Adam B. Firester

 

9 Parc Lane

Hicksville, NY 11801

(516) 939-9470

E-mail: adam@firester.com

 

Objective:        To obtain a challenging leadership position in the area of systems architecture with the opportunity to create and explore unique technical solutions to satisfy company needs.

                       

Computer Skills:

            Hardware:                         Intel x86, AMD Opteron, Sun SuperSPARC, Sun UltraSPARC I/II/III, Sun AX000/DX000, EMC Symmetrix/Clariion, MTI, Netapp

            Operating Systems:     Solaris, SunOS, FreeBSD, Linux, Irix, Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, Cisco IOS

            Protocols:                          TCP/IP, SMTP, POP/IMAP, DNS, NFS, SMB, NNTP, FTP, HTTP, NTP, TELNET, SSH, LDAP

            Languages:                        C/C++, Perl, PHP, Visual Basic, HTML, Javascript, UNIX shell environments

            Applications:                     Solstice DiskSuite, Veritas Volume Manager/File System, Veritas Cluster Server, EMC Navisphere, Checkpoint Firewall-1, Apache, Tomcat, Squid, iPlanet, Vignette StoryServer, Netgravity, HP OpenView, Netcool, F5 and Foundry Load Balancing Products, Oracle8.x, Thunderstone, Rational ClearCase, VMWare GSX Server, and additional open source products.

                                                              

Work Experience:

            Yahoo! HotJobs                                                                                                                                            2/02 - Present

            Lead Systems Engineer                                                                                                                                2/02 – Present

Architecture and staged implementation of Yahoo's first disaster recovery site for HotJobs in the West Coast datacenter facility, which required adaptation of the HotJobs platform and technology to the Yahoo network architecture, as well as formulation of methods for data replication across the company's inter-colo VPN.

Coordinated a successful site failover of the HotJobs site from the East Coast to West Coast datacenter location.

Planned and oversaw the relocation of the original HotJobs infrastructure from the existing NYC location to Yahoo’s Virginia datacenter. Guided Yahoo cage management staff to establish proper rack layout with an eye towards maximizing system/network redundancy, as well as ensuring sufficient availability of electrical power.

Capacity planning of various site components with a subsequent reallocation of hardware resources to better meet performance requirements and hardware redundancy.

Led project team to replace technology for the HotJobs Candidate Search product with search engine technology obtained through an acquisition.  Our team was the company vanguard in use of this technology. Worked closely with the search team located in Norway to adapt the technology to the Yahoo platform. Provided proof of concept to allow leverage of the technology throughout the company.

Operations lead for a high-profile project to rearchitect the HotJobs recruiter product.  This required project management of team members across 3 global locations as well as close coordination with the project’s other functional teams.

Determination of architectural requirements for an ASP-style customer solution based on projected traffic and growth metrics.

Tuning of Solaris kernel drivers to increase performance and enhance security.

Introduction of automated build and rapid deployment methods for Solaris and Linux server platforms to offer specific appliance hosts using Jumpstart and Kickstart, native packaging methods, and post-install scripts.  This method was later adapted to account for location-specific configurations.

Rebuilt HotJobs Solaris platform from a heterogeneous mix of versions 2.6, 7, and 8 hosts to a homogeneous Solaris 8 platform in order to accomplish consistent behavior across server farms as well as the reduction of administrative overhead.

Configuration and management of Oracle datastores comprised of clustered Sun EX500 hosts running VCS and direct-attached to EMC Clariion FC4500 storage, which included a major overhaul of the OS and HBA drivers in order to upgrade from Solaris 8 and Navisphere ATF to Solaris 9 and Veritas DMP.

Systems support to DBA team for project to upgrade Oracle 8.1.7 to 10g RAC standalone.

Architecture of HA hardware platform for 10g RAC installation consisting of AMD Opteron systems running RHEL4 and Netapp FAS980 storage.

Configuration and deployment of MTI SAN storage for backend Oracle datastores of the SoftShoe platform, a hosted enterprise customer solution.

Rollout of performance monitoring solution to gather metrics from production hosts and display them via the web as graphs over time.

Rebuilt development and QA environments using VMWare GSX server and FreeBSD jails to consolidate hardware and enforce a new scheme for resource deployment.

Introduction of many standards and policies which resulted in a more consistent change management and code deployment process, greatly reducing risk of human error.

Enforcement of server naming conventions to eliminate administrative confusion and error.

Architecture and execution of a serial console solution for all hosts using Cyclades technology.

Providing systems support and architectural guidance to Software Development and QA teams of the HotJobs business unit for major product launches.

Interfacing and collaborating with staff of other Yahoo divisions on issues concerning use of proprietary software for the HotJobs site.

Interviewing and training of new Operations team members as HotJobs established a presence in the Sunnyvale and Bangalore locations.

Authoring of management scripts for Yahoo proprietary applications using shell and Perl.

Providing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level on-call support for production site issues.

 

 

            nano                                                                                                                                                                  11/00 - 12/01

            Sr. Director, Systems and Operations                                                                                                         11/00 - 12/01

Building and management of team responsible for configuration, deployment, and maintenance of all systems for the company, including corporate desktop and mobile workstations as well as all platforms relevant to production work cycles.

Setting of all policies and procedures with regards to how the team functions as well as how other teams interact with it.

Development of approved annual budget for team.

Working with VP of Finance to negotiate leasing terms with vendors for systems hardware.

Rebuild/expansion of existing development environment to enforce standardization and support software development team.

Development of systems architectural plans for ASP-modeled service based on requirements of company-developed software.

Rapid deployment (2 ˝ weeks) of a multi-tiered, HA production platform consisting of 40 Sparc Solaris and Intel Linux hosts.

Liaison to other teams of the company.

Management of vendor relationships for the company.

 

 

            StarMedia Network                                                                                                                                       11/98 - 10/00

            Director of Systems                                                                                                                                          8/99 - 10/00

Management of 24x7 operations for configuration, deployment and maintenance of 300+ hosts, including Sun U2-E6500s running Solaris and Intel hosts running FreeBSD and NT.

Setting of standards and security policies for servers, as well as sysadmin practices of team.

Creation of all operational procedures for the team.

Overseeing of all major architectural changes, including the upgrade of entire Solaris farm from 2.6 to 7, rearchitecture of adserving cluster for peak performance, and consolidation of the core webserver cluster from 20 hosts to 5 for greater ease of administration and reduction of operating cost.

Implementation of development and QA environments for all host clusters to enforce better development cycle procedures, with an accompanying reduction of errors in production.

Responsible for completion of project to migrate E-mail of 2.3 million users from an outsourced vendor to an in-house solution using Sun and EMC hardware and software from Software.com.

Responsible for leading the team through 2 major site relaunch events.

Coordination of all major projects.

Management of all vendor relationships for the department.

            Senior Systems Administrator                                                                                                                        11/98 - 8/99

Administration of all Unix hosts.

Configuration and administration of T1 link between datacenter and office.

Responsible for purchase of all hardware and software for new products as well as server expansion.

Wrote system in Perl to monitor critical services of server farm.

Implementation of customized Jumpstart host and Solaris packages for fast-paced server deployment.

Solely responsible for development of server platform for Periscopio, Inc, which laid the groundwork for standardization of all StarMedia hosts.  Later led team of sysadmins.

 

 

            Globix Corporation                                                                                                                                         8/97 - 10/98

            Manager, Systems                                                                                                                                             1/98 - 10/98

Management of all staff involved in maintenance and upgrades of onsite networked systems, as well as customer technical support of the company's internet services.

Coordination of project work and daily routines of staff.

Extensive involvement in the development and modification of internet services and policies.

             Systems and Networking Administrator                                                                                                         8/97 - 1/98

Administration of internal and collocated Solaris, Irix and Linux servers, including hardware configuration, installation of operating system, data backup solutions.       

Setup and administration of dialup, ISDN, and shell accounts for all customers and staff.

Administration of mail and news services.

Handling of all DNS issues, including the update and maintenance of nameserver records, as well as domain name registration for customers.

Configuration of customer networks, including netblock allocation and router configuration.

Implementation and maintenance of monitoring system for customer networks and collocated hosts, including the automated paging of technical staff in the event of a problem.

Installation and maintenance of web servers for hosted customers and internal purposes.

Implementation of an automated procedure to generate customized web traffic and bandwidth statistics for hosted and collocated customers.

 

                               

        Cooper Union Computer Center                                                                                                                         2/95 - 6/97

        Various positions                                                                                                                                                      

Account administration for students, faculty, and staff.

Hiring, scheduling, and payroll of employees.

Administration of 70 UNIX and Intel-based workstations and servers.

Design and maintenance of institution's official and internal web sites.

Web server and software implementation.

Configuration and integration of various web-related applications.

Supervision and training of students and faculty at all ability levels in programming, desktop application programs, and number crunching applications on various platforms.

 

Memberships:

                        Usenix, Sage

 

Education:

                                The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

                                B.E. Mechanical Engineering, May 1997

 

Interests:

                                Music, Reading, Camping, Fishing, Canoeing, Rafting, Scuba Diving, Traveling

 

References:

                        Available upon request