Built a prototype for rudimentary alternative to data warehouse style reporting
Hypothesized that "sql-as-the-interface" was critical for reporting purposes
Proposed that existing integrating routes were insufficient
Explored an alterative method: adhoc creation of SQLite databases mirroring the schema and select rows from the parent data set
Shared findings with broader team and discussed ramifications of the approach
Used this as an opportunity to use ChatGPT Enterprise code generation
Discussing secrets management approaches for various vendor services operated through Terraform
Internal enterprise accessibility (UI)
Programmatic access in Vela (TF) and as a Workload (API)
Low operational overhead
High coherence with existing tooling
Updated vulnerability reporting to use v2 capabilities
Fixed bugs as they arose from the new v2 capabilities
Prototyped a new internal repository SVG badge for easier at-a-glance-status reports
SVG badge using basic go templating
Data sourced from cloud systems on uptime, deployment status, etc
September
Continued evaluating various SCA and SAST vendors
Increasingly scrutinizing vendor capabilities and weighing pros and cons
Supporting critical decisions with detailed reports
Compiled results of at least five SCA and SAST vendors
Continued as primary contributor to the cloud resources user interface codebase
Helped onboard new team members so they have at least a fundamental understanding of the codebase
Contributed to platform capabilities
Based on a feature request, contributed a basic integration with the API Gateway to determine if a policy was active or inactive, and report that during API deployment accordingly
Followed existing logic and codebase patterns
Wrote tests and increased Sonarqube coverage by 1.5%!
Programmatically alerted teams to stale deployments
Opened issues with details on their deployments in their respective repositories
Shared important details regarding the stale deployment cleanup timeline
Performed maintenance on various deployed applications
Upgraded dependencies
Resolved existing vulnerabilities
Continued contributing and brainstorming on new tech strategy
August
Continued evaluating various SCA and SAST vendors
Planned replacement scenarios internally
Began working on a new technical strategy initiative
Helping with various aspects
Continued as primary contributor to the cloud resources user interface codebase
Went to the Minnesota State Fair three times! 🎉
July
Began testing various SCA and SAST vendors
Evaluating findings reliability
Evaluating integrating capabilities (out of the box, API, CLI, etc)
Developed baseline SCA and SAST projects in JS/Node and Java/Spring Boot
Assisted the CIAM team with the Okta Identity Engine upgrade
Helped review bugs as they were filed
Created prototypes of different scenarios so product teams could follow along with necessary upgrades
Documented the legacy vela plugin deprecation timeline and approach
Explicitly listed existing plugins that are being deprecated
Created THEN-vs-NOW style documentation to help teams gradually migrate their pipelines
Wrote about the impetus and motivation behind the deprecation
Planned new code instrumentation, beyond metrics gathering, to gradually slow and eventually break builds if legacy plugins are still used
Continued as primary contributor to the cloud resources user interface codebase
Saved an old project as a memorialized frozen version and kept it for future generations
June
Monitored AEM usage until official shutdown
Finished data and image migrations
Finished codebase updates where necessary
Repeatedly communicated shutdown dates
Celebrated wild success for our years-long cutover
Became a primary contributor to the cloud resources user interface codebase
Implemented react query and react table with appropriate abstractions to ensure flexibility while offering some reusability
Guided team to use an openapi to sdk generator to make integrations easier
Enforced minimal customization to MUI to ensure future upgrades were smooth
Participated in a pilot program, field testing ChatGPT Enterprise
Framed around "engineering capabilities"
Set a basic cadence for reviewing findings and experiences (positive and negative) with the tooling
Shared video demos with the broader group regularly
May
Created end-to-end automated scripts that saved all existing AEM-Scene7 images locally, and programmatically reuploaded them in the new public-image target, Cloudflare Images
Created a data tracking system with caching to efficiently upload images
Updated various infrastructure pieces (CMS, S3-abstraction) to handle new workflows
Fixed various bugs introduced by changing internal vendor support
Wrote extensive documentation to guide product teams on minimal necessary changes required in their application layers (primarily limited to URL swaps)
Continued to monitor AEM usage
Created and watched datadog dashboards that summarized legacy ecosystem paths typically associated with AEM
Notified teams of remaining as shutdown looms
Rewrote daily productivity booster "gclone"
Written in plain bash
Intelligently clones a repository into a known folder path based on org/repo name
Automatically cd into the repo after clone
Wrote new tutorials for first time contributors
Wrote new Python API tutorial featuring FastAPI and Docker and Vela
Wrote new Java Spring Boot API tutorial also featuring Docker and Vela
Extensively updated existing guides for SPAs using Vite
Began assisting another platform team focused on cloud operations with their custom ui offering
Helped coach a backend engineer on frontend tooling and patterns
Helped scaffold the initial application using MUI, Vite, TypeScript, React (partially based on previous work)
During an innovation hackathon, used Ollama + Llama2 and Llama3 along with the GitHub API to pull activity for repositories (PRs, commits, change sets, etc) and summarize daily/weekly activity in a concise format
Created the CIAM organization while assisting Okta IDP team migration efforts
April
Continued Adobe Experience Manager shutdown evangelism
Ran two brownout periods, stage and then production, incrementally to help teams safely discover lingering integrations with legacy tooling
Worked with various teams to ensure a smooth transition
Helped a team using a legacy flow to onboard to the current reverse proxy solution
Helped teams previously using Apache migrate to containerized nginx for server side routing
Created a suite of basic single purpose vela plugins
trigger-deployment-plugin
trigger-release-plugin
validate-tag-plugin
March
Began preparing for final Adobe Experience Manager shutdown
Published documentation, featuring timeline, explanations, brownout dates, diagrams
Swapped internal Sonarqube instance authentication workflow from SAML to OIDC
Swap decreased workflow time substantially
Instrumentation legacy internal vela plugins with DataDog event hooks
Instrumentation provided metrics to prioritize updates and deprecation of legacy internal vela plugins
Created "undisclosed-ui" as a demonstration of a reproducible frontend codebase
Featuring Vite, TypeScript, MUI, TanStack tools
Restricted "net new" deployments in a legacy organization to spur product team scoped application management as previously planned
Allowed existing deployments to continue to operate with no firm migration timeline out of the legacy organization
February
Triaged unexpected behavior between vela and github
Tag events were no longer associated to their reference branch when tagged from the pipeline itself in undefined conditions
Created reproduction cases
Created an workaround that used the preferred interface anyway—using the github release ui
Experimented with an Okta Auth POC to extend token duration
Okta access tokens expiration is extensible while id tokens expiration are not
Refined a public authentication workflow for external and internal users
Previously using a non-OIDC approach with old versions of authentication packages
Previously implemented with a cookie-ful approach in mind; and later surreptitiously updated to use session tokens
Entirely re-implemented the flows using latest generation libraries
Reduced the number of SFDSCs (Screen Flash During State Change) and redirects and improved overall user cognitive load
Triaged a major security incident
Created a reproduction
Created initial documentation
During a hackathon, created a GitOps flavored link shortener
Used hono, zod, yaml
January
Announce that a monolithic cloud cluster will be locked for net new deployments broadly
Provided documentation for this plan
Applied a 4-sprint—60-day window to give teams ample time
Provided value aspects for breaking breaking this cluster a part if important and strategic
Finalized and began implementing with the api for arbitrary datadog events
Began refactoring and adding the curl -X POST call to the api service in various vela plugins to begin getting telemetry
Created a datadog dashboard with sections scoped to each plugin's usage
Backed up legacy application s3 buckets using various scripts
Backed up legacy application Auth0 databases
Compiled a list of AWS and Cloud stakeholders to get explicit documented approval to shutdown legacy application accounts
Shutdown legacy application accounts and documented their official closure dates
Enjoyed a wonderful winter break vacation for 10 days