Hector Castro

1720 Fairmount Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19130
215-839-6736
[email protected]

Skills

• Languages: Spanish, Bash, Clojure, Go, Python, Ruby
• Web Frameworks: Django, Flask, Rails
• Configuration Management: Ansible, Chef, Docker, Packer, Terraform, Vagrant
• Operating Systems: FreeBSD, Linux (Amazon Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu), macOS
• Distributed Processing: Amazon ECS, Amazon EMR, Amazon Lambda, Mesos, Spark, YARN
• Data Stores: Accumulo, Cassandra, HDFS, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Riak, Solr

Experience

Operations Engineer, Azavea Inc.; Philadelphia, PA – July 2014-Present

• Built a foundation of reusable Ansible modules used across all software development teams.
• Added additional layers of metrics collection, alerting, and log aggregation to multiple applications.
• Helped introduce blue/green deployment techniques to mitigate deployment incidents.
• Aided benchmarking efforts of GeoTrellis on Amazon Web Services with Mesos, Spark, Accumulo, and HDFS.

Developer Advocate, Basho Technologies; Cambridge, MA – January 2013-July 2014

• Engaged in technical pre-sales conversations with prospects.
• Maintained Chef cookbooks for Riak and Riak CS.
• Built tooling to support Riak for Docker, Datomic, Omnibus, and Vagrant.

Programmer/Analyst, Wharton Research Data Services; Philadelphia, PA – June 2010-January 2013

• Automated existing data preparation and publishing processes.
• Rewrote a significant portion of internal documentation to improve maintainability.
• Re-architected a core product’s full-text search with Solr and Amazon Web Services.

Software Engineer, The Wharton School; Philadelphia, PA – August 2008-June 2010

• Met faculty and PhD research demands using a wide variety of languages and platforms.
• Delivered several technical presentations to spread awareness of emerging technologies.
• Helped drive open source software initiatives to decrease IT costs and maintain quality.

Community Involvement

Volunteer, Coded by Kids; Philadelphia, PA – October 2015-June 2016

• Led students through basic web development courses and projects.
• Streamlined student and volunteer on-boarding processes with virtual e-mail accounts.

Volunteer, Emerging Technologies Conference; Philadelphia, PA – September 2014-Present

• Helped recruit speakers for the infrastructure track.
• Helped expand Opportunity Grant program for members of underrepresented groups.

Co-organizer, Philly DevOps; Philadelphia, PA – July 2012-December 2015

• Started the first DevOps focused user group in Philadelphia.
• Working to grow a community for individuals who believe in bridging the gap between development and operations.

Board Member, PennApps Labs; Philadelphia, PA – May 2011

• Advised student initiated technology projects for the University of Pennsylvania.
• Connected student developers with technology resources within the university.

Volunteer, Police Athletic League; Philadelphia, PA – February 2011

• Mentored kids who where struggling with mathematics.
• Helped administer a 24 Challenge tournament for sixth graders.

Education

The Wharton School, UPenn, San Francisco, CA – Product Design and Development, January 2011

• Participated in an Innovation Tournament with a class of MBA students.
• Brainstormed and pitched several iterations of Internet based business ideas.
• Managed the development of website prototypes on a short timeline.

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA – B.S., Computer Science, May 2007

• Graduated Magna Cum Laude with a 3.66 GPA (3.70 in major).
• Member of the Temple University Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
• Served as an ambassador to incoming students for the Computer Science Department.