James Fryman

Principal DevOps Engineer
Nashville, TN · james@fryman.io · 615-973-9847
fryman.io · GitHub · LinkedIn

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 · PCB Design · Kubernetes · Platform Engineering · DevOps · Infrastructure Automation · CI/CD · Terraform · Python · GoLang · Elixir

Experience

Principal Member of Technical Staff

Salesforce · May 2021 — Present
Nashville Metropolitan Area

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.

Founder & Principal Engineer

Frykin Industries, Incorporated · January 2022 — Present
Nolensville, Tennessee

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).

Sr. Staff Engineer, Platform Engineering

Ripple · December 2019 — April 2021
San Francisco, California

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).

Technical Operations Engineer

Ripple · November 2018 — December 2019
San Francisco Bay Area

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).

President

The Bikeshed, LLC · October 2014 — October 2020
Nashville, TN

Co-working center and technology incubator. Managed Makerspace with prototyping tools (electronics, 3D printing). Hosted cloud infrastructure for members and hackerspace meetups.

Lead System Engineer

NationBuilder · November 2017 — October 2018
Greater Los Angeles Area

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.

Sr. Software Engineer / Evangelist

Puppet · March 2017 — October 2017
Portland, Oregon Area

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.

Infrastructure Product Owner

Auth0 · March 2016 — January 2017
Greater Seattle Area

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.

DevOps Stormer

StackStorm · November 2014 — February 2016
San Francisco Bay Area

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.

Operations Hacker

GitHub · October 2012 — October 2014
San Francisco, California

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.

Technology Strategist

Fryman and Associates, Inc · July 2011 — October 2013
Nashville, TN

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).

Professional Services Engineer

Puppet Labs, Inc. · April 2011 — July 2011
Portland, Oregon Area

On-site classroom training (3-day course) on Puppet usage. Helped clients bootstrap and optimize Puppet installations from 50+ nodes to 5000+ node deployments.

Sr. Network Operations Manager

Asurion · November 2009 — April 2011
Nashville, TN

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.

Security Manager

Asurion · August 2008 — November 2009
Nashville, TN

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.

Sr. Security Analyst

Asurion · April 2007 — August 2008
Nashville, TN

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.

Security Architect

Asurion · July 2006 — April 2007
Nashville, TN

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).

Information Technology Manager

Credit Control Corporation · January 2005 — July 2006
Nashville, TN

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%.

Independent Consultant

Desktop Success · July 1997 — August 2003
Nashville, TN

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

Bachelor of Arts, Mathematics/Psychology
Harding University · 2003 — 2004

Bachelor of Science, Information Technology
University of Phoenix

Publications & Speaking

“ChatOps for Dummies”

Wiley Publishing · April 2015

Foreword and contributor.

“Puppet Cookbook, 3rd Edition”

Packt Publishing · February 2015

Technical reviewer.

“Puppet Reporting and Monitoring”

Packt Publishing · June 2014

Technical reviewer.

“ChatOps: Technology and Philosophy”

January 2015

▶ Watch on YouTube

“DevOps: Day 2 — People and Process”

DevOpsDays Berlin · October 2014

▶ Watch on Vimeo

“Design Patterns in Configuration Management”

May 2014

Volunteer

Nashville Software School

Mentor · July 2014 — July 2017

Languages

English (Native or Bilingual) · Spanish (Elementary)