David Rancourt Jr.

Resume

I am a systems engineer providing a strong background focused on providing value in Information Technology solutions for the Federal Government and corporate clients. I am the glue that bonds many projects together into a high-tech solution that is curated for each individual client’s specific needs. Please do not hesitate to contact me today to discuss your organization’s specific needs.

Experience

Sr. Unix Systems Administrator, INNOVIM

contractor at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD — February 2015 - Present
Providing Unix Systems Administrator support for the ICESat-2, GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation), Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory, and LVIS (Land Vegetation Ice Sensor) missions.

My primary objective in this position is to act as the “glue” between the IT operations and software development teams to ensure that all of the environments from integration, test and production are fully functional, allow the development to be in a continuous integration cycle where we build and deploy bespoke solutions to the clients.

  • Systems prioritization, profiling, baselining, and optimization for maximum efficiency and reliability are the client’s primary target goals.
  • Daily routine involves mitigation of security threats and risk analysis.
  • Automation of various COTS, GOTS, and bespoke applications with various integration schemes using orchestration tools.
  • Developed a bespoke continuous monitoring solution that is custom tailored to the client’s needs that ensures that issues are proactively attended to.

Systems Engineer, INNOVIM

contractor at NOAA - National Weather Service’s Systems Engineering Center - Meteorological Development Laboratory
Silver Spring, MD — April 2013 - February 2015
Providing systems engineering, prototyping, development, and planning for the NWS’s integration into the FAA NextGen Aviation System in a DevOps role bridging gaps between development and operations teams.

  • Integration of High-Performance Computing Clusters for integrating AWIPS-2 output data from meteorological offices across the NWS to integrate with the NextGen systems.
  • Development of the DevOps workflow for this organization to deploy code and infrastructure using change management and continuous integration.

IT Specialist, INNOVIM

contractor at NOAA - National Weather Service - Performance Management Division
Silver Spring, MD — November 2012 - January 2014
I handled all of the System Engineering duties on the IT side of projects for all of National Weather Service’s early-warning forecast verification system, which provides verification and performance metrics to scientists, meteorologists, military, educational researchers, and members of congress across the nation insight and tracking tools for the performance metircs of lead-time of warning notifications vs the actual time-frame of all related weather event observations.

  • Lead infrastructure upgrades, to modernize the system to a virtualized datacenter and speed it up as it is critical to ensure verification workflow is delivered on time.
  • Integrated bespoke software developed in-house along with various open-source software for weather forcast verification methods.
  • Performed routine maintenance work, security audits, fine-tuning, and optimization of the servers to ensure that the project runs smoothly and efficiently with miniamal downtime.

Network & Servers Administrator, Bird Technologies

Cleveland, OH — February 2012 - November 2012
My core responsibilities as the Network / Servers Administrator consisted of management and maintenance of nearly 200 servers in a mixed environment of Windows and Linux, as well as a various range of network and security appliances.

Some projects I took responsibility for in the System Administrator role involved research, testing, deployment, piloting and production roll-outs for various software applications that were developed by an in-house software engineering team. Some general examples included a thin-client conversion in the manufacturing facilities to preserve space in the factory. I also was responsible for the testing and deployment of a better WAN topology for all of the corporate factories to be fully integrated with headquarters.

I was also responsible for the daily management duties of multiple large clusters of Microsoft Exchange servers, Microsoft SQL Servers, & Microsoft Active Directory sites. I simplified the management process by implementing Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager & Operations Manager tools.

IT & Network Support, Bird Technologies - TX-RX Systems

Buffalo, NY — September 2010 - February 2012
Technical troubleshooting within an enterprise environment, including system crashes, slow-downs and data recoveries. Engaged and tracked High Priority issues, with responsibility for timely documentation, escalation (if appropriate), resolution and closure of trouble tickets. Responsible for monitoring network traffic and troubleshooting network issues in a timely manner.

  • Team lead that researched and implemented a site to site VPN solution to replace an old and aging inefficient system that was causing down-time of communications between offices. Implemented the solution with Sonicwall UTM appliances and configured the appliances as the default gateways for each branch office.
  • Monitored network infrastructure utilizing SNMP targeting software on multiple platforms.
  • Kept inventory of all workstations and laptops with Spiceworks, a low cost web based help desk ticketing solution that I helped implement.
  • Provided support for Microsoft based environment for 300 users in multiple locations worldwide.
  • Migrated physical servers to a VMWare ESXi based virtual environment.
  • Troubleshooting of network performance utilizing both Windows and Linux based tools, Wireshark, Snort, Nessus Security Scanner, Angry IP Scanner, IPTools, NSLookup, and many other built in functions of both Windows and Linux.
  • Handled technical/mission-critical calls daily and consistently met satisfied user results.
  • Built and maintained customized computers for engineering and software engineering teams specialized for Xilinx compilations which required more stringent standards.
  • Experienced with troubleshooting Dell servers, workstations and laptops.
  • Built a cost effective NAS solution utilizing FreeNAS, to provide iSCSI targets for each of the servers to backup images, a part of the disaster recovery plan.
  • Worked on network infrastructure projects involving cabling, re-wiring racks, dropping new nodes in areas of need.

Technology Expertise

  • Network Infrastructure - Cisco, Dell, HP, Juniper, Ubiquiti, Barracuda, D-Link, Ruckus, Netgear
  • Network Security - PFSense, Sonicwall, Cisco ASA, Juniper Netscreen, Barracuda
  • Virtualization - Citrix, VMWare, Hyper-V, Xen, KVM
  • Cloud based PaaS, IaaS - Amazon AWS, Linode, Digital Ocean, Google Cloud Platform, Google Firebase
  • Local/Hybrid PaaS, IaaS - OpenStack, OpenShift
  • Storage Technologies - Dell EqualLogic, NetApp, Nexenta, Promise
  • Server and Desktop Hardware - whitebox & OEM - Dell, HP, IBM / Lenovo, Sun, Supermicro
  • Server and Desktop Operating Systems - Windows Server, Red Hat, CentOS, Debian, Scientific Linux, Ubuntu
  • LAN/WAN/WLAN – design and troubleshooting
  • Network Protocols – Routing, Switching, VLANs, BGP, iSCSI, Fiber, Copper, Wireless & Sensors
  • Server Administration, Automation, & Monitoring - Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Nagios, Opsview, Graphite+Grafana, Logstash, OSSEC-HIDs, Snort, Cacti, Splunk, PKI, Graylog2, Sensu, Nginx load balancers, NGINX web & proxy servers, PostgreSQL, Tomcat & node.js app servers, Docker containers
  • Documentation & Project Workflow - Jira, Confluence, Dokuwiki, Gitlab, GitHub Enterprise, Jenkins, Travis-CI, Circle-CI, Slack, ServiceNow

Education

University of Maryland, University College BS, Management Information Systems - 2019
Rochester Institute of Technology AAS, Applied Computing Technologies - 2011