Learn how a data science executive thinks about building scalable data systems at startups.
Walter Derezinski
DevOps | Cloud Architect | FInOps | 30 years experience scaling applications and organizations
I help organizations balance their cloud cost with user experience against business objective
I've engineered systems capable of handling large-scale operations, from video-on-demand services and data lakes to contributing to one of the most widely-used apps ever, The Weather Channel.
I currently reside in Chattanooga, enjoying access to the nation's fastest internet speeds and looking for a reason to get 10G service to my house.
I am a freelance consultant looking to help startups lay the foundati…
Work
The Weather Company (The Weather Channel)
https://weather.com/· Reduced AWS monthly spending by 40% through Reserved Instance utilization, application right sizing, auto scaling groups, and reporting.
· Scaled an AWS ingest pipeline to handle more then 15T monthly events using Kinesis Firehose, SQS, Cassandra, EMR, Lambda, and S3 generating 72TB of monthly data across 600K files. Sustained a peak daily throughput of 1T events.
IBM – Watson Advertising and Weather Analytics
https://www.ibm.com/watson· Reduced AWS spending by $3M annualized without requiring a change in architecture.
· Implemented an AWS tagging policy and compliance reporting system.
· Developed multi-cloud AWS to IBM Cloud terraform CI/CD pipeline
Service Credit Union Payment Platform
Created a banking payments platform with real-time cost optimizations to lower service API costs and to provide switching of backend service providers without affecting the user experience.
The solution was designed as a B2B solution.
Toyota speed up engineering and design with AWS
https://youtu.be/vrA-KiYXTug?t=1564Solution Architect and Lead Developer for Toyota’s transformative multi-million project, orchestrating the migration of 2000 engineers to AWS's next-generation Integrated Digital Engineering (IDEA) platform, designed for virtual desktops (VDI) and high-performance computing (HPC).
· Streamlined User Experience: Designed an efficient user experience by redesigning the user workflow and application, condensing a 12-step process into a single click. This enhancement significantly improved user productivity and satisfaction.
· IDEA Platform Enhancements: Lead developer to enhance the IDEA platform to meet Toyota’s business and security requirements. The solution included ReactJS, Python, Jinja, bash, and PowerShell and optimizing the platform's performance and functionality.
CNN/Turner Broadcasting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAfC7ciWzS4Turner Broadcasting is using the AWS Cloud to provide storage and content processing required to enable mission-critical video libraries. Turner is creating a copy of CNN's 37-year news video library in AWS to take advantage of the cost and architectural benefits of cloud storage. This project has unique requirements around retrieval times, and Turner partnered with AWS to drive specific capabilities such as those Amazon Glacier expedited and bulk retrieval options. These cloud-based archives can enable Turner to use other cloud-based value-add services, such as AI/ML/search, and media supply chains efficiently. Turner's global content exploitation strategies call for extensive versioning of content assets required for distribution to different platforms, products, and regions. Today, this involves complex workflows to derive multiple downstream versions. Adopting the SMPTE Interoperable Mastering Format (IMF) and cloud-based object storage, Turner will dramatically simplify these workflows by enabling cloud-based automation and elastic scalability. Hear Turner’s strategy, implementation around these media workloads, and lessons learned.
See AWS re:Invent 2017: Turner's Cloud Archive for CNN's Video Library and Global Multip
Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV Migration
Led the cloud migration for the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV video stream solution being an Azure-only solution to supporting AWS and Openstack.
Experience
Walter Derezinski
Solution Architect, DevOps, Cloud Cost
Sep 2016 - Present
As a cost-conscious Solution Architect, I specialize in optimizing cloud expenditures while ensuring alignment with strategic business objectives. My extensive background spans product development, software engineering, and DevOps, equipping me with a versatile skill set to tackle diverse challenges.
- Lead architect for State Farm's AWS data lake
Ericsson
Technical Product Management
Dec 2006 - May 2016
Responsible for portfolio multi-cloud and systems strategy for media platform products.
- Lead development for 50 cloud and platform engineers
The Weather Channel
Senior System Architect
Jun 2000 - Dec 2016
Lead system architect for the clustered digital forecasting system, storage area network, and file services.
- Lead system engineer for the clustered digital forecasting system
Kennesaw State University
Graduate
Sep 1998 - Mar 2000
- Master of Business Administration
Bellsouth.Net
Operations Manager
Jan 1998 - Jun 2020
Launched Bellsouth's initial internet service focused on scaling their back office operation team and systems.
- Launched Bellsouth Internet Service
Sprint Paranet
Senior Technical Analyst, Professional Services
Jan 1994 - Jan 1998
Senior Analyst providing consulting services to customers along the East Coast, specializing in large-scale system migrations, system stabilization, and data protection.
- 4 Customer Recognition Awards
- Two time exceeded 100% Annual Performance
- Top Five Percent Company Best of the Best
Georgia Institute of Technology
Undergraduate
Sep 1990 - Dec 1993
- Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
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Former Co-Founder & CTO at Cedar Systems, early engineer at Maven, former VP of Engineering at Agilis Commerce
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