Matt Crook

Brief Summary

Currently, I am a DevOps Engineer and Tech Lead in Systems, Networking, and Cloud Infrastructure where I utilize previous full-stack engineering and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) experience to be able to create reliable infrastructure and pipelines in which data is shaped and protected from failure, and manage large scale, highly complex networking infrastructure components through the DevOps set of guiding principals, standards, and workflows. I also assist our large department of stakeholders in Machine Learning by applying these principals through MLOps.

I have experience and expertise working at large enterprise scale on a wide variety of technologies, some of which include: Kubernetes, CDN, Edge and Edge Compute, Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Security, Multi-Region / Multi-Cluster Service Mesh, API-Gateways, and MLOPS alongside Kubeflow, VertexAI and AI Model Pipelines, and deployment of ML models and pipelines.

As a Lead DevOps Engineer, I have stepped into more of a leadership role, where I assume responsibility not only for myself but also my team. I believe a team is only as good as its leader, and the leader must own everything in his or her world. For me, this means enabling the team for success, by mentoring and consistently working towards building a better and more effective team, and ownership in driving projects corresponding to business objectives consistently and effectively to completion.

Before becoming a software engineer, I had been working in the Music Business for 5+ years, being involved on the artist side playing drums professionally, later transitioning to the business and technical side doing project management and data analytics. Before that, I was an athlete and semi-pro golfer, and for a couple years a personal trainer and strength coach.

Personality wise, I am a lifelong learner and will always consider myself "junior" as there is always something new to learn, something to improve, and goals to be met.

In addition to my regular responsibilities, I provide mentorship for individuals and teams, and consulting services for various projects. I am available for both, and I am enthusiastic about exploring opportunities to support however I can in traditional capacities or volunteer my expertise for relevant projects or specific needs. Please don't hesitate to reach out, as I would love to start a conversation about how I can offer assistance.

For a more detailed description of my journey, previous work, and current work, please see the about page.

From Musician, to Project Manager, to Data Analytics, to Developer.

Before becoming a software engineer, I had worked in the music industry as an Income Tracking Services Manager and later Data Analyst at Bertelsmann Music Group, where I gained experience working in a rapidly changing and demanding environment, where my role touched nearly every other department in the company. My responsibilities as Income Tracking Services Manager included Redirection, Live Performance tracking and analysis, Mechanical Tracking and analysis, Radio Tracking and analysis, and further pipeline analysis and forecasting. I would contribute to over $5 million dollars recovered annually.

In addition, moving into Income Tracking Analytics, I project managed technical projects, worked regularly with large data, utilized the underlying platform services and infrastructure, created scripts to fetch data using various API's, developed extensive professional experience in data visualizations, used SQL and SQL tools for queries using various drivers to feed data into Power BI, and worked directly with our developers to build tools, apps, and automate processes.

My deepening curiosity for programming and understanding how things worked, ambition towards goals, and drive lead me to attending Nashville Software School. That curiosity and drive did not stop through school, and shorty after graduating from NSS, I accepted a role as a full-stack software engineer at RootNote where I had the opportunity to help build many of analytical and data visualization software I once used.

Continuing to learn and with the drive to grow my skills and craft, coupled with the passion and deep curiosity towards infrastructure, I continued my journey to next become a Site Reliability Engineer at Built Technologies. In my time at Built, I was eventually promoted and given the opportunity to lead a small SRE team to implement the SRE set of guiding principals for key initiatives.

Growing my aptitude in both application development and infrastructure, and gaining experience working with large distributed systems, I moved on to my current role at Target, where I have the opportunity to work with a wide array of technologies, including Kubernetes, Istio Service Mesh, CDNs and Edge Compute, work with Machine Learning Engineers to implement MLOps, Tech Lead many projects, and much more.

To learn more, and for a more detailed description of my previous and current experience, see my LinkedIn profile.