Donald Johnson

Experience

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  TelstraClear

  Jan 2001 - Jan 2005

  CSR
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  Telecom New Zealand

  May 2005 - Apr 2008

  Service Delivery Specialist

  Supported staff in project delivery and technical knowledge for the delivery of wide area network solutions

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  Airways New Zealand

  Aug 2008 - Feb 2018

  Network Design, Architecture and Operations.System integration.Infrastructure and systems 3rd level support.Security.Policies and product frameworks.Leadership and mentoring.Vendor management.Stakeholder management.- Network Architect of MPLS and Carrier Ethernet network expansion in Christchurch and Wellington using Juniper, RAD and Cisco products.- Planning and design for refresh of air traffic management system and associated data centre networks.- Key driver in technology change.- Lead Network Architect for Airways NZ National MPLS backbone utilising Juniper, Cisco and RAD Hardware.- Network Architect of Multilateration IP network in Queenstown basin and southern New Zealand.- Network Architect of network operations networks using Cisco, VMWare and Solarwinds products.- Leadership and mentoring. Show less

  • Principal Network Engineer

    Jul 2016 - Feb 2018

  • Senior Network Engineer

    Aug 2008 - Jul 2016
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  Spark Digital NZ

  Feb 2018 - Mar 2019

  Technical Consultant

  Primarily a pre-sales role that focuses on client outcomes, also included delivery and engineering. Working with clients to understand their;• Business and technical requirements, plus any constraints for either. • Compiling of information into a solution for clients.• Strong focus on client relationships and outcomes to build on and become their trusted advisor.Worked closely with Christchurch and Queenstown City councils.• Played a key role in the delivery of the Tūranga Library wired network prior to opening. External review of design, with recommendations and remediation work for integration into the wider City Council network.• Worked with Queenstown District council to modernise their Data Centre Network. Designed and implemented higher capacity networking as they had outgrown their legacy Cisco hardware.• Identified areas for improvement and fixes for performance issue indicators in their Hyperconverged ESXI and Storage computes layers. Show less

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  Computer Concepts Limited

  Mar 2019 - May 2022

  Responsible Data Centre Networking, Automation practice, and Monitoring platforms across the merged Computer Concepts Ltd and Revera Limited business.• Data Centre network modernisation leveraging our fully automated Arista design using Ansible.• Monitoring Strategy / Guidelines• Automation tooling development• Developed DevOps community of practise within CCL for sharing of knowledge, success stories and to meet common challenges.• Instillment of common practises. For example, code documentation (i.e. PEP257) and code styling (i.e. PEP8).• Development of “How we work” guidelines to instil common practises.• Co-Developing our development environments, covering from workstation coding through all test, review and pre-production phases to production ensuring idempotency in execution no matter the stage.• Removing barriers to coding, testing and execution of code through common practises.• Strong focus on common practises, feedback loops, data validation, testing and continuous integration / deployment through Gitlab pipelines.• Created personal development plans for the team.• Worked with cross functional teams to understand automation needs and opportunities.• Strengthening of continuous integration footprint to deliver on long term strategy of continuous delivery and continuous deployment.Development of my people in the areas of automation, automation tooling, coding and containerisation is one I am very proud of. Through guidance, development plans and regular open conversations we have seen the skills, knowledge, and execution of the automation practises are going from strength-to-strength. Show less Technical lead for Data Centre Networking across CCL’s six Nationwide Data Centres.• Lead migration work from Cisco to Arista. • Contributor to automation efforts.• Identifying opportunities to automate technical and soft solutions such as enhancements to infrastructure-as-code and network zero tough provisioning, documentation automation.• Writing custom modules using python for ansible.• Introduced code testing methodology to capture human factor errors in code before they become an operational delivery issue. Show less

  • Network, Automation & Monitoring Manager

    Nov 2019 - May 2022

  • Senior Systems Engineer (Networks Lead/DevOps)

    Mar 2019 - Nov 2019
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  Spark New Zealand

  May 2022 - Aug 2022

  Principal Consultant

  • Large scale WAN, LAN, Wi-Fi and QoS designs.• Large scale migration planning, utilising automation for design documentation and project artifacts.• Customer/organisational roadmaps.• Business process.• Strategic mindset, big picture thinking.• Problem solving.

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  Datacom

  Aug 2022 - now

  Responsibilities: ANZ Datacom Cloud Services Networking and Automation Practices (Australia and New Zealand)• Led the transformation of network practice, emphasising improvements in platform management, processes, procedures, and documentation.• Development and implementation of technology roadmaps with objective to iterate and deliver value often.• Formulated and presented business cases for the implementation of a new Automation Platform.• Achieved cost reduction through strategic technology selection and the development of streamlined processes.• Ensured robust practice delivery by prioritising a documentation-first approach.• Established and implemented standards and guidelines within the automation practice.• Effectively allocated resources to align with and support business objectives.• Oversaw lifecycle and capacity management to optimise performance and reliability.• Managed vendor relationships, fostering strong partnerships and collaboration.• Provided mentorship and leadership to staff, focusing on enhancing autonomy and capability.• Contributed as a member of the Architecture/Design Review Board.• Led product and service development initiatives to drive innovation and quality.• Acted as a staunch advocate for team members, supporting their professional growth and development.• Lead development of robust feedback loops for automation workflows supporting engineering and billing processes• Collaboration with peers in the development of widely applicable practices and processes• Strong focus on long term viability of all new technology, with emphasis on scalability and simplicity• Enabled staff to seek opportunities to optimise, reduce costs, and automate. Leading to 1.2 million net revenue increase in Fy23 through utility cost savings Show less

  • Cloud Platform Manager

    Oct 2024 - now

  • Cloud Platform Manager

    Aug 2022 - Oct 2024