viewing contractor profile for ian-46512
Working in the IT contract market, I am skilled at rapidly adapting to new environments and learning new products to effectively manage and support most IT infrastructures. In my last contract it was this ability which made me the ideal choice to bridge the knowledge gap between the main Unix infrastructure staff member leaving and a replacement being recruited.
My latest permanent role was the Infrastructure Manager for a commercial utilities provider in North London. This position combined hands-on experience with the network and phone systems and all aspects of management of the team, infrastructure, auditing and liaison with the company's directors and its parent company, Macquarie Bank.
My primary technical skills lie with Linux and Windows systems, though I also have significant exposure to other network systems such as Sun Solaris, Novell Netware and IBM OS/2.
Throughout my career in Information Technology I have consistently applied my skills and enthusiasm in this field to all situations presented, researching problems and finding better ways of achieving goals based on all relevant factors such as implementation timescale, total cost of ownership, performance, reliability and security.
I am interested in all types of contract work in my field; one of my objectives for going into contracting at this time in my career is to further broaden my exposure to other systems and methodologies in other companies and to apply my existing skills in new and challenging environments.
experience
| Job Title | Company Name | Date From | Date To | Description |
| Broadcast IT Consultant | Red Bee Media | Jan 2009 |
The playout operations at Red Bee Media, based in the BBC Media Village at White City, are critical to the operations of numerous UK television operators including the BBC, Virgin Media and Channel 4. |
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| Linux Consultant | Television Translation Ltd | Jan 2009 | Jan 2009 |
I was commissioned to set up an infrastructure monitoring and alerting system within this broadcasting company in West London. Nagios and MRTG were the core systems I set up to provide these services. All critical services and processes on the network were included for monitoring and alerting to the relevant personnel. Key ports on the 10 Gigabit HP Procurve switches for the broadcast network were monitored with MRTG to provide historical information and graphs to assist the engineering team with capacity planning. |
| Linux and Unix Administrator | Bauer Media | Sep 2008 | Dec 2008 |
This large media and publishing company (publications including Grazia and FHM magazines) brought me in to take over the running of their Linux/Unix infrastructure from the Unix Systems Manager who was leaving the company. The infrastructure was handed over to me and my first task was to explore and fully understand the infrastructure before the existing manager left. I was also involved in assisting the Infrastructure Manager in finding a replacement permanent staff member for the replacement position. Once the replacement was on board I in turn handed over the infrastructure to him. - Developing a Kickstart system for RHEL 5.2 to automate installations for various types of server around the business |
| Infrastructure Manager | Corona Energy | Oct 2003 | Jul 2008 |
In this mid-sized commercial energy supplier, my role as infrastructure Manager was very much hands-on; I managed the desktop and network support team and was also the primary resource for planning and implementation of infrastructure projects, and providing third line support to the team. The network was built around a Windows NT / 2003 authentication system (one of my projects was to plan and implement the transition from Windows NT to Windows 2003 Active Directory). Most other components of the network were RedHat Linux based; Web servers (Apache), Storage servers (Samba), Mail relays (Postfix), Proxy servers (Squid), Database servers (Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL), network management (Nagios, syslog, Nessus) and backup servers (rsync, BackupPC, and Symantec on the Windows boxes). My responsibilities in managing the network included ensuring the security and reliability of the network; keeping track of updates necessary to all the servers, running penetration testing of the internal and Internet-facing servers and reporting to the Management team. I was also responsible for recommending IT policies and procedures and ensuring that up-to-date technical and disaster recovery documentatiion was available. Achievements during this role include: |
education, training and professional qualifications
| Date From | Date To | Estab | Qualification |
| Sep 1991 | Jul 1994 | Univeristy of Sheffield | BSc Physics |