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Hi, I am Mickey

Michael Diores

Sr Devops Engineer at Rakuten Securities Inc.

With over 25 years of industry expertise, I bring a unique blend of technical expertise and industry-agnostic knowledge to the table, with a proven track record of success across multiple sectors, including Fintech, Telecom, IT Services, and more.

My strengths lie in my ability to rapidly adapt to new challenges, lead teams to success, and deliver high-quality results with unwavering enthusiasm and motivation. My unstoppable work ethic and focus on achieving desired outcomes drive me to excel. As a seasoned IT professional, I excel in deployment management, systems and network administration, and operating system expertise, with a strong background in Unix, zLinux, Linux, and *BSD. I’ve successfully set up an ISP from the ground up and have a proven ability to build, package, and deploy application code releases from test to production rollout.

With strong soft skills to match my technical expertise, I thrive in fast-paced environments, communicating effectively and collaborating seamlessly with teams to meet deadlines and resolve technical issues. I’m passionate about staying ahead of the curve, embracing new technologies and trends, and continuously developing my skills to deliver exceptional results.

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist
Istio and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Leadership
Team Work
Hard Working

Skills

Experiences

1
Rakuten Securities Inc.

July 2022 - Present

Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan

Rakuten Securities Inc. operates as a financial firm offering various brokerage and securities services. The Company offers the purchase, sales, and brokerage of securities throughout the world.

Senior Devops Engineer

July 2022 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • Infrastructure Modernization and Optimization
    - Revitalized 6-year-old on-premise infrastructure, deploying pfSense BSD Firewall and bandwidth management for 100+ devices, resolving operational bandwidth issues.
    - Negotiated 30% cost savings on a 1 million peso IT asset purchase in 2022, resulting in significant company savings.
    - Collaborated with global DevOps teams to transform 30-year-old infrastructure, migrating from Sun Microsystems to Linux and introducing innovative technologies.
    - Enhanced infrastructure monitoring with hardware resource tracking and alerting, using Icinga, Prometheus, and Zabbix.
    - Streamlined infrastructure management by migrating from Puppet to Infrastructure-as-Code (IaaC) using Terraform, Ansible, Gitlab with Runners (CICD) and Bitbucket.
    - Improved remote access security by migrating from Poor Man’s VPN to OpenVPN, addressing limitations and enhancing security.
    - Introduced new infrastructure tools, including IPA for DNS and SSO, IPAM for IP tracking, Nginx Proxy Manager, Guacamole, Netbox, and Portainer, on the air-gapped network.
    - Upgraded High Sierra Mac minis to Ventura, switching to VMware Fusion for improved virtual machine creation and resource efficiency on MacOS.
    - Maintained comprehensive documentation and ensured seamless issue resolution using Confluence and JIRA.
  • Upgraded infrastructure architecture by
    - Migrating from Ubuntu MaaS cluster to Proxmox Cluster with CEPH Cluster
    - Creating a Kubernetes Cluster with MetalLB and Nginx Ingress on Proxmox Cluster
    - Managing applications on Azure and AWS Kubernetes Cluster

Webqem

January 2016 - June 2022

Neutral Bay, NSW, Australia

Webqem is a collective of Sydney-based strategists, creatives and geeks with a history of excellence in web design, development and digital strategy. Our work spans international corporations to small businesses and not-for-profit organisations; across strategy, creative, IT, and marketing; for over seventeen years and ten thousand individual projects.

Devops Engineer

January 2016 - June 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Infrastructure Management
    - Oversee and monitor a fleet of 250-300 nodes, including web hosting, in-house, and application servers
  • Backup and Restoration
    - Led the implementation of a comprehensive backup and restoration solution using Bacula, Duplicity, and rsnapshot, ensuring data integrity across all nodes (Windows and Linux)
  • Technical Support
    - Provide expert technical support for code deployments from testing to production environments
    - Conduct thorough testing of application updates in a controlled environment to ensure seamless deployment
  • Server Management
    - Monitor and implement server updates, ensuring optimal performance and security
    - Offer 24/7 on-call support for backup and restoration requests, resolving JIRA tickets promptly
  • Documentation and Knowledge Sharing
    - Document new discoveries, steps, and best practices on Confluence, promoting knowledge sharing and collaboration
  • Collaboration and Client Support
    - Work closely with Sales and Production teams to address client tickets related to server upgrades and value-added services
    - Deliver exceptional support, exceeding client expectations, and providing timely resolutions to tickets, inquiries, and consultations
  • Cloud and Automation
    - Deploy new nodes on various cloud platforms, including Digital Ocean, AWS, Vultr, and in-house XenServers
    - Utilize Puppet for deploying and rolling out changes, and create custom modules for server tasks that require automation across all or selected nodes
  • Monitoring and Maintenance
    - Monitor node performance and health using Nagios and Icinga
    - Collaborate with clients’ developers and IT teams to realize plans and blueprints
    - Maintain a diverse range of servers, including Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, and Windows, hosted on various platforms, including data centers, office nodes, and cloud providers
2

3
Accenture

June 2015 - January 2016

Cebu City, Philippines

Accenture plc is a US multinational professional services company headquartered in Dublin for tax reasons, specializing in information technology services and consulting. A Fortune Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $64.1 billion in 2023.

IT Operations Manager and Infrastructure Account Manager

June 2015 - January 2016

Responsibilities:
  • Leadership and Team Management
    - Successfully managed a team of 32 staff members and 4 Team Leads across all Cebu sites, spanning L1 to L4 Support levels
    - Achieved a promotion rate of 28% (9 staff members) to the next level, and hired 11 additional sub-contractors for L1 Support as a bonus for Cebu’s steady growth, performance, and cost savings
    - Supported a large user base of almost 5,000 seats
  • IT Asset Management
    - Led the IT Asset Team in collaboration with the Business Operations Manager to review and forecast IT Assets supply and demand
    - Successfully oversaw the monthly required IT Assets for two consecutive quarters, maintaining a 10% buffer
  • Problem-Solving and Process Improvement
    - Inherited year-old issues from previous management and resolved 90% of them within the first quarter
    - Implemented SCRUM Meetings, coaching, and daily performance checks to ensure compliance with company policies
  • IT Asset Compliance
    - Set and achieved a new IT Asset compliance target rate of 99%, improving from the previous management’s rating of 97.81% to 98.37%, and eventually reaching a monthly average of 99.19% to 99.46%
    - Successfully completed this feat despite the lack of manpower during the first quarter, with an L1 Support to Seats Ratio of 1:500 (compared to the standard ratio of 1:250)

IBM

August 2013 - July 2015

Cebu City, Philippines

International Business Machines Corporation, nicknamed Big Blue, is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries.

Integrated Demand and Supply | Continued Intelligence | Demand Management Deployment Team Lead

August 2013 - July 2015

Responsibilities:
  • Team Management and Collaboration
    - Led a team of librarians in Mexico and the Philippines, ensuring effective collaboration and communication.
    - Worked closely with cross-functional teams in Mexico, Philippines, China, US, and Europe to achieve shared goals.
  • Deployment and Release Management
    - Served as Deployment Lead, overseeing the release of applications from testing to production, creating change tickets, and coordinating with installation teams.
    - Managed the promotion, compilation, and binding of application code, ensuring change management and security administration for multiple projects.
  • Technical Expertise
    - Utilized AIX, Linux, MVS, Jenkins, and Websphere to manage code versions, requirements, defects, and tasks in Rational Team Concert.
    - Demonstrated expertise in managing code deployment requests, checking out code from the Code Library to various nodes, and deploying documentation to EPPS Online Doc.
  • Change Management and Support
    - Facilitated weekly change control meetings to review past promotions, follow-up issues, and new promotion requests.
    - Provided on-call/site support for monthly CPE/EXPRS runs and as needed by developers and projects.
    - Installed and updated ESAT engine and webPUBLISH on all nodes, and set up new boxes with necessary configurations.
  • Additional Responsibilities
    - Maintained password lists for librarian IDs on all nodes.
    - Performed cutover promotions from System Test to UAT or from UAT to Production for various applications.
    - Offered lifecycle support for Demand Management.
4

5
TheTMSway

June 2010 - August 2013

Cebu City, Philippines

TheTMSway provide a cloud based platform of services for mobile marketing and commerce and an innovative technology to promote mobile offers as direct extension of traditional advertising campaigns.

IT Infrastructure Team Lead

June 2010 - August 2013

Responsibilities:
  • Server and Network Infrastructure Management
    - Oversee server implementation, maintenance, and monitoring of leased line circuit
    - Administer CISCO 1800/1900 routers for reliable network connectivity
    - Troubleshoot and resolve network connection issues
    - Manage server and workstation installations/updates
    - Remotely troubleshoot Hong Kong servers via SSH
  • Infrastructure Optimization and Development
    - Spearheaded the development of a new software development flow and infrastructure, resulting in a significant boost to developer performance and productivity.
    - Implemented Single Sign-On (SSO) across multiple platforms, including WiKi, FTP, Email, Redmine, and Git, enhancing user experience and security.
    - Successfully migrated email server from RHE to FreeBSD with LDAP backend, improving email management and security.
    - Consolidated four RHE servers in RackSpace into a single FreeBSD server with JAIL virtualization, reducing monthly hosting costs and increasing server efficiency and web application performance.
    - Upgraded web infrastructure by replacing Apache with NGINX and PHP-FPM with NGINX Reverse Proxy as a load balancer, enhancing website performance and scalability.
    - Established an in-house web server for testing and development, streamlining the deployment process to HK servers.
    - Configured and optimized a streaming server in HK using Darwin, running on RHE and FreeBSD, to ensure seamless content delivery.
    - Managed virtual hosts and domains, ensuring efficient domain management and organization.
    - Optimized web servers using eAccelerator and memcache, resulting in improved website performance and responsiveness.

Education

B.Sc. in Computer Science & Engineering
CGPA: 3.5 out of 4
Taken Courses:
Course NameTotal CreditObtained Credit
Data Structures and Algorithm43.75
Network Security43.8
Operating System43.5
Artificial Intelligent43.75
Extracurricular Activities:
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Higher Secondary School Certificate
GPA: 5 out of 5
Extracurricular Activities:
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  • Vestibulum consectetur lorem justo, at laoreet lorem feugiat et.
  • Duis sed massa feugiat, ornare justo et, aliquam est.
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JK School of Science
2005-2010
Secondary School Certificate
GPA: 4.5 out of 5

Projects

Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Contributor March 2018 - Present

Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management.

Tensorflow
Tensorflow
Developer Jun 2018 - Present

An Open Source Machine Learning Framework for Everyone.

A sample academic paper
Team Lead Jan 2017 - Nov 2017

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Nocode
Nocode
Nothing Oct 2019 - Dec 2019

The best way to write secure and reliable applications. Write nothing; deploy nowhere.

Toha
Toha
Owner Jun 2019 - Present

A Hugo theme for personal portfolio.

Publications

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Accomplishments

Linux Foundation System Administrator
Linux Foundation March 2018 - March 2019

This course helps to understand the key concepts such as networking, storage, security, maintenance, logging and monitoring, application lifecycle, troubleshooting, API object primitives etc. It also help to grow the ability to establish basic use-cases for end users.

Machine Learning
Coursera Jun 2020 - Jan 2021

This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition. Topics include: (i) Supervised learning (parametric/non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks). (ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning). (iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias/variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI).

Grokking the System Design Interview
educative Jan 2018 - Sept 2018

This course is a complete guide to master the SDIs. It is created by hiring managers who’ve been working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon. We’ve carefully chosen a set of questions that have not only been repeatedly asked at top companies, but also provide a thorough experience to handle any system design problem.

Mastering Multithreading Programming with Go (Golang)
Udemy Nov 2017 - Mar 2018

Discover how to create responsive and high performance software. Develop programs with Golang that are highly Concurrent and Parallel. Improve your programming skills in Go with more advanced, mulithreading topics.

Achievements

Best Presenter

Champion

Graduation

Award Winner