CV

This document is a detailed CV. For a shorter one-pager resume, please click here. For more information, drop me a message at ricc,tutanota,de.

Summary

Summary of experience and credentials

  • 17+ years of total working experience in tech, including:
    • 6+ years of cloud-native DevOps engineering experience in Germany (2018 to present)
    • ~10 years of SAP techno-functional consulting experience in the Philippines (2006 to 2016)
  • Computer Engineering graduate with a degree recognised by the ZAB
  • Intermediate German language skill (Certified CEFR B1)

Summary of non-technical differentiators

(… or “what I bring beyond my technical expertise“)

  • First-principles learning for transferability of skills — When I learn something new, I try to also understand the underlying principles (i.e., the whys and the hows) instead of just rote memorisation. This allows me to transfer the skills that I learned to other technologies and even other disciplines.
  • Leadership skills — Not just in terms of being a team leader, but mostly about being able to step up and take charge of a crucial situation when nobody else is doing so.
  • Human integration — I can bridge the gap between diverse individuals by being able to put myself in the shoes of both business and technical stakeholders. I can understand their [usually] differing motivations and objectives, and then translate those into words that can make sense for everyone.
  • Awareness of tech news and current events — Technology is developing in a fast pace, so it’s important to be up-to-date while maintaining a critical eye. This is also important for my role to make sure that I’m updated with discoveries of new security vulnerabilities.
  • Team-level and even cross-team improvements — Beyond improving my own productivity, I also try to cascade these improvements to my team, and if possible, also to other teams. I do this by:
    • Sharing knowledge and other learnings either by active teaching, writing documentation, or sometimes as simple as sharing links to important news and current events
    • Making things easy by either formally automating existing processes or as simple as sharing my own scripts that help me in my day-to-day work

Professional Experience

DevOps Engineer
Eucon Group / Eucon Digital GmbH
Münster, Germany
2024 May to present (8 months)

DevOps Engineer
LifeBonus Gesundheitsmanagement GmbH
Hamburg, Germany
2023 June to 2024 May (1 year)

Summary

Be the subject-matter expert and provide technical leadership in all topics involving DevOps. This includes introducing the foundational principles of the DevOps culture (i.e., the Three Ways), determining which DevOps tooling and processes to use, and then implementing them in all software development teams.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Determine and implement which DevOps tooling and processes should be used by all software development teams
  • Improve existing DevOps tooling and processes primarily to improve the developer experience of using them (see the Projects, Highlights, Achievements section)
  • Minimise toil by automating processes and constantly improve these automations
  • Train, guide, and/or mentor developers of various experience levels to help them adjust to the DevOps culture and to the evolving practices
  • Help developers improve the processes that they own (i.e., release management)
  • Create DevOps-related tasks in Jira for developers to accomplish
  • Serve as a one-man infrastructure support team for the whole software development tech stack
  • Implement tooling and processes to minimise infrastructure costs; examples:
    • Utilise AWS budget alerts and spending limits
    • Automate end-to-end provisioning of non-production EKS/Kubernetes clusters that are either too expensive to keep running or not often used
    • Perform regular housekeeping to make sure that unused resources are decommissioned or at least stopped
    • Decide which services can be shared across multiple development teams
  • Write documentation including all knowledge gained and lessons learned
  • Proactively initiate projects to implement improvements

Projects, Highlights, Achievements

  • Improve the developer experience of using Terraform (infrastructure-as-code) by:
    • Fixing existing huge infrastructure drift that’s causing anxiety when using Terraform
    • Implementing automated monitoring to prevent drifts from happening again
    • Segregating the resource configuration into environments (i.e., “dev” and “prod“) to allow developers to freely manage the dev infrastructure without the anxiety of affecting production
    • Logically grouping different categories of resources into single files and modules to minimise passing of parameters (i.e., resource names and ARNs) and to ease the provisioning of similar resource sets
  • Automate the deployment pipeline of AWS Lambda and AWS AppSync (i.e., git commit/push/merge will trigger automation to deploy the changes to AWS)
  • Automate end-to-end provisioning of non-production EKS/Kubernetes clusters for easier and faster on-demand deployments
  • Improve systems security by minimising shared accounts and replacing them with individual access, and by making sure everyone is using Multi/Two-Factor Authentication (MFA/2FA)
  • Implement periodic and/or automated backups
  • Centralise scattered Bash/shell scripts into GitHub Action workflows

Technology Stack

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS), specifically:
    • Lambda (serverless functions)
    • AppSync
    • EC2 instances (cloud virtual machines/VMs)
    • VPC (networking incl. subnets, routing tables, and internet gateways)
    • Route 53 (DNS service)
    • EKS (AWS-managed Kubernetes service)
    • IAM (access and permissions control) and IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO)
    • KMS (self-managed encryption keys)
    • S3 (storage buckets)
    • Databases: DynamoDB (NoSQL) and PostgresSQL via RDS and Aurora
    • Elastic Beanstalk
    • AWS Backup
    • CloudWatch (logging and monitoring)
  • Terraform and OpenTofu (infrastructure-as-code)
  • GitHub (git version control) with GitHub Actions (CI/CD pipelines)
  • Bash/shell scripts
  • GitHub Copilot (ChatGPT/LLM-based AI programming assistant)
  • Jira (project management and tasks tracking)
  • Confluence (documentation)
  • Moodle (learning platform)
  • Operating systems: Amazon Linux (EC2 instances) and macOS (workstation)

Industry Sector and Geographical Region

  • Preventative Healthcare in Germany

DevOps Engineer
Xempus AG
Munich, Germany
2022 April to 2023 May (1 year, 2 months)

Summary

Use DevOps principles and practices to manage application servers and provide operations support including release management.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Manage and deploy releases (i.e., application and database schema updates)
  • Execute automated steps manually when automation fails, or as required
  • Provide application operations support
  • Minimise toil by automating processes
  • Enhance or extend the internal developer platform
  • Maintain code integrity by refactoring or rewriting existing codebases to improve readability, functionality, idempotency, and ease-of-use
  • Write documentation including all knowledge gained and lessons learned
  • Proactively initiate projects to implement improvements

Projects, Highlights, Achievements

  • Automate the completeness checks of deployments and database schema changes
  • Implement Ansible automation for the Windows servers from scratch

Technology Stack

  • Ansible (configuration management)
  • Jenkins with Groovy pipeline scripts
  • PowerShell scripts
  • C# for the internal developer platform
  • Bitbucket (git version control)
  • Jira (project management and tasks tracking)
  • Confluence (documentation)
  • Operating systems:
    • Linux: Ubuntu WSL for personal workstation
    • Windows: Windows 2016 (application servers) and Windows 10 (workstation)

Industry Sector and Geographical Region

  • Insurance Technology (Insurtech) in Germany

Bassist
ROOT49 Showband GbR
Osnabrueck, Germany
2018 January to 2022 May (4 years, 5 months)

DevOps Engineer
Serrala Group GmbH
Hamburg, Germany
2019 August to 2022 March (2 years, 8 months)

Summary

Use DevOps principles and practices to manage 200+ cloud-based Linux and Windows Server virtual machines (VMs) and other related resources in Microsoft Azure.

Duties, Responsibilities, and Technology Stack

  • Provision and configure Azure VMs and related cloud resources using:
    • Terraform (infrastructure-as-code)
    • Chef (configuration management)
    • Bash/shell scripts
    • PowerShell scripts
  • Secure and harden servers using standard practices plus:
    • Hashicorp Vault for secrets management
    • Barracuda web application firewall (WAF)
  • Perform general systems maintenance (i.e., system/application updates/upgrades)
  • Implement observability and monitoring strategies using:
    • Icinga2, NRPE (Nagios agent for Linux), and NSClient++ (Nagios agent for Windows) for active monitoring
    • Elastic/ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana), Filebeat, and ElastAlert for auditing and central logging
    • Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana, and other Azure-provided monitoring tools for server performance and resource utilisation monitoring
  • Write and maintain monitoring scripts and configuration using:
    • Logstash filters using Grok and regex to improve the structure of log messages
    • Filebeat inputs/prospectors that properly send multiline logs to Logstash
    • ElastAlert rules that send notifications based on specific log filters
    • Various Bash/shell and PowerShell scripts
  • Decommission servers and other resources at end-of-life
  • Minimise toil by automating processes
  • Improve the team’s codebases and maintain code integrity by:
    • Refactoring or rewriting existing codebases and large configuration files to improve readability, functionality, idempotency, and ease-of-use
    • Writing extensive unit tests and integration tests in Chef cookbooks
    • Writing custom Chef resources and libraries using its Ruby DSL
    • Debugging and refactoring other programs and scripts written in various languages including Go, Python, Groovy, and Perl
  • Implement a couple of Azure Logic Apps and Azure Functions (serverless)
  • Write documentation including all knowledge gained and lessons learned
  • Interview candidates for open positions within the team
  • Train teammates when necessary
  • Proactively initiate projects to implement improvements

Projects, Highlights, Achievements

  • Develop a system to manage Linux updates for hundreds of VMs à la WSUS
  • Improve the existing file syncing solution between SFTP servers, Azure blob storage, and application servers
  • Implement GitOps to allow non-admin users to maintain configuration files
  • Automate the SSL/TLS certificates renewal via Chef by using certbot in Linux and win-acme in Windows

Server Types

  • .NET and Java web application servers using Apache, Nginx, and Windows IIS
  • Docker hosts using Docker Compose
  • Jenkins CI/CD server using Groovy scripts to deploy and maintain pipelines
  • FileMage SFTP server
  • Mailcow mail server
  • Database servers (i.e. MSSQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB (NoSQL))

Other technology stack not mentioned above

  • Familiarised self but did not directly work on Argo CD (Kubernetes GitOps solution)
  • Used Ansible to configure personal WSL workstation
  • Bitbucket (git version control)
  • Jira (project management and tasks tracking)
  • Confluence (documentation)
  • Operating systems:
    • Linux: CentOS and Ubuntu (application servers) and Ubuntu WSL (workstation)
    • Windows: Windows 2016 (application servers) and Windows 10 (workstation)

Industry Sector and Geographical Region

  • Financial Technology (Fintech) in Germany

Application Developer
Projekteins GmbH
Osnabrueck, Germany
2018 February to 2019 August (1 year, 7 months)

Summary

Develop and implement backend microservices of a cloud-based omnichannel/no-line commerce application system for a large German shoe retailer.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Develop backend Java applications (REST API microservices) using the Scrum/Agile methodology
  • Implement unit tests using JUnit and Mockito and integration tests using Runscope
  • Manage Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
  • Monitor and analyse application performance
  • Perform general systems administration and other basic DevOps practices

Highlights and Achievements

  • Learned and applied DevOps principles and practices on-the-job
  • Took on some project management tasks like project scheduling, productivity measurement, and process engineering
  • Represented the company in a trade show in Düsseldorf and in a university event in Osnabrück

Technology Stack

  • Java 8 with Spring Framework
  • REST API microservices
  • Cloud Foundry PaaS on IBM Cloud (formerly known as Bluemix)
  • SysEleven-managed Kubernetes with Flux CD (GitOps)
  • Gitlab
  • Jenkins
  • Databases: MongoDB (NoSQL), PostgreSQL, and mySQL
  • IDEs: JetBrains IntelliJ, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, and Eclipse
  • Operating Systems for workstations: macOS and Windows 10 with Ubuntu WSL
  • SAP Point-of-Sale Data Managment (SAP POSDM)

Industry Sector and Geographical Region

  • Shoe Retail in Germany

Professional sabbatical to resettle in Germany
2017 April to 2018 January (10 months)

Level 3 Support (SAP Enterprise Portal)
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Taguig City, Philippines
2016 October to 2017 March (6 months)

Summary

Provide Level 3 support for custom financial apps in SAP Enterprise Portal (SAP EP).

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Support custom financial applications in SAP Enterprise Portal (SAP EP)
  • Develop, modify, and/or enhance applications
  • Document technical specifications of implemented changes
  • Resolve Problem Records and Incident Tickets

Technology Stack

  • Java EE using SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio (SAP NWDS)

Industry Sectors and Geographical Regions

  • Multinational Consumer Goods Manufacturing
  • Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, North America, and South America

(Senior) SAP Techno-Functional Consultant
Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific / Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Taguig City, Philippines
2009 September to 2016 October (7 years, 2 months)

Notes:

  • Promoted to senior position on 2014 February
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise split from Hewlett-Packard in 2015 November

Summary

Estimate and deliver SAP projects for Hewlett-Packard’s biggest SAP customer.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Provide FTE estimates for new project contracts
  • Facilitate client workshops to gather business requirements (AKA blueprinting or matching and mapping)
  • Transform business requirements to technical solutions including solution design, development, and implementation
  • Review and approve designs by other consultants
  • Provide remote or on-site support during user acceptance tests and hypercare, either as the first point of contact or as the escalation or next-level support for high-complexity issues
  • Interview candidates for open positions within the team
  • Train and mentor other consultants
  • Write documentation

Technology Stack

  • Main scope: Sales and Distribution (SAP SD) and Logistics Execution (SAP LE)
  • Other touchpoints: Materials Management (SAP MM) and Financial Accounting and Controlling (SAP FICO)
  • ABAP development: User exits, document forms (SAPScript Forms and Smart Forms), ALE (IDocs, EDI, XML, RFC), and BAPI
  • Solution Manager (SAP Solman)

Project Types

  • Establish new legal entities (i.e., companies, sales areas, and factories)
  • Integrate warehouse systems of third-party logistics (3PL) providers
  • Integrate external logistics solutions (i.e., JDA Transport Management System)
  • Merge and/or restructure corporate legal entities
  • Consolidate SAP systems
  • Develop custom enhancements

Industry Sectors and Geographical Regions

  • Multinational consumer goods manufacturing
  • International and cross-border sales & logistics
  • Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, North America, and South America

SAP Consultant / ABAP Developer
Aspire IT R&S, Inc.
Mandaluyong City, Philippines
2008 June to 2009 September (1 year, 3 months)

Summary

Work as an external SAP consultant and ABAP developer for Hewlett-Packard to help implement and deliver SAP projects for its biggest SAP customer.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Transform business requirements to technical solutions including solution design, development, and implementation
  • Provide remote support during user acceptance testing and hypercare
  • Write documentation

Technology Stack

  • Sales and Distribution (SAP SD)
  • Logistics Execution (SAP LE)
  • ABAP
  • SAPScript Forms

Project Types

  • Establish new legal entities (i.e., companies, sales areas, and factories
  • Integrate supply chain systems of third-party logistics (3PL) providers
  • Merge corporate legal entities

Industry Sectors and Geographic Regions

  • Multinational consumer goods manufacturing
  • International and cross-border sales & logistics
  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa

IT Staff
Samsung Electronics
Calamba City, Philippines
2006 April to 2008 June (2 years, 3 months)

Summary

Provide technical support to the daily factory and office operations as an SAP support staff (2006 November to 2008 June) and, previously, as an IT support staff (2006 April to 2006 October).

As an SAP support staff (2006 November to 2008 June):

  • Provide techno-functional support for the Financial Accounting and Controlling (SAP FICO) and Materials Management (SAP MM) modules
  • Develop and modify ABAP reports and programs (Highlight: Enhance the critical stock/inventory aging report program)
  • Perform basic SAP Basis administration

As an IT support staff (2006 April to 2006 October):

  • General IT infrastructure support
  • Basic SAP Basis support

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering
Lyceum of the Philippines University – Laguna
(formerly known as Lyceum Institute of Technology)
Calamba City, Philippines
2001 June to 2006 March (4 years, 10 months)

Highlights

Languages

Filipino/TagalogNative/Bilingual
EnglishNative/Bilingual
GermanIntermediate (Certified CEFR B1)