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Nelson Figueroa

I’m a Software Engineer with broad experience working with technologies like Ruby on Rails, Kubernetes, and Amazon Web Services. My interests include writing code, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity. I started this blog for fun and to share my knowledge. I currently work in a Kubernetes security role.

Experience

Security Engineer @ Robinhood (2023 - Present)

  • tbd :), lots of Kubernetes security stuff

Software Engineer IV @ Edmunds (2020 - 2022)

  • Managed Edmunds’ cloud infrastructure on Amazon Web Services
  • Began as Software Engineer III and was promoted to Software Engineer IV
  • Assisted developers with new application initiatives and infrastructure questions
  • Reduced AWS costs in the six figures range using billing dashboard and Trusted Advisor to clean up unused resources
  • Created and updated AWS Service Catalog products that developers use to deploy infrastructure with ease
  • Set up Spinnaker CI/CD on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service and maintain YAML manifests
  • Migrated SES email relays to dual region setup and set up Kibana, Elasticsearch, and SSO with Okta to view email logs.
  • Deployed QA version of CCPA Requests serverless app that uses Lambdas, DynamoDB defined in Terraform
  • Took part in 24/7 on-call duty to handle any production issues that may arise
  • Set up New Relic for metrics monitoring on all NGINX nodes and set up a dashboard for observability.
  • Creates redirects to maintain edmunds.com SEO rankings with CloudFront and Lambda@Edge functions written in Python
  • Developed and Deployed New Relic User Management Service with Python, API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB, and Okta.
  • Used AWS Athena to query access logs and identify malicious IP addresses and exposed internal services
  • Remediated security vulnerabilities across all infrastructure.

Junior DevOps Engineer @ Vitu (2019 - 2020)

  • Self-taught Terraform, Kubernetes, and Google Cloud Platform
  • Developed Terraform resources and modules to provision GCP infrastructure including: VPC networks, subnets, DNS, PostgreSQL databases, Redis stores, Linux virtual machines, and Kubernetes clusters
  • Wrote Dockerfiles to containerize .NET Core, Vue.js, and Angular applications
  • Created and managed Dev, Stage, and Production environments for several applications
  • Defined and managed Kubernetes objects in YAML, including: Namespaces, Deployments, Secrets, Horizontal Pod Autoscalers, Services, Managed Certificates, and Ingresses
  • Automated creation of Docker images and Kubernetes deployment using Google Cloud Build CI/CD
  • Improved production deployment speed and reduced downtime associated with production changes
  • Resolved production issues with databases, applications, and load balancers on a 24/7 basis

Software Engineering Intern @ Dollar Shave Club (Summer 2019)

  • Used Ruby on Rails to refactor Collateral Injection service, which supports over 3 million customers
  • Learned and applied Test-Driven Development using RSpec to deliver well-tested features

Software Engineer @ CSU Northridge (2018 - 2019)

  • Self-taught Ruby on Rails and began delivering production features within the first 2 months
  • Led development of the National Center on Deafness web app, serving 30,000+ students and faculty
  • Worked directly with customers in an Agile/Scrum environment to deliver features
  • Implemented LDAP authentication API successfully without interrupting live services
  • Used New Relic to analyze and improve slow SQL queries, reducing multiple query times by 30-50%
  • Updated application front ends using Bootstrap and JavaScript
  • Deployed production changes to EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services on a weekly basis
  • Wrote documentation for applications and trained incoming engineers

Skills

Programming/Scripting: Ruby, Python, Bash, Go

Web Technologies: Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap CSS, Bulma CSS

Databases: MySQL, SQLite 3, PostgreSQL

Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Serverless, CloudFormation, CI/CD (Google Cloud Build, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Spinnaker)

Cloud: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform

Operating Systems: Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, Kali), macOS, Windows 10

Other: Command Line, Agile/Scrum, Jira, Git, RSpec

Education

California State University, Northridge

Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Technology (2019)

Open-Source Contributions

github.com/tldr-pages/tldr

Simplified and community-driven “cheat sheet” for command line tools.

Contributed practical examples for the following commands:

  • rails generate
  • rails destroy
  • rails db
  • rails routes
  • terraform validate
  • terraform fmt
  • minikube stop
  • minikube delete
  • pmset displaysleepnow
  • kubectl get
  • kubectl describe
  • kubectl logs
  • kubectl rollout
  • kubectl delete
  • kubectl edit

Interests

Technology: Programming, DevOps/Cloud Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Privacy

Hobbies: Videogames, Electric Guitar

Games:

Shows:

  • Better Call Saul
  • Breaking Bad
  • The Mandalorian
  • The Eric Andre Show
  • The Boys
  • Succession
  • Invincible
  • BoJack Horseman
  • Silicon Valley
  • The Boondocks

Music: I mainly listen to Death Metal. My Bandcamp collection is public if you’re curious. Or check out some of my currently favorite songs:

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