name: James Fryman title: Principal DevOps Engineer location: Nashville, TN email: james@fryman.io phone: 615-973-9847 website: https://fryman.io github: https://github.com/jfryman linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesfryman about: > Engineering leader and DevOps architect who bridges the gap between technical excellence and human potential. I transform engineering organizations by crafting efficient systems and cultivating high-performing teams. My approach combines deep technical expertise with a keen understanding of how people work best, enabling teams to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure. I thrive on challenges that require both technical innovation and organizational transformation, always with the goal of empowering engineers to do their best work. skills: - 3D Printing - AutoCAD Mechanical - Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design - Kubernetes - Platform Engineering - DevOps - Infrastructure Automation - CI/CD - Terraform - Python - GoLang - Elixir experience: - title: "Principal Member of Technical Staff" company: "Salesforce" period: "May 2021 — Present" location: "Nashville Metropolitan Area" description: > Led technical architecture and development of Salesforce Code Builder through Beta and GA launches. Architected custom Kubernetes Operator in GoLang, served as primary technical liaison for AWS partnership, led 12 engineers across three teams, and pioneered Elixir adoption within Hyperforce platform. - title: "Founder & Principal Engineer" company: "Frykin Industries, Incorporated" period: "January 2022 — Present" location: "Nolensville, Tennessee" description: > Specialized engineering and manufacturing consultancy. Engineer custom PCB drive controllers for electric vehicle conversions with CAN bus communication, operate advanced 3D printing facility, design legacy automotive components through reverse engineering (Fusion 360). - title: "Sr. Staff Engineer, Platform Engineering" company: "Ripple" period: "December 2019 — April 2021" location: "San Francisco, California" description: > Scaled Platform Engineering team from 3 to 9 engineers. Architected and launched Platform v2 (comprehensive Kubernetes migration). Developed custom Platform Operator using operator-sdk. Established Kubernetes training program across global teams (Iceland, India, UK, US). - title: "Technical Operations Engineer" company: "Ripple" period: "November 2018 — December 2019" location: "San Francisco Bay Area" description: > Authored business case for Platform Engineering team creation. Pioneered Kubernetes adoption, reducing customer integration costs by $250K annually. Architected GCP infrastructure for data analytics. Enhanced infrastructure security with automated certificate management (Salt + Vault). - title: "President" company: "The Bikeshed, LLC" period: "October 2014 — October 2020" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Co-working center and technology incubator. Managed Makerspace with prototyping tools (electronics, 3D printing). Hosted cloud infrastructure for members and hackerspace meetups. - title: "Lead System Engineer" company: "NationBuilder" period: "November 2017 — October 2018" location: "Greater Los Angeles Area" description: > Drove infrastructure maturity and data integrity within PostgreSQL tier. Implemented zero-downtime schema deploys. Upgraded Puppet v3 → v5 with CI/CD and testing tools. Deployed Rundeck for workflow automation, implemented DataDog for unified logging and metrics. - title: "Sr. Software Engineer / Evangelist" company: "Puppet" period: "March 2017 — October 2017" location: "Portland, Oregon Area" description: > Developer on Lumogon Project (https://lumogon.com). Built serverless SaaS infrastructure with AWS Lambda, ElasticBeanstalk, and DynamoDB. Designed CI/CD workflows with AutoDeploy. Worked on Puppet Discovery, porting Clojure to Golang and deploying via GCE/Kubernetes/Helm. - title: "Infrastructure Product Owner" company: "Auth0" period: "March 2016 — January 2017" location: "Greater Seattle Area" description: > Led team to implement instrumentation and metrics across primary application. Implemented Site Reliability Engineering practice, scaling two-person ops team into organized SRE function. Organized workstreams: Support/Growth, Stability/Maintenance, Common Tools, CI/CD. Implemented on-call program. - title: "DevOps Stormer" company: "StackStorm" period: "November 2014 — February 2016" location: "San Francisco Bay Area" description: > Designed and built world's first enterprise ChatOps solution. Worldwide evangelism of event-driven automation. Worked with development team to design and deliver ChatOps features. Organized and managed integration team. Built first on-premise appliance installation. - title: "Operations Hacker" company: "GitHub" period: "October 2012 — October 2014" location: "San Francisco, California" description: > 24/7 Operations team for github.com, gist.github.com, and other properties. Optimized and extended Puppet operational usage, integrated with ChatOps. Traveled worldwide sharing large-scale infrastructure best practices. Helped grow server footprint from ~100 cloud nodes to mixed cloud/datacenter. - title: "Technology Strategist" company: "Fryman and Associates, Inc" period: "July 2011 — October 2013" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Small business consultancy focused on: CTO as a service (strategy advice for startups), DevOps transformations (weekly/monthly deploys → daily+), Technology delivery (Chef, Puppet, Cfengine, AWS, Ruby on Rails). - title: "Professional Services Engineer" company: "Puppet Labs, Inc." period: "April 2011 — July 2011" location: "Portland, Oregon Area" description: > On-site classroom training (3-day course) on Puppet usage. Helped clients bootstrap and optimize Puppet installations from 50+ nodes to 5000+ node deployments. - title: "Sr. Network Operations Manager" company: "Asurion" period: "November 2009 — April 2011" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Daily operational management of enterprise systems. Created business plan for strategic offshoring, reducing operating costs by $1.5M over 3 years. Migrated NOC from US to Philippines on-time and under-budget with aggressive 6-month timeline. - title: "Security Manager" company: "Asurion" period: "August 2008 — November 2009" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Strategic planning for Security Department (Physical Security, Investigations, Internal Fraud, Technical Security, Administration). Maintained regulatory and contractual compliance. Led organization through major audits (ISO17799, PCI requirements). Process optimization via Lean-Thinking. - title: "Sr. Security Analyst" company: "Asurion" period: "April 2007 — August 2008" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Planned and led company-wide PCI-DSS v1.2 compliance initiative by 12/2008. Transformed security metrics for management visibility. Guided management decisions through layered security (host and network). Mentored team in security practices and risk-based approaches. - title: "Security Architect" company: "Asurion" period: "July 2006 — April 2007" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Developed security standards for 1500+ servers (Windows 2000/2003, RedHat Linux) in compliance with PCI-DSS v1.1 and ISO17799. Designed and implemented hardening standards. Implemented ground-floor RedHat Linux infrastructure with layered security (iptables, kernel hardening, RBAC via Kickstart). - title: "Information Technology Manager" company: "Credit Control Corporation" period: "January 2005 — July 2006" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Full responsibility for Windows 2003 servers (AD, Exchange) interconnected with Linux RedHat and AS/400. Implemented security policy (HIPAA/GLBA/PCI compliant). Reduced operating costs $250K/year with automated client-server call center design. Introduced VMWare virtualization, increasing utilization by 40%. - title: "Independent Consultant" company: "Desktop Success" period: "July 1997 — August 2003" location: "Nashville, TN" description: > Computer repair, diagnosis, and analysis for local businesses, individuals, and U.S. government. IT consultation (virus concerns, server recommendations, network planning). Maintained numerous small networks. Migrated single-user Access database to multi-user SQL database. education: - institution: "Harding University" degree: "Bachelor of Arts" field: "Mathematics/Psychology" period: "2003 — 2004" - institution: "University of Phoenix" degree: "Bachelor of Science" field: "Information Technology" publications: - title: "Design Patterns in Configuration Management" date: May 2014 role: "Author" - title: "DevOps: Day 2 — People and Process" event: DevOpsDays Berlin date: October 2014 role: "Speaker" - title: "ChatOps for Dummies" publisher: Wiley Publishing date: April 2015 role: "Foreword and contributor" - title: "Puppet Cookbook, 3rd Edition" publisher: Packt Publishing date: February 2015 role: "Technical reviewer" - title: "Puppet Reporting and Monitoring" publisher: Packt Publishing date: June 2014 role: "Technical reviewer" speaking: - title: "ChatOps: Technology and Philosophy" date: January 2015 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37LmuHToYjQ - title: "DevOps: Day 2 — People and Process" event: DevOpsDays Berlin date: October 2014 video: http://vimeo.com/110484640 - title: "Design Patterns in Configuration Management" date: May 2014 volunteer: - organization: Nashville Software School role: Mentor period: "July 2014 — July 2017" languages: - language: English proficiency: Native or Bilingual - language: Spanish proficiency: Elementary