Michael Kirkpatrick

Experience

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  BODELWYDDAN CASTLE TRUST

  May 2008 - Jun 2014

  Paranormal Investigator

  An incredibly fun job!Provided historical tours of the building, then ghost hunted through the night. While this is a far cry from being IT related, this did give me the necessary skills and confidence to be able to stand in front of a crowd and talk - as such, I am a well rounded presenter.

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  Ysgol Emrys Ap Iwan

  Sept 2013 - Jul 2016

  Music Technology Teacher

  Teaching A-level music technology.This was on a peripatetic basis, with guitar tutorship thrown in.Reporting and auditing was of vital importance; as was accuracy of grades, delivery of information and the ability to be very adaptable at a moments notice.

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  Pearson VUE

  Jan 2017 - May 2022

  Help Desk Support Specialist

  An incredibly varied helpdesk role where I was able to wear many hats at various stages.Initially:-Provide over-the-phone and webchat based help to users at test centres (3rd party and company owned) for the bespoke PearsonVUE testing software.-Networking - the software was very network heavy, as such Firewall rules, ports, DNS and subnets had to be set up in a certain way. Provided much support on this.-Windows support - company owned sites had full WinTel support.-Software updates-Always providing the best customer support whether internally or externally - received a great deal of positive comments over the years for that with me being specifically asked for on a regular basis.NOC Team:I was able to have a secondment with the NOC team where I was able to be part of CISCO switch/firewall/router configurations, build new test sites including cabling and building of server racks.Internal IT Team:I had an additional secondment with the internal IT team where I was able to be involved in SCCM, imaging, building new machines and internal WinTel support (including printers)Operations Engineer:During my final stage at being in this role (same job title) I was part of a small team where we migrated a major client (DVSA driving theory tests) to a new piece of software, utilising IIS, SQL and an Azure backend. We worked very closely with the DVSA, third parties and our internal stake holders. This ended up being hugely successful and one of the smoothest transitions in the company's history. Show less

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  Netcompany

  May 2022 - Nov 2024

  A promotion from my previous Netcompany role.Since starting in this position I have been involved in decommissioning a major piece of critical UK infrastructure, resulting in massive cost savings for the UK government.I have been heavily involved in service improvement for various teams, increasing their methodology and monitoring solutions - resulting in more efficient responses to events/incidents as well more defined processes on how to handle them when they do come in.I am leading a team of Advanced Engineers in establishing stronger IT security principles within our Cloud space (particularly where Netcompany is the CSP) - resulting in more resilient, better secured and more audited environments. This has been done with minimal cost to further increase its value to both internal and external customers. This is using many cloud-native tools, scripts and internal ticket systems.I have been selected as an instructor on a major week-long seminar held by the company to increase understanding of methodology, client engagement and following a project through to completion from an infrastructure perspective. This is an extremely highly rated and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive, with my performance on these a contributing factor. This involves presentations, providing feedback and teaching in general.My primary project currently is another piece of critical UK infrastructure that is Hyper-V focussed, however, my role is to bolster processes and procedures, improve the Azure-side of the project (monitoring and improvements) as well as adding automations to increase efficiency across the board. Show less An incredibly varied role that allowed me to grow into the Senior Operations man I am today. Working on a vast array of different types of systems.Initially offering application support in a critical UK system across a huge server suite, adding in automation to expedite lengthy processes and increasing auditability by improving monthly reporting. Applications such as K2, F5 load balancer, SQL, BizTalk as well bespoke software within the environment were all in-scope.From starting within this project, I was 2nd in command within a few months, taking the helm while the TL was away - liaising with the client, attending CABs and ensuring internal processes were being followed.I was part of a team that created an internal alerting tool combining SQL, C#, PowerShell, PowerAutomate and SendGrid. This has reduced MTTR to events/incidents and provides stronger internal accountability.From here I moved onto several PaaS Azure projects, where I was able to improve:-Azure DevOps Pipelines-Increase automation with runbooks improving efficiency-Improve monitoring with New Relic and built in Azure tools.-Methodology with the use of tooling/documentationI was also the team lead for one of the countries most used/important pieces of critical infrastructure. Show less

  • Advanced Operations Engineer

    Dec 2023 - Nov 2024

  • Operations Engineer

    May 2022 - Dec 2023
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  Justice Digital

  Nov 2024 - now

  Senior infrastructure engineer (cloud ops)