Andrew C. Hoffman

Experienced Technical Architect, Leader & Manager

Andrew has over 17 years of experience in deep technical roles, technical leadership and engineering management with a progressive increase in responsibility. He has built and led multiple Architecture and DevOps programs, executed cloud migrations and modernization overhauls. He is comfortable being hands-on if necessary or stepping back for a higher level perspective and coaching the team and helping them learn new technologies. 

He is driven by curiosity and a desire to help others feel passionate about technology and fulfilled in their careers.  He is an advocate for CloudNative technologies like Kubernetes, Argo and Backstage.

Education

MS, Strategic Management - IU Kelley School of Business MBA, General Management - IU Kelley School of Business BS, Computer Science, Distinguished Leadership Award - Denison University

Career Progression

Circonus, Director of Architecture

Feb 2023 - Current

Methodology: Technical Vision and Direction,Event Architecture, Distributed Systems, Coaching, Structured Interview, Domain Driven Design, Highly Available Systems Technologies: OpenSearch, Open Telemetry, Kubernetes, Backstage, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Kafka, PostgreSQL, AWS, GCP, GKE, CrossPlane, Terraform, Private VPC, Networking, Operator SDK

Leadership/Management

• Rolled out Architectural Decision Record (ADR) and process to persist institutional knowledge and increase visibility into technical decisions and increase thoughtfulness of cross team impact.
• Implemented Architectural modeling, risk management, and continual planning framework to be used to build into formal technical roadmapping process, grounded in financial and analytical decision making.
• Iteratively leading architectural evolution by helping engineer teams land on best practices and codify them in code.
• Lead tool selection for new multi-tenant log & telemetry SaaS Platform including build vs. buy decisions.
• Coached teams with strategies of how to model implementation and decide on domains for a new product, “Passport”, that automates telemetry agent management.

Technical

• Developed architectural vision and implementation strategy for near, mid and short term that unifies legacy and new product development into single unified platform by creating conceptual model that shifts focus from “systems” to on domain driven design principles that map domain entities and corresponding functionality.
• Architected and hands on implemented a multi-tenant based log and telemetry Saas platform based on OpenSearch and CNCF technologies such as OpenTelemetry.
• Designed and Implemented Developer Experience platform based on ArgoCD, Crossplane, Kubernetes in GCP and Backstage.
• Architected and Implemented custom K8s operator utilizing OperatorSDK to fully automate provisioning and management of OpenSearch clusters and ingest pipelines and other application resources.
• Hands-on implemented new Account and AuthN services utilizing event driven architectures with CloudEvents, Knative Eventing, Protobuf and gRpc to provide an example of how to use choreographed service patterns, as well as direct gRpc service-to-service communication. Used these services as baselines for service-templates.

Caribou Financial, Engineering Manager - DevOps

Aug 2021 - Jan 2023

Sr. DevOps Engineer

Apr 2021 - Aug 2021

Methodology: Change Management, Incident Response, Event Architecture, Coaching, Structured Interview, Dev Experience (Dx) Technologies: Kubernetes, Backstage, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Argo Workflows, Elastic Stack (ELK), Kafka, PostgreSQL, GCP, GKE,ConfigConnector, CrossPlane, Terraform, Private VPC, Networking

Leadership/Management

• Initial service deployment time reduced from weeks to under 10 minutes with ArgoCD, Workflows & Backstage.
• Scaled DevOps/Dx platform from supporting 12 engineers to 60 in under 12 months using CNCF based tooling.
• Evangelized change and K8s adoption creating the A.N.T.L.E.R.S. internal Dx platform brand.
• Implemented question bank for structured interviewing hiring process used to hire 50 Engineers and managers.
• Reduced platform incident rate from 2-4 times per week to < 4 per Quarter.
• Successfully lead the consolidated Heroku and legacy cloud environments into fully idempotent IaC based Kubernetes (GKE) platform on GCP.
• Grew first DevOps team of 6 engineers into leaders with “DevOps Partner” program.
• Ensured teams career growth through 1:1s, performance reviews and consistent feedback.
• Implemented scrum process with “Feature Captains” for shared ownership of roadmap.
• Oversaw rollout of corporate rebrand by collaborating with across the organization.
• Lead team in enabled collection of DORA metrics through ArgoCD, Argo Workflows.
• Built roadmap by creating systems that analyzed dev feedback, risk & business needs.
• Established partnerships with vendors to help accelerate adoption Backstage and data-streaming architecture.
• Strategically partnered with other managers to accelerate infrastructure antifragility goals as well as product features.
• Instituted bug triage and resolution to ensure SLAs were met.

Technical

• Architect, Lead and Hands-on implementation of IaC to provision the entire GCP cloud platform, Kubernetes Infrastructure, and Private VPC, Service Mesh.
• Cut legacy monolith build time from 2+ hours to < 20 minutes by converting legacy CI/CD to Argo Workflows.
• Created and implemented GitOps CD platform with ArgoCD and an App-of-Apps pattern.
• Implemented observability/telemetry platform using Elastic Stack, Kubernetes, and Kafka.
• Designed implementation of “one-click provisioning” using Backstage Scaffolder and Helm.
• Coached team into adopting an “Umbrella-chart” pattern to easily include subcharts and allow developers to provision new infrastructure according to pre-configured best practices.
• Within the first week, resolved database instability and migrated from self-managed to CloudSQL.
• Provided architectural guidance for implementing the Data Engineering platform on Kubernetes and event-based ingestion while following GCP’s best practices for IAM security.
• Taught Sr Engineers DDD principles, coached definition of domains.

DevOps Engineer, Healthx / Zipari

Sept 2019 - Apr 2021

Methodology: Scrum, Micro Service Architecture, Design Patterns, DDD, DevOps Transformation, Infrastructure as Code Technologies: Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, PowerShell (DSC), Bash, Dot Net Core 3, Vue, ASP.NET, Windows & Linux based infrastructure, Packer, Cloudformation, Helm, ArgoCD, Istio, Knative, Jenkins, MS SQL, Newman, Selenium.

• Brought to market a new multi-channel (Voice, SMS & Chat) AI based “virtual assistant” platform that is based on microservice and cloud-native architecture.
• Created DevOps platform for Kubernetes based microservices that included templates for docker builds, infrastructure provisioning through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and deployment via Helm and automated api test execution with Newman.
• Influenced architectural decisions and DevOps-friendly behaviors of the engineering team.
• Primary technical lead for migration of monolith ASP.NET application, working with consultancy, IT & Engineering to create new HIPAA & SOC compliant AWS environment. It is entirely based on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and consistent between dev, test and production environments.
• Designed performance tests to evaluate latency for various deployment topologies and sizing of cloud resources and assisted others with the implementation and execution of the tests.
• Created framework for PowerShell DSC and Packer to decouple build and deployment scripts from on-prem Hyper-V solutions and prepare for immutable cloud infrastructure. Guided other DevOps engineers on implementation.
• Lead design sessions with engineering and implemented trunk based deployment workflow and tagging strategy.
• Designed and implemented proof-of-concepted “next generation” microservice platform with focus on even-driven design and 12-factor applications using Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Istio, Grafana & KNative.
• Advanced architecture by working with Sr. Dir of Engineering, Architect and other senior technical resources to begin defining ubiquitous language and bounded contexts as part of the Architecture Governance Committee.
• Designed and implemented CDN, web-firewall and DDOS protection strategy to support over 200 custom domain names and SSL certificates. Included successfully proofing out authentication strategy to support legacy session-based authentication, as well as OAuth.
• Supported and analyzed legacy deployment and database issues ranging from SQL query performance issues to single-sign-on outages.
• Worked with IT to implement centralized logging, system and security monitoring.

Scheer Hoffman Solutions & Creative

March 2015 - Sept 2019

Methodology: Small business consulting, marketing

Technologies: Kubernetes, Docker, DotNet, PowerShell, PHP, Azure DevOps, Git

• Founded to help small businesses with media and technology only previously available to large institutions.
• Created highly available multi-tenant hosting environment using Docker, Azure Kubernetes, and AzureDev Ops
• Implemented custom websites, developed strategy roadmaps, and executed implementation.
• Consulted with foundations, associations, law firms, independent professionals, manufacturing, and retailers.
• Developed and executed business models, including go-to-market strategy for B2C and B2B brands, internal processes, technology strategy, and financial decision-making models.

Manager Consultant, Sogeti

February 2011 – March 2015

Roles: Integration Architect, Solution Architect,, Tech Lead/Lead Developer, Technical Business Analyst, Scrum Master Methodology: Scrum, Domain Modeling, Data Mapping, BPMN, Integration, SOA design patterns, RESTful interfaces, and SOAP. Technologies: C#, MVC.NET, Entity Framework, MS SQL, JavaScript/JQuery, SharePoint Solution Framework, Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, J2EE/Spring, Eclipse

• Conducted design meetings, code reviews, wrote user stories/technical specifications, estimated scope and planned workloads and ensured adherence to development methodologies.
• Researched technologies and conducted comparative analysis.
• Lead conversion of waterfall to agile/scrum development methodologies for multiple clients.
• Enterprise Architecture projects included investigative interviews, analyzing network traffic, data modeling, identifying data and process dependencies, defining canonical message formats, and selecting design patterns for services.
• Documented business processes using BPMN, analyzed for efficiency and then implemented the solutions.
• Reviewed and audited code and processes on other projects to identify architecture and stylistic flaws and make recommendations for improvements.
• Mentored junior developers in both technical and consulting skills.
• Implemented functionality in C# (MVC.NET), Java (J2EE/EJB), JavaScript (jQuery) as both stand-alone applications and SharePoint Solutions.
• Developed both public-facing and internal solutions for seven clients in insurance, heavy manufacturing, and online marketing industries.

Senior Consultant, Ambassador Solutions July 2009 – February 2011

Project Roles: Solution Architect, Tech Lead, Technical Business Analyst

Methodologies: Agile, Iterative Waterfall, Data Mapping, Records Management, Taxonomy DevelopmentTechnologies: C#, ASP.NET, MS SQL, JavaScript/JQuery, SharePoint Solution Framework, Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, Concept Searching, CSS/HTML, J2EE

Consultant, Crown Partners July 2007 – July 2009

Project Roles: Lead Developer, Developer, Technical Business Analyst Methodologies: Iterative Waterfall, Waterfall Technologies: C#, ASP.NET, MS SQL, JavaScript, Dojo, SharePoint Solution Framework, Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, J2EE, Documentum.

Presentations

• Leading Architectural Change with Backstage - BackstageCon/KubeCon Fall 2022
• Business Processes for Facebook Generation – ARMA International
• SharePoint Governance – ARMA International
• SharePoint Politics: Identifying Opportunity – SharePoint Saturday
• SharePoint Ad Hoc Rapid Application Development for Relational Data – SharePoint Saturday

Community Involvement & Leadership

• Indiana Buddhist Center - Treasurer/Board of Directors/Instructor 2021-present -- Teaches weekly education sessions about Buddhist philosophy and meditation.
• Indianapolis Valley Scottish Rite - Officer - 2020-present: Masonic institution that knows where the treasure is buried.
• Millersville Masonic Lodge – President (Master) 2015 & Officer 2008-2015: Responsible for 500 membership organizations with $150,000 annual budget and $1.2m in assets plus real estate.