, coached, and mentored team of 8+ employees and contractors to drive DevOps transformation initiatives and build a container-based infrastructure platform.
  • Designed and built Telematics Container Cloud Platform (TCCP), a multi-site/Active-Active containerized internal cloud platform on high-density OCP racks with eBGP Clos architecture, Consul DNS service discovery, Docker Swarm, and ceph distributed storage. 100% uptime over 1.5+ years, reducing deploy cycles from 30 days to 8 hours.
  • Designed and managed large-scale Splunk and Dynatrace AppMon deployments for log aggregation and application performance monitoring.
  • Represented Verizon Connect on OpenSwitch TSC under Linux Foundation. Presented at Open Networking Summit NA 2018.
  • Designed and built the Verizon Connect Innovation Lab — ML, AI/computer vision, embedded devices (Raspberry Pi/Arduino), 3D printing — resulting in patents and multiple business opportunities.
  • Established fully automated End-to-End network and server infrastructure provisioning and OS/software configuration using Ansible. Leveraged GitLab & GitLab-CI for code/issue/project/CI/CD management.

Architecture & Design, OnCue by Verizon

Jun 2014 – Mar 2016
  • Infrastructure architecture and design of nationwide OTT & IPTV video streaming service — 1000+ edge locations, 40+ POPs, 20+ content ingest/encoding data centers, 15+ Pbps throughput.
  • Server, storage, and network hardware evaluation and vendor comparisons resulting in $80M cost savings.
  • Drove adoption of Dell/Force10 Open Networking and vendor pricing negotiations resulting in significant cost savings and simplified architecture.
  • Architecture and design of network, systems, and logical application infrastructure supporting OnCue Mobile, OnCue Home, and FiOS IPTV. Planning and tracking of $200M+ CAPEX budget.
  • Ansible automation of ceph cluster deployment and Linux login authentication via AD/LDAP.
  • Built and managed team of Systems Administrators across 75+ data centers for go90 and FiOS IPTV products.

Manager of Infrastructure, Redbox Instant by Verizon

Jun 2012 – Jun 2014
  • Design and build of infrastructure systems in support of nationwide OTT video delivery platform.
  • Coordinated vendor engagements to assess & optimize JBoss application performance issues resulting in $20,000+/month cloud cost savings.
  • Maintained target 99.9% infrastructure uptime.
  • Hiring, training, coaching, and professional development of team members.

Architecture, Design & Development, Verizon

May 2007 – Jun 2012
  • Designed and implemented OTT video streaming solution to stream select FiOS TV channels to iOS/Android devices.
  • Designed and implemented Verizon Media Manager Online — 1.5PB Hadoop/HDFS cluster enabling customers to store personal media in the cloud and view on any device.
  • Research and evaluation of video encoding solutions resulting in over $9M cost savings. Developed vendor partnerships and negotiated lab funding saving over $200,000.
  • Designed and developed vSNAP — 3-tier distributed application for analysis of web server performance & usage metrics across 28+ data center locations.
  • Developed custom SharePoint sites and dashboards consolidating inventory, trouble ticketing, change management, and monitoring data, significantly reducing MTTR.
  • Java & MS.NET memory dump analysis & code fixes — faster MTTR than MS Support.

Web Administrator

Florida Department of Transportation
Nov 2006 – May 2007
  • Built, racked, cabled, and maintained production servers in accordance with standard policies and procedures.
  • Created standard server build guides and supported server inventory and audit processes.
  • Assisted with server consolidation using VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 by installing VI3 nodes and migrating physical and virtual machines into the environment.
  • Created applications to collect administrative user and software inventory information from servers.
  • Assisted with management of Camellia Software's Batch Job Server.
  • Assisted with implementation of new ArcIMS/ESRI GIS mapping systems.

Senior Network Analyst

TSYS
Nov 2002 – Nov 2006
  • Managed migration of over 30 critical systems to a new data center in the UK, with zero downtime.
  • Built, racked, cabled, and maintained production servers in accordance with standard policies and procedures.
  • Created standard build guides for Windows Server 2003 systems and documented standardized procedures and environment changes.
  • Developed Patch Deployment Tool (PDT) using batch scripts and free third-party utilities to automate Microsoft patch installation, configuration changes, service management, and server information collection in a highly secure environment where commercial patch management tools were ineffective.
  • Replaced manual Sneakernet patching with PDT automation, saving thousands of dollars and man hours across the server administration team.
  • Remediated security vulnerabilities identified through SAS70, CISP, OIG, and DOED security audits.
  • Designed analysis platform for security compliance in SAS70, PCI, and SOX404 environments.
  • Managed planning and implementation of new client application deployments and upgrades across multiple sites.
  • Performed software evaluations, proposals, justifications, and implementation of products for enterprise application environments.
  • Installed and configured Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005 in standalone and redundant configurations, including Microsoft Clustering and SQL Server 2005 Merge Replication.
  • Installed, maintained, and troubleshot IBM WebSphere MQ servers in standalone and clustered configurations; created queue managers and queues, installed CSD patches, and monitored queue depth.
  • Created scripts and applications to assist with IBM MQ Series server management.
  • Troubleshot Netscape Enterprise Server, Apache, and Microsoft IIS 5.0/6.0 web servers.
  • Designed and implemented fully redundant Mercury SiteScope monitoring solution across 7 separate network environments.
  • Created SiteScope monitors for Windows and Unix servers, applications, websites, and IBM WebSphere MQ servers.
  • Installed and maintained McAfee ePO antivirus solutions in 6 separate network environments and McAfee Entercept host-based intrusion prevention in 5 environments.
  • Administered Veritas NetBackup and performed emergency backups and restores of Windows and Unix servers.
  • Installed and configured Microsoft Distributed File System and File Replication Services.
  • Remotely managed servers across multiple logical and physical locations using ControlIT, VNC, PCAnywhere, SSH, Terminal Services, and Terminal Services tunneled over SSH.
  • Maintained 24x7 on-call support with direct client interaction and served as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level escalation for critical issues.

ASP Help Desk Technician

Lightspeed Datalinks
Jun 2002 – Nov 2002
  • Monitored, maintained, troubleshot, and repaired LAN and WAN networks.
  • Administered Citrix MetaFrame 1.8 application hosting servers, Citrix NFuse applications, and file sharing on Windows 2000 and Samba file servers.
  • Administered users and groups for Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, and Citrix MetaFrame 1.8 environments.
  • Troubleshot and configured applications within Citrix on Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 servers.
  • Administered VPN connections and VPN security using Astaro Internet Security on Red Hat Linux servers.
  • Set up email accounts using Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and Sendmail.
  • Administered Veritas Backup software to support data protection and recovery.
  • Used Macro Express 3 to automate repetitive administrative tasks.
  • Provided timely technical support to end users for network, email, Windows 2000, and Citrix issues to ensure customer satisfaction.

Computer Technician

Phenix City Board of Education
Jul 2001 – Jun 2002
  • Repaired, installed, and maintained computer systems across the school district.
  • Installed Cat-5 network cabling, punched down network cabinets, and installed wall-mount jacks.
  • Repaired and installed local and network printers.
  • Used Norton Ghost Multicast Server to clone multiple computers.

Computer Technician (Internship)

I.H.S. Computers
Jun 2001 – Jul 2001
  • Repaired, upgraded, and maintained computer systems.
  • Installed and upgraded programs, including operating systems.
  • Installed Cat-5 network cabling, punched down network cabinets, and installed wall-mount jacks.
Side Projects

Independent Platform Engineering Lab

Personal / Side Project · May 2026 – Present

  • Taking time after the birth of my son while building production-shaped platform and AI engineering systems.
  • Using a local macOS/Colima/Lima environment as a fast iteration testbed for platform patterns that map closely to cloud or bare-metal infrastructure: Kubernetes networking, Helm/Kustomize delivery, secure service exposure, OpenTelemetry tracing, Prometheus/Grafana observability, and reproducible workstation/cluster automation.
  • Architected a Colima/k3s AI platform with Cilium, Tailscale Operator, Kustomize/Helm, and phase-ordered deployment automation.
  • Built a four-backend vector RAG bake-off across Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector, and Milvus with shared ingestion, chunking, embedding, search, and smoke-test code.
  • Built a FastMCP retrieval layer exposing normalized search, cross-backend comparison, document/chunk lookup, corpus stats, file listing, and breadcrumb navigation.
  • Developed a LangGraph docs RAG agent with deduplication/reranking, LiteLLM synthesis, FastAPI serving, Prometheus metrics, and OTLP tracing.
  • Deployed LiteLLM as an OpenAI-compatible gateway for local llama-swap/llama.cpp/MLX models and hosted providers, with Langfuse callbacks, OTel export, virtual keys, caching, guardrails/policies, and budget controls.
  • Deployed Langfuse plus an LGTM stack with Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Prometheus, Alloy, and the OpenTelemetry Collector for traces, evals, dashboards, logs, and metrics.
  • Built reproducible workstation and cluster environments with Chezmoi, Homebrew Bundle, mise, pre-commit validation, Lima test VMs, and scripted k0s/k3s/kubeadm clusters.
  • Next phase: LLM pre-/post-training, SFT/RL experiments, dataset pipelines, and eval-driven iteration.
Skills
  • Terraform / Ansible / GitHub Actions
  • AWS / Kubernetes / Linux
  • Production Engineering / SRE
  • CI/CD / Deployment Automation
  • Security / Secrets / HashiCorp Vault
  • Observability (Datadog, Grafana, Splunk)
  • Networking (DNS, BGP, Clos, L2-L7)
  • PostgreSQL / Data Infrastructure
  • Blockchain Nodes / Validator Infrastructure
  • Hybrid Cloud / Bare Metal / KVM / COLO
  • Python / Bash / Go / Rust
  • Docker / Containers / Platform Engineering
  • Team Leadership / Hiring / Mentorship
  • Agile / Kanban / JIRA / Linear
  • Vendor Management / CAPEX
  • AI / LLM Agents & Tooling
Certifications & Training
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (2021)
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (2021)
  • Using Terraform to Manage Applications and Infrastructure (2020)
  • System Tooling with Go (2020)
  • Getting Started with Go (2021)
  • RedHat Ansible (2016)
  • Splunk (2013)
  • MCTS - C#, ASP.Net, and ADO.Net (2009)
Education

Associate in Applied Science - Cyber Defense

Chattahoochee Valley Community College, 2006

Associate in Applied Science - IT/Cisco Networking

Chattahoochee Valley Community College, 2005
© 2026 Rick Davis