JLJade Lester
@jadelester
Senior DevOps & Infrastructure Architect with extensive automation expertise.
United StatesWhat I'm looking for
I am a Senior DevOps & Infrastructure Architect with over 30 years of experience in designing and automating global-scale infrastructure. My expertise lies in driving transformation through Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Agile CI/CD pipelines, and automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, and Python. I have a strong background in monitoring and observability using Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK Stack, which has enabled me to deliver zero-downtime deployments and resilient hybrid/multi-cloud solutions.
Throughout my career, I have successfully led teams and projects that align infrastructure strategy with business goals, optimizing costs and managing secure, high-availability systems. My recent freelance work has involved designing infrastructure upgrades for small businesses, building IoT automation projects, and maintaining a home lab to simulate production-grade environments. I am passionate about mentoring others and sharing my knowledge to foster growth in the tech community.
Experience
Work history, roles, and key accomplishments
Freelance DevOps Consultant & Technical Projects
Self-Employed / Independent Contractor
Jan 2022 - Present (3 years 5 months)
Designed and deployed infrastructure upgrades (next-gen firewalls, NAS, Windows/Linux servers) for small business clients, improving security and scalability. Built IoT automation projects using Raspberry Pi and Arduino, delivering real-time monitoring, sensor alerts, and process automation.
Technical Reskilling & Light Consulting Projects
Self-Directed
Jan 2023 - Jan 2024 (1 year)
Completed structured study and hands-on projects with Terraform, Ansible, GitOps, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines. Delivered responsive IT support to local businesses, including malware removal, system hardening, and wireless optimization.
IT Engineer & Facilities / Maintenance Generalist
Knights Inn LLC
Apr 2021 - Jan 2022 (9 months)
Modernized security with IP-based NVR surveillance and integrated hotel systems with online travel platforms. Maintained RFID keycard systems, PBX phones, and staff/guest network infrastructure.
TAC Engineer, UCS Hardware Team
Cisco Systems via Insight Global
May 2021 - Oct 2021 (5 months)
Delivered Tier-3 support for Cisco UCS hardware (B-Series, C-Series, FI, HyperFlex) across global deployments. Diagnosed UCS infrastructure issues involving VLANs, storage policies, service profiles, and firmware compliance.
Senior Solutions Architect
Texas Department of Transportation via Apex Systems
Oct 2019 - Feb 2020 (4 months)
Designed and deployed Cisco HyperFlex and NetApp FlexPod stack, achieving 35% improvement in workload performance. Authored zero-downtime migration playbooks for seamless system upgrades.
DevOps Engineer - UCS Infrastructure, Cisco IT
Cisco Systems
Sep 2017 - Oct 2019 (2 years 1 month)
Led end-to-end lifecycle management for global bare metal and virtualized environments within Cisco IT, supporting streamlined CI/CD deployments and infrastructure automation. Managed UCS B-Series, C-Series, HyperFlex, and Fabric Interconnects globally using UCSM, CIMC, UCS Central, UCS Director, and Intersight.
SRE / Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
Cisco Systems
Oct 2013 - Sep 2017 (3 years 11 months)
Automated end-to-end provisioning of over 8,000 UCS devices across global private cloud platform sites, utilizing CI/CD pipelines (Python, Ansible, Git, Gerrit, Jenkins) in an Agile framework to streamline deployment of OpenStack services across 10 global OpenStack (Icehouse / Juno) cloud platform sites. Collaborated with networking teams to optimize VLAN tagging, trunking, and OSPF configurations
Senior Virtualization / Infrastructure Engineer
Cisco Systems
Sep 2005 - Oct 2013 (8 years 1 month)
Administered global VMware & UCS environment (7,000+ hosts, 27,000+ VMs) with 99.99% uptime. Automated storage balancing with PowerShell to identify VM density, cluster overcommit, and vMotion targets.
Education
Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework
Jade hasn't added their education
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Tech stack
Software and tools used professionally
Availability
Location
United StatesAuthorized to work in
Website
personalwebsite.comSocial media
Job categories
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