James Lucktaylor

Overhauled GKE clusters and GitOps (Flux) workflows, reducing risk and tech debt for data and trading teams. Led implementation of Crossplane, enabling engineers to provision/manage infrastructure in-cluster directly alongside service software definitions. Co-developed abstraction layers, enabling teams to accelerate run up of new services into production from several weeks to a few minutes.

Led the Tyk Cloud and Tyk Operator squads, focusing on re-architecting to an event-driven paradigm and facilitating team growth through mentoring and recruitment. Evaluated and planned the development and release of an internal CLI tool, and drafted engineering-centric blog posts for thought leadership.

Worked primarily on the re-release of Tyk Cloud, a Kubernetes-based PaaS hosting Tyk API gateway and associated applications based on AWS. Automated local dev environment on Minikube, and later orchestrated move to Skaffold/Kind. Increased testability of the system with interfaces and mock/in-memory alternative packages.

Achieved certifications on both AWS and GCP platforms and maintained ISO 27001 compliance. Assisted with re-development, and enacted re-host/re-platform to IaaS/PaaS. Delivered a modular migration factory CI/CD pipeline with Terraform modules covered by Go-based Terratest integration/unit tests.

Managed DevOps processes and led Quality Assurance efforts for the company's TPM and pricing tools. Collaborated with the Product Owner and Chief Product Officer to ensure product quality and successful deployments.

Performed systems testing and contributed to DevOps initiatives for ERP solutions in the fashion industry. Collaborated with the Development Manager and Managing Director to ensure software quality and operational efficiency.

Grade: Richard Sutton Award for Best Performance in 2nd Year in Applied Science (2003), Member of Golden Key International Honour Society (2003), The prize for Best Performance in 1st Year in Applied Science, RMIT (2002), Merit for Science, Mathematics, Service to Transition and English (1998), Merit for Academic Excellence (1995, 1996).

Activities and societies: Mentoring as part of the RMIT Network program in Europe, working with undergraduates to coach and assist. Volunteering with the local Scouts chapter - age group 6-8 years old (Beavers).

Studied programming principles, operating systems, and coding in Java, C, C++, and PHP. Gained knowledge in data structures, memory operations, system calls, and software engineering. Covered SDLC, electrical engineering, hardware/software interfacing, and low-level driver implementation.