Mercedes Coyle

me@mercedescoyle.com
github.com/mercul3s

Interests

Automation, Systems Architecture, Chatops, Backend Software Engineering, Data, Public Speaking, Technical Writing. Hire me! I’m looking for a remote-friendly team doing meaningful work.

Experience

Percy

11/2018 - 5/2019
Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure

  • Prototyped and executed function as a service solution to prove out viability of rewriting browser rendering as a function, instead of a kubernetes backed rendering cluster
  • Increased test coverage from ~10% to ~85% in a small, but critical HTTP Proxy project written in Go, resulting in more reliable and readable code.
  • Acted as a team resource for Go knowledge and best practices, including test coverage, dependency management, and project architecture
  • Wrote a kubernetes mutation controller to manage node taints, tolerations, and affinities for advanced cluster scheduling

Sensu

6/2017 - 10/2018
Software Engineer, Sensu-Go

  • Collaborated on a team with 7 fellow developers on the open source sensu-go codebase, writing testable, reusable, and readable code.
  • Removed operational roadblocks to help smooth out our development process.
    • Enabled faster development, debugging, and release cycles by writing a terraform plan for a clustered staging environment on AWS
  • Onboarded new engineers by walking through the codebase and pairing on feature development.
  • Dug deep into etcd features, performance, and clustering.
  • Notable accomplishments:
    • Refactored keepalive and check ttl backend monitor code to ensure monitors were reusable and safely coordinated across a cluster of sensu-backend nodes.
    • Implemented a durable, etcd backed queue for use with adhoc check requests.
    • Paired with a colleague to plan, spec, rewrite, and reorganize sensu-go documentation. Revised language from a software developer focused, out of date reference, to operator centered getting started guides and complete api references.

Comcast

7/2016 - 2/2017
Software Engineer, Core Application Platforms

  • Wrote API integrations for Pagerduty and Slack to send metrics/alert data to those services in Elixir.
  • Implemented an Elixir API wrapper for Marathon to create/destroy/scale containers
  • Prototyped Slack chatbot in Elixir for a lab week project. Bot handled support questions for an HTTP proxy service, such as querying for a user’s api key limit and looking up on call rotation schedules in Pagerduty

Scripps Networks Interactive

8/2015 - 7/2016
Cloud Operations Engineer

  • Designed and built data collection system using AWS serverless architecture with Kinesis and Lambda to handle realtime processing of 100M+ events daily
  • Authored, refactored, and tested Chef cookbooks and recipes to automate teardown/build/installation of about 100 EC2 instances
  • Added monitoring checks for critical failure points with DataDog and AWS Lambda
  • Worked with Data team to build Hadoop and ELK systems, processing and storing around 70TB of data

Scripps Networks Interactive

2/2013 - 8/2015
Data Infrastructure Engineer

  • Built out Hadoop and ELK infrastructure and data pipelines for processing and analyzing 100M video player events daily in batch and realtime
  • Implemented dashboards and monitoring for system and data health using Statsd, DataDog, and Dashing
  • Architected and prototyped realtime analytics system for faster and more accurate business and system health metrics
  • Mentored Apprentice Engineers by pair programming, code reviews, and weekly goal and feedback sessions

ngmoco:)

4/2011-8/2012
Desktop Support / Corp Systems Admin

  • Scaled Open Directory Authentication system from one failing xserve to master / multiple replica scheme for better service availability
  • Upgraded CrashPlan backup server from mac hardware to an Ubuntu Server, expanded storage capacity, and optimized file exclusions and archiving for faster backups
  • Maintained Casper Software deployment system, creating new base OS images and software packages for deployment, and updating system as required

The Urban School

7/2008-4/2011
Technology Support Specialist

  • Provided Mac hardware, software, and AV support for over 400 students and teachers
  • Restructured and added new documentation to knowledge base
  • Managed small student team to image, inventory, and distribute new laptops to incoming students and teachers and provide after hours email support and documentation

Projects

OSS Contributions:
Sensu Go
Community maintained Sensu Go Chef cookbook

1U Home Datacenter: Virtualized servers with SmartOS Details in this blog post
Crabbot: Slack bot for Otakorp
Answers common questions such as event dates and ticket registration count using Python against a simple HTTP API
Lost and Found system: Web App for tracking and returning items lost during Otakon’s annual convention Flask, MongoDB, and phonetic algorithms for search functionality

Technical Talks

Monitorama 2018: Building Open Source Monitoring Tools
PyCon 2016: Build Serverless Realtime Data Pipelines with Python and AWS Lambda
OpenSourceBridge 2015: What’s in a name? Phonetic Algorithms for Search and Similarity
DevopsdaysSV 2014: Onboarding and Mentoring Apprentices with DevOps Culture

Skills

Languages and Frameworks: Go, Python, Ruby, Elixir, SQL, Flask, Sinatra, Arduino, Function as a Service (Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Openfaas)
Data Stores and Processing: Etcd, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, ZeroMQ, RabbitMQ, Rsyslog, Kinesis
Infrastructure tools: Kubernetes, GCP, AWS, Chef, Terraform, Helm, Docker
Monitoring tools: Sensu, DataDog, Statsd, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK stack
Methodologies: Kanban, DevOps, Continuous Delivery

Education

B.A. Photography, San Francisco State University Completed May 2005

Volunteering

Kumoricon 10/2017-present
Manager, Cosplay Repair:
Manage and direct volunteers, assist convention attendees with various materials repairs in an often chaotic environment. Ensure volunteers care for themselves as well as attendees.

Otakon 1/2014-present
Department head for Information Desk and Volunteer Operations, Otakon Vegas:
Direct volunteers, help attendees with information and locations at the convention
Staff for Volunteer Operations and Lost and Found, Otakorp:
Software development projects to help automate tedious processes, Code of Conduct committee

GeekGirlCon 10/2016
General volunteer: Helped convention attendees learn about demo video games and systems
Counted crowds and managed line control for workshop events