My name is Cameron Tindall. Welcome to my résumé site.

I am a curious, outgoing IT professional in Austin, Texas. If you're considering me for a position, this page is here to help you make that decision, but that doesn't mean I don't want to talk! Please feel free to drop me a call or line by visting the contact section.

About Me

While I am very happy in my current position as Lead Systems Administrator at the Electronic Arts, I have been taking evening classes in computer science (having recently earned my Associates' degree). I have been a hobbyist programmer for over a decade, and a professional IT operations professional for nearly as long. I would like to deepen both skillsets and continue to put them to use professionally. To that end, I am seeking opportunities in Site Reliability Engineering and IT Operations, with a preference for organizations that practice (or are transitioning to) a continuous delivery model using declarative configuration management and related orchestration strategies ("DevOps" and related modalities).

Skills

Operations/Systems Administration

Linux Administration

  • CentOS/RHEL
  • Debian/Ubuntu
  • Apache/FastCGI
  • Nginx
  • Exim
  • MySQL

Incident Management

  • Familiar with ITIL standards.
  • rapid problem solving in stressful situations
  • root cause analysis
  • collaborate and lead cross-functional teams for swift incident resolution
  • distributed systems troubleshooting
  • tcpdump/packet capture
  • log analysis

Change Management

  • Familiar with ITIL guidelines.
  • Succesful in implementing new standards with existing stakeholders.
  • Risk Assessment
  • Operational Experience

Programming/Markup Languages

Proficient

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Python
  • PHP
  • Bash/Shellscript

Conversant

  • Javascript
  • Ruby
  • C/C++

Familiar

  • Perl
  • Common Lisp
  • Scheme

Other Skills

  • excellent written english
  • public speaking/teaching
  • high level customer service
  • experience with academic research
  • strongly self-motivated
  • conversational in Polish language

Employment and Education

Education

Associate Of Computer in Computer Science

(Austin Community College)

I maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA for in-area coursework and a 3.9 GPA overall while taking classes in evenings and weekends.

  • Programming Fundamentals I (Python)
  • Programming Fundamentals II (C/C++)
  • Programming Fundamentals III (Data Structures)
  • Computer Organization and Machine Language

Bachelor of Arts in History

(Michigan State University)

Studying history as part of a well-rounded undergraduate education, I was able to sample widely from the coursework available at MSU. I specialized in European History, and was granted special permission to take some graduate-level courses relevant to my research interests, which included the development of print and the history of science. In addition to academic pursuits, I was active in a number of organizations including the International Relations Organization, Model United Nations, and student housing cooperative Montie House.

Roles at Electronic Arts


Lead Systems Administrator - Mission Control Center

(current position)

At the Mission Control Center (MCC), I am responsible for building a true Incident Management discipline at Electronic Arts (EA).

  • devising and implementing standardized incident management procedures and improvements, from severity classifications to detailed contingency planning and escalation strategies, including communication, training and coaching to ensure uniform application across timezones and geographies
  • working alongside studio teams to on-board and plan for the launch of new online game titles, including Battlefield 2042, Need For Speed: Heat, Knockout City, Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, Star Wars: Squadrons, UFC 4, Need For Speed: Payback, as well as several yearly installments of the FIFA, Madden, and NHL franchises and nearly a dozen season launches for Apex: Legends
  • absorb the duties of several offshore teams with a smaller, more agile in-house team while improving quality and satisfaction among customers and partners
  • improving consistency and quality of incident reports via automation and training
  • reducing alerting noise by working with service owners to improve monitoring strategies and infrastructure

Roles at Endurance International Group


Lead Incident Manager

As Lead Incident Manager, I was responsible for high-level monitoring, incident management, and change management. In this role, I had the opportunity to manage relationships between diverse functions and brands including operations, datacenters, development, finance and public relations. As Lead Incident Manager I took on fewer direct-monitoring incident management duties and instead focused on:

  • implementation of the company's first Enterprise-wide Change Management process and policies
  • conducting blameless post-mortems of previous incidents
  • suggesting and implementing change to incident alert procedures, including maintenance of several emergency alert systems (Everbridge, xMatters, Pagerduty)
  • maintaining process and policy documentation for the rest of the department, including for training purposes
  • developing and maintaining specialized support scripts and software in Python, PHP, and Shell/Bash
  • integrating newly-acquired properties and companies into enterprise-wide procedures

Incident Analyst

As an incident analyst in the Command Center department, I was primarily responsible for day-to-day incident management tasks, including

  • monitoring system health via Zabbix, Icinga, and in-house monitoring tools.
  • declaring incidents and leading their resolution
  • running high-pressure incident phone bridges convened with subject-matter experts from across the company
  • keeping up-to-date contact and alert information for necessary subject-matter experts

Linux Support Administrator

As a Linux systems administrator for Hostgator (now part of the Endurance International Group), I was part of our round-the-clock systems administration team, handling customer inquiries and requests, performing maintenance in LAMP/cPanel shared server environments as well as custom environments using a wide variety of technologies, including:

  • Apache, Nginx
  • MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
  • NodeJS, Ruby On Rails, Wordpress

This was a fast paced environment where it was frequently necessary to understand new technologies quickly and to work under time pressure. During my time in this role, I rarely missed very strict performance metric goals, and received the “Employee of the Month” honor.


ESL Teacher

(various employers)

I worked as an ESL (English as a second language) teacher in a number of settings including private tutoring students, daycare and after-school programs, and University courses, both in the United States and abroad in Kraków, Poland. This experience improved my fluency with public speaking, including my skill in changing my register to new audiences as appropriate to them. I designed lesson plans, activities, and field trips to supplement ordinary classroom-based instruction.

After-School Program Coordinator

(Saginaw Public Schools — Saginaw, Michigan)

As part of the Federally-funded 21st Century Program, I coordinated a slate of educational after-school activities for middle-school aged children at Willie E. Thompson Middle School. Activities included structured debate, creative writing, problem-solving, and team-building activities. I was also responsble for a number of reports necessary to maintain grant funding for the program.

Substitute Teacher

(PCMI Services — Saginaw, Michigan)

As a substitute teacher employed by a firm serving multiple districts in the Mid-Michigan Area, I was called upon to teach at every level from Kindergarten to High School on short notice. I taught all subjects, from basic reading to high-school math. I was frequently sought-out specifically by several teachers and principals who were very happy with my work, and more than once engaged for week-long stints in the same classroom, fleshing out lesson plans with my own activities.

Projects

Open Source Projects

orgblog

Github Link

A web application and static site generator that generates websites from org-mode input files.

  • scratch-written recursive descent parser for org-mode files
  • Flask/Python
  • packaged and installation via `pip`
  • used in production in Billipede.net

NoPanel.sh

Github Link

Tools to aid LAMP system administration.

  • literate programming style: code and documentation both built from same sources
  • Bash/NOWEB
  • compiles to single shellscript file for easy installation
  • simplifies common tasks like adding users, backing up sites, etc


tabcast

Github Link

Small utility to generate UNIX-style tab-separated output files from standard RSS feeds, allowing the easy construction of shell pipelines and scripts that consume these feeds.

  • written in clean, Object-Oriented style
  • fault-tolerant: provides usable output even with malformed input
  • easily installable via `gem install`
  • full usage, README, and documentation included.

yance-man

Github Link

Jekyll template and Makefile for generating a professional-looking resume site from structured input.

  • produces static HTML site and PDF from identical input sources.
  • compatible with Jekyll and similar static site generators
  • works with Github Pages
  • easily customizable


Other Projects

Billipede.net

External Link

My technical blog where I write more or less regularly about projects, scripts, and other interests.

Really Big Day

External Link

Business offering custom websites for couples planning weddings.


CallMom.Pro

External Link

Service that will automatically connect you with your loved ones, so you never forget to stay in touch!

Email For Trees

External Link

Fun site allowing users to send messages to beloved trees in their area.

Lunch Warrior

External Link

Simple web application in HTML/jQuery to help plan a weekly brownbag lunch schedule.