Rick Davis

Cube.Exchange · Sep 2023 – Oct 2024

Open source Ansible Galaxy Collection enabling partners to launch self-hosted Cube Guardian instances with zero-touch provisioning of HashiCorp Vault clusters.

Developed an open-source Ansible Galaxy Collection of roles enabling Cube.Exchange partners to launch their own self-hosted instances of the Cube Guardian software. The collection included zero-touch provisioning of HashiCorp Vault clusters used as the secrets storage backend. Part of broader production environment buildout at Cube.Exchange including zero-touch provisioning with Terraform and Ansible, HA clusters for PostgreSQL, HashiCorp Vault, KVM virtualization hosts, and blockchain RPC nodes, plus GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines for Rust applications.

Figment.io · Oct 2021 – May 2023

Automated deployment, configuration, and maintenance of 60+ blockchain networks across 13 cloud/COLO providers spanning 1,300+ servers with operational dashboards and standardized configuration models.

Led the automation of deployment, configuration, and maintenance of 60+ blockchain networks across 13 cloud and colocation providers, spanning 1,300+ servers. Led architecture and design for colocation/cloud environment onboarding, optimized Ansible role designs, and developed standardized configuration data models. Built operational dashboards for time-series analysis of infrastructure metrics and application logs with DataDog. Developed due diligence guidelines for evaluating new blockchain networks and automated cost reporting for tracking infrastructure sprawl. Co-founded the Sensitive Operations team for security and validator onboarding, and led security incident response in collaboration with SecOps.

Dell Technologies · Jan 2020 – Mar 2020

Led deployment of Folding@Home distributed computing across Dell labs and partner infrastructure in support of COVID-19 research, coordinating with ABN AMRO through the Dell Dataistic partnership.

Led the initiative at Dell Technologies to review, approve, and deploy the Folding@Home distributed computing project across Dell lab environments and employee laptops in support of COVID-19 protein folding research. Coordinated with strategic partners, including ABN AMRO through the Dell Dataistic partnership, who donated idle computing resources. Led the automated installation and configuration of the Folding@Home client across participating infrastructure, enabling rapid deployment at scale.

Dell Technologies · Oct 2019 – Oct 2021

Open source Terraform provider for automated configuration and deployment of Dell servers via Redfish REST APIs, enabling infrastructure-as-code management of server hardware.

Led the cross-organizational initiative at Dell Technologies to develop and productize a Terraform provider for automated configuration and deployment of Dell servers via Redfish REST APIs. The project was part of a broader effort to evangelize DevOps practices with key IaaS, Internal/Hybrid Cloud, and Telco/Service Provider teams both internally and to customers. The resulting open-source provider enabled infrastructure-as-code management of Dell server hardware at scale.

Verizon Connect · Dec 2017 – Oct 2018

Innovation lab supporting ML, AI/computer vision, IoT, 3D printing, and embedded devices, resulting in patents and multiple business opportunities.

Designed and built the Verizon Connect Innovation Lab from the ground up, supporting various initiatives spanning machine learning, AI/computer vision, IoT/embedded devices (Raspberry Pi, Arduino), 3D printing, and more. Led training sessions to introduce integrated circuit and embedded development concepts to team members, including a hands-on project building an Arduino-based autonomous vehicle. These initiatives resulted in multiple potential business opportunities as well as patent filings.

Verizon Connect · Mar 2016 – Oct 2018

Multi-site Active-Active containerized internal cloud platform with eBGP Clos architecture, achieving 100% uptime over 1.5+ years and reducing deploy cycles from 30 days to 8 hours.

Designed and built TCCP, a multi-site Active-Active containerized internal cloud platform at Verizon Connect (Telematics). Led the creation of the first DevOps team in Telematics, hiring, training, coaching, and mentoring 8+ employees and contractors. The platform was designed for high resilience and fault tolerance, capable of handling multiple concurrent hardware/software failures within and across sites. It leveraged eBGP Clos network architecture, Consul DNS-based service discovery with multi-site failover, Docker Swarm container orchestration, and Ceph distributed storage. The entire infrastructure provisioning and configuration was fully automated end-to-end using Ansible. Represented Verizon Connect on the OpenSwitch Project Technical Steering Committee under the Linux Foundation and presented at Open Networking Summit North America 2018.

Verizon / OnCue · Jun 2014 – Mar 2016

Infrastructure architecture supporting 1,000+ edge locations, 40+ POPs, and 20+ content data centers with 15+ Pbps throughput for go90 and FiOS IPTV, yielding $80M in cost savings.

Led the infrastructure architecture and design of a nationwide OTT and IPTV video streaming service supporting the go90 by Verizon and FiOS IPTV products. Designed high-level application architecture changes that more efficiently ingested, encoded, and delivered video, leading to enormous savings in both capital and operational costs. Managed a team of systems administrators across 75+ data centers and drove adoption of Dell/Force10 Open Networking for significant cost savings and architectural simplification.

Verizon · Oct 2008 – Jan 2009

3-tier distributed application for web server performance analytics across 28+ data centers, later upgraded with log searching for faster debugging and reduced MTTR.

Designed and developed vSNAP as a 3-tier distributed application that analyzed web server logs on a nightly basis to generate application usage metrics across Verizon's FiOS TV infrastructure covering 28+ data center locations and over 2,750 servers. Later upgraded to support real-time searching of web server logs, enabling support and development teams to quickly debug issues during outages by searching logs across all servers in all environments. Custom dashboards and email reports were built to assist with performance analysis and capacity planning.