Nicole Farris
Oklahoma City Area · United States ·
nikki.farris@icloud.com
Hiya, and welcome! I am a 2x AWS-certified DevOps Engineer by day, a hobbyist Software Developer by night, and an all-around nerd all of the time. I've worked in a variety of roles, from Operations to Development, and I've spent a lot of time over the years developing apps, bots, APIs and other software projects in my spare time. As such, the intersection of cloud operations and software development is a natural one for me. Automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and serverless technologies promise to change everything about the way modern IT operates, and I'm here for it.
Interests
Apart from my daily work, I have a variety of other interests and hobbies! I’ve been writing open-source apps and bots in my spare time for over ten years now, which I’ve found to be highly rewarding work! I’ve used a variety of languages and frameworks in doing so, such as C#, Python, and JS and I’ve got over five years of experience building small projects and other game demos with Unity3D as well.
I’ve also become fascinated with the Cloud over the years. I now hold two AWS certifications – the AWS Solutions Architect Associate and the AWS SysOps Administrator Associate – and I have plans for more certifications and future projects that will run in the Cloud. Chief among them: I will one day build a complete, end-to-end, secure and fully-featured serverless multiplayer network backend in the Cloud. That's a heck of an endeavor, but I think it’s possible to do so and achieving this goal would lower the costs of running multiplayer games substantially. This would allow Indies (read: me) to make online multiplayer games with as little operational overhead as possible.
As you might have guessed, I’m also a bit of a video game nerd. I don’t have a lot of time to play these days, but to give you an idea of the level of nerddom this reaches: I placed 3rd in a 64-player online (read: LAN mode but tunneled across the internet using a second NIC and a PC app called Warp Pipe) Mario Kart: Double Dash tournament in 2005! Feel free to ask me about it! I still play my Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Sega Saturn, Super Nintendo, and other classic consoles regularly. I will so show up to your game night or LAN party! Gaming is one of my favorite ways to bond with people.
Skills
Programming Languages
Tools
Workflow
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform
- CI/CD tools such as CircleCI, TravisCI, GitLab, GitHub Actions, JetBrains TeamCity, and Octopus Deploy
- Monitoring tools such as Datadog, LogicMonitor, Prometheus, Grafana, and Nagios
- Code security tools such as Snyk and tfsec
- Virtualization with VMWare, Hyper-V, and Amazon EC2; Containerization with Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon ECS and EKS
- Strong understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle, Agile Development & Scrum
Certifications
Experience
DevOps Engineer
Tackle.io
I'm writing lots of infrastructure as code, setting up and managing our CI/CD pipelines, and performing other tasks in the Cloud every day. I've been able to get into the weeds with Terraform and AWS in this role, I'm really proud of the things I've built! While I can't go into extreme detail here, I can offer that my work has made our developers' lives a lot easier. The code I write helps our teams deliver new products and enhancements more rapidly than ever while also embedding solid security defaults, ensuring infrastructure is secure by default and following the principal of least privilege by only opening the access that is necessary for the product to function.
June 2021 - Present
Overnight Remote Systems Administrator
Agio
In this role, I led after-hours projects, performed installations and maintenance, and took calls from end users along with many other tasks. I worked in over 150 client environments totaling over 10,000 users and devices, and I performed a wide variety of management work on all three major Cloud platforms. I also performed Release Management tasks for client development teams using CI/CD tools like Octopus Deploy and JetBrains TeamCity.
July 2018 - June 2021
Systems Administrator & VOIP Lead
Museum of the Bible
In my first post-graduation job, I began as a member of the Helpdesk, earning trust by assisting users with all sorts of software, hardware, and mobile device issues. Within a year, I was promoted to Systems Administrator and shortly after that, VOIP Lead. MOTB is where I fell in love with cloud computing: we ran a multi-cloud environment of AWS and Azure and I worked with the team to architect the technology behind the $500M Museum in Washington, DC.
September 2015 - July 2018
Family Room Specialist
Apple
I worked in the busiest Apple Store in the state of Oklahoma, so to say that this was a fast-paced job is an understatement! Time management was key: I empathized with customers, listened to and understood the issues they were coming in to get resolved, and quickly figured out the best way to resolve those problems. Each interaction was a complex web of possibilities, so I had to think and act quickly, and be correct too! In this role I got a ton of experience working with customers and built the soft skills that would be necessary to succeed in future roles.
April 2014 - September 2015
Education
Oklahoma State University-Stillwater
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA)
Major: Management Information Systems - Information Assurance
Organizations:
- Information Security and Assurance Club (ISAC)
- Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP)
- Student Union Activities Board (SUAB)
- KXZY Student Radio
The coursework was partially developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) and had an Information Assurance (Security) focus, so I obtained the following certifications upon
graduation, as well:
- NSTISSI 4011 - Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) Professional
- CNSSI 4012 - Senior Systems Manager
- CNSSI 4014 - Information Systems Security Officer
- NSTISSI 4015 - System Certifier
- CNSSI 4016 - Risk Analyst
August 2008 - December 2014
Awards
- Best Executed Project in the Q1 2022 Tackle.io Hackathon, for my Staging Reservation Bot
- 1st Place at the Oklahoma Tournament of Champions in General Business (2005)
- 3rd Place at the 8th Annual Southwest Regional CCDC (2012)