Ian Johannesen

Systems Engineer | SRE/DevOps | IP Engineer

Summary

Proven track record in managing a wide variety of systems and networks, and using instrumentation to measure the ins and outs of a system to avoid bottlenecks ahead of time.

Firm believer in reliable builds and not using duct tape on duct tape.

Skilled in popular languages for scripting and infrastructure as code.

Technologies

Efficient in Rust, Nix, Perl, Java, and PHP
Knowledge about C, C++, C#, Go, Scala, Ruby, Elixir, and Python
Experienced Linux, Solaris and *BSD administrator
DBA level knowledge about MySQL, Oracle, PostGreSQL, and Cassandra
Extensive knowledge about Cisco and networking (BGP4+, IS-IS, OSPF, IPv4, IPv6, etc)
Highly available front-end systems based on nginx, Apache, HAproxy, and Squid
Automated builds and continuous integration using Github Actions and Gitlab CI
Scalable storage using ZFS and iSCSI
Infrastructure as code using Nix and Terraform
Kubernetes on bare metal and AWS AKS, and AWS ECS
Cloud providers AWS, GCP, Azure and Alibaba Cloud
Monitoring using Prometheus and Grafana
Git, Mercurial, SVN and CVS RCS systems

Employment

Devops Plaza SL — CEO & Partner

September 2020 — Present, Estepona

Implementation of software for custom hardware platform for customer (Rust/C), complete overhaul of customer setup and migration to AWS (PHP Laravel solution from non-scalable to fully scalable), and setup of Github Actions with Nix.

Concordium AG — P2P Lead & Senior SRE

January 2018 — September 2020, Marbella

Lead for P2P layer implementation, node runner (binary including all other components and facilitation communication between them), and surrounding instrumentation in Rust. Responsible for the team running the highly scalable testing cluster for simulating many thousands of nodes in a network and how it would perform, and the public facing infrastructure for public services and foundation run nodes on the main network.

RavenPack — Blockchain Consultant

April 2017 — June 2018, Marbella

Part of a team of 3 other developers, implemented a proof-of-concept version of a system for on-chain data pricing, management, processing and trading access to users’ data. Also responsible for the entire platform the proof of concept was tested on and for instrumentation of it to pinpoint potential bottlenecks.

HipDriver — Systems Engineer

March 2016 — February 2017, Marbella/Oslo

Designed and implemented a platform for hosting a system for driving data analysis - data collected with freq. of 30hz when cars were driving. The platform had to scale dynamically in- and outwards depending on how much ingestion was being sent to it.

Rage Technologies — Partner

August 2009 — December 2018, Copenhagen

My consultancy company that I used for ad-hoc projects and consultancy.

BeeVPN — Partner & Network Architect

December 2009 — November 2016, Copenhagen

Created and managed one of the biggest European VPN providers - at the time. Built on the Cisco ASA platform with custom Radius and hooks for dynamic user features. I also managed the LIR processes, transit agreements, and peering agreements.

FlexPhone A/S — Partner & Systems Engineer

August 2008 — December 2010, Copenhagen

A small Danish MVNO and ADSL company. At the best point, the company had around 8k subscribers. Services provided were mobile telephony, and broadband connections (ADSL) based. I was responsible for the billing and provisioning systems.

Willis A/S — Systems Engineer

August 2008 — January 2011, Copenhagen

After Willis A/S took over systems and platform for flexbenefits from WakyWaky A/S I helped with the technical handover and integration of the entire platform into theirs.

Earlier positions — details upon request

WakyWaky A/S — Systems Engineer
Galaxy Digital — Network Architect
Responsefabrikken A/S — Systems Engineer
Syslogic I/S — Partner & Systems Engineer
Arrownet A/S — IP Engineer
Netdoktor A/S — System Administrator
Advice A/S — Linux System Administrator

Education

Aalborg Handelsskole — High School, Economical line

1995 — 1998, Frederikshavn, Denmark

Hedegaardsskolen — Primary School

Non-Profit

Founded Freesite.DK / Wiktor.DK — a free website hosting company in Denmark
Core member of XS26 — a not for profit network of tunnel brokers to try to give more people access to IPv6 early on

Personal

Born in Denmark. Speaks Danish and English fluently, and Spanish on a communication-basis. Began programming in Turbo Pascal at age 13, founded a Danish free hosting website at age 17, and moved on to getting my first job in the sector later the same year. I’m passionate about the whole ecosystem around Nix and how to make every build the most reproducible it can be, and scaling up platforms the most flexible way.

Currently living with my dog in Estepona, Spain.