Rafal Proszowski

Site Reliability Engineer

Professional summary

I'm a highly experienced Site Reliability Engineer with extensive experience of providing technical leadership across teams and projects, committed to maintaining cutting edge technical skills and up-to-date industry knowledge. I'm eager to learn and always after new exciting opportunities and challenges.

Skills

Application DevelopmentGo, TypeScript, Node.js, NGINX
Infrastructure & CloudKubernetes, Terraform, AWS, CloudFoundry
Databases & StoragePostgres, MySQL, Redis, DynamoDB
DevOps & SecurityGit, Docker, CI/CD, Testing
Monitoring & ObservabilityGrafana, Prometheus, Datadog, Dynatrace
Frontend & WebReact, Angular, Koa.js, Express.js

Experience

Arrow right Arrow down : Head of Platform and Reliability Engineering at Government Digital Service
: Head of Platform and Reliability Engineering
: Lead SRE
  • Lead the Site Reliability Engineering capabilities across multiple teams, managed workload, provided guidance and mentorship to junior team members
  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams including software development, IT operations, and security teams to improve reliability, scalability, and security of infrastructure and the surrounding processes
  • Developed and implemented proactive monitoring and alerting systems to ensure that issues are caught before they become critical
  • Worked with development teams to ensure that software releases are properly tested, validated and deployed in production environments
  • Developed and maintained documentation for infrastructure and processes related to Site Reliability Engineering
  • Participated in incident response and post-mortem analysis to identify the root cause of problems and implement preventative measures to avoid similar incidents in the future
  • Ensured compliance with industry standards and best practices related to Site Reliability Engineering and serverless systems
  • Evaluated and implemented new technologies and tools that can help improve system performance and reliability
  • Worked and Communicated with senior management and stakeholders regarding the strategy, progress and status of Site Reliability Engineering initiatives providing guidance at various levels
  • Contributed and assisted in building the support model for the programme, setting out the strategy for running critical service sustainably and reliably
: Senior SRE and Tech Lead
  • Technical Lead for GOV.UK PaaS platform serving 200+ government organizations. Architected and delivered critical infrastructure components including admin portal used by the platform users and adopted by similar platforms in the industry, automated billing system processing monthly recharge, and inter-cell IPSec encryption layer improving security posture. Managed platform reliability for 2.5k applications and 2k backing services with 99.999% uptime.
  • Architected and led the design and development of various components for the Kubernetes platform including service operator, signed docker images, deployment and smoke testing pipelines
  • Worked with Senior Management, Product Managers, User Researchers, UI and Content Designers to understand user needs and design, plan and prioritise multiple streams of work to improve the platform
  • Provided expert advice to PaaS tenants across government and the wider public sector to help them get the most out of the platform and to establish best practice patterns and approaches. Feeding learnings from this support back into the team to help identify unmet needs
  • Developed GOV.UK PaaS and Build & Run processes with the use of Terraform, AWS, Concourse, Kubernetes, CloudFoundry, Bosh, YAML, Go, Shell Scripts, Postgres
  • Developed web applications for GOV.UK PaaS tenants with the use of Go, Node.js, TypeScript, Sinatra, JS, Webpack
  • Worked with Secure Continuous Delivery system using Git and GPG encryption to ensure integrity of developer commits prior to deployment
  • Line managed and mentored colleagues through career progression, more demanding tasks and new responsibilities
  • Troubleshoot complex network and systems issues through being on support or a incident lead
  • Actively patched various CVE's, performed security audits, triaged risks and pen-test findings
  • Collaborated with NCSC on improving the designs and architecture for an international system
  • In-depth pair programming to build shared knowledge, onboard colleagues to complex systems and share the burden of more demanding tasks
  • Presented and demonstrated at show and tells, knowledge shares, meet-ups, conferences and online panels and podcasts
  • Driving progression, well being, and best working practices for the team
  • Worked in an Agile - Kanban and Scrum environments
  • Used and managed ticketing system Pivotal Tracker for project management which involved creating epics and stories
Arrow right Arrow down : Frontend Developer at FLIP Sports
  • Worked on a rewards system with the use of Angular, Ionic, JWT, OIDC, Python, AWS, Postgres
  • Delivered services in a form of REST APIs, Web Applications, Metric collectors
  • Mainly focussed on the Frontend aspect of the projects
  • Helped out with certain python micro services
  • Helped out with PHP projects
  • Used ticketing system JIRA for project management
Arrow right Arrow down : Developer at HurstDEV
  • Worked with variety of clients on different needs, solutions and technologies
  • Been able to choose a stack for each project to satisfy needs
  • Worked with PHP, MySQL, Laravel, CakePHP, jQuery, Node.js, Gulp, Grunt, Ansible, Vagrant, NGINX, Ubuntu Server, Puppet, Shell Scripts
  • Delivered services in a form of REST APIs, eCommerce Stores, CMS, Web Applications, Chat
  • Helped out junior members of the team in progression
  • Helped out in recruitment process
  • Solved interesting problems to satisfy clients needs
  • Been on call for certain clients
  • Used ticketing systems Codebase and JIRA for project management
Arrow right Arrow down : Junior Web Developer at Surreal Creative
  • Worked with variety of clients on different needs, solutions and technologies
  • Worked with PHP, MySQL, CodeIgniter, Laravel, JavaScript, jQuery, Vagrant, Puppet, Chef
  • Solved interesting problems to satisfy client needs
  • Used ticketing system Pivotal Tracker, Codebase and Bootcamp for project management
Arrow right Arrow down : Extended Diploma in IT at Newcastle College
  • Worked on Exciting modules:
    • Unit 1: Communication and Employability Skills for IT
    • Unit 2: Computer Systems
    • Unit 3: Information Systems
    • Unit 4: Impact of the Use of IT on Business Systems
    • Unit 5: Managing Networks
    • Unit 6: Software Design and Development
    • Unit 7: Organisational Systems Security
    • Unit 8: e-Commerce
    • Unit 9: Computer Networks
    • Unit 10: Communication Technologies
    • Unit 11: Systems Analysis and Design
    • Unit 12: IT Technical Support
    • Unit 13: IT Systems Troubleshooting and Repair
  • Did few projects in PHP on the side in exchange for games
    • Local Game Shop website
    • A tool to generate websites for my class colleagues to pass their modules
  • Completed with an impressive result of Triple Distinction (D*DD)

Hobbies & Interests

IT, Technology, Software Development, Gaming, Open Source, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, comic books.

Making things open, making things better.