Pedro Alvarez Piedehierro

Manchester, UK
Email: pedro@alvarezpiedehierro.com

Personal Statement

Computer Science Engineer with experience working with embedded devices and Linux systems. Main areas of expertise include: build systems, system integration (including building Linux systems from scratch), infrastructure, open-source technologies and culture. Special interest in automation and reproducibility, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and contributing to open-source projects. Team player, always willing to help, and to share knowledge.

Programming Languages & Tools

• Python, Shell, Java
• Basic knowledge of C++, Rust and some others.
• Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform.
• Git, Gerrit/GitHub/GitLab, Jenkins, Travis, GitLab CI, GitHub actions, Zuul CI.
• OpenStack, AWS.
• Linux, systemd.

Employment History

Codethink - Software and Systems Engineer & Tech Lead

05/2020 – 07/2020

Remote-execution setup on OpenStack

Deploy a remote-execution solution on customer’s infrastructure.

• Used Terraform to automate the deployment of instances on OpenStack
• Ansible scripts to setup all instances with the different BuildBarn services
• Updated configuration of projects to build on remote execution
• Zuul CI for automation

06/2020 – 02/2021

Python services for internal development workflow

Develop a set of microservices on customer’s multi-environment architecture to develop a PR-like workflow for patches to SVN.

• Integrated with Kafka messaging queues from external services to track validation progress
• Microservices running on a multi-environment architecture
• Collaboration with multiple customer teams to get our solution integrated.

02/2020 – 05/2020

SVN split to Git automatic migration

Automation of a previously manual process for migrating libraries from a mono-repo in SVN to individual git projects.

• Developed scripts and libraries in python to handle the automatic migration of hundreds of libraries from SVN to Git.
• Used Jenkins pipelines for the automation process, triggered via GitHub PRs

11/2019 – 01/2020

TroveKube, Git mirroring service on Kubernetes

Initial effort to migrate Baserock Trove (https://git.baserock.org) from a monolithic server to a microservices architecture.

• Migrated Baserock’s monolithic mirroring service to python3
• Created containers for each of the services in Docker, and a PoC using docker-compose.
• Adapted the solution to run on Kubernetes running locally (minikube)
• Developed a Helm chart, to deploy easily the service, including EFS and SSL support.
• Used Terraform for AWS deployments of ELK and EFS.

07/2019 - 11/2019

Autonomous driving demo for ELCE

Robots (NVIDIA Jetson Nano boards with wheels and a camera) that use AI to follow a road, and stop when necessary.

• Built a Linux system from scratch for the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, using Freedesktop SDK and BuildStream.
• Implemented OTA upgrades for the rootfs and kernel using OSTree.

04/2019 - 07/2019

Remote Execution API Test Suite

To provide a continuous way of testing the compatibility between different Remote Execution clients (Bazel, RECC, BuildStream) and servers (Buildbarn, Buildfarm, BuildGrid).

• Architected and started initial implementation of the project.
• Created a test suite to check API stability of Bazel remote execution, against the 3 most used Remote Execution implementations.
• Used Amazon EKS with Terraform to run the services and tests on Kubernetes from Gitlab CI.

01/2019 - 04/2019

OpenStack on ARM64 servers

Deploy and maintain an ARM64 OpenStack cloud to validate the architecture is supported, and to fix any problems found. The main goal is to add ARM64 as a target on OpenStack CI.

• Automated deployments of OpenStack and Ceph to ARM64 machines hosted in packet.net.
• Upstreamed (via Gerrit) some fixes needed in kolla/kolla-ansible to support ARM64 in their Docker templates and Ansible scripts.
• Created extra Ansible scripts to help with the deployment automation and debugging.
• Researched ways to have isolated self-managed domains, to workaround current limitations in OpenStack.

01/2017 - 12/2018

Application for configuring and working with ANC chips

Develop an application to help with the tuning and flashing of ANC devices.

• Created and maintained CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins, setting the best practices for all the teams.
• Architected and implemented an RPC server to communicate Python with legacy software in Matlab.
• Developed Python libraries for flashing and loading code into the ANC development board, and to emulate the process for testing purposes.

Codethink - Software and Systems Engineer

Involved in and developed a wide variety of projects

08/2013 - 01/2017

Baserock and others

• Integrated and maintained software in a set of definitions of Linux systems. OpenStack, Systemd, linux kernel, graphics stack, etc.
• Troubleshoot integration problems from the application to kernel layer.
• Continuous investigation about new possible applications of Baserock.
• Created and maintained the core infrastructure of the project, using Ansible and OpenStack.
• Implemented and improved existing tooling to support atomic system upgrades.
• Added support and ported Baserock to new architectures (POWER, ARMv6, ARMv7)
• Interacted with various Open Source communities,

Education

09/2007 - 09/2012

MSc Computer Science Engineering (2:1)

Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain - 5 years degree covering many different areas, including Mathematics, Unix, Networking, Databases, Software Analysis and Design, AI, Robotics.

Links Of Interest

• GitHub: https://github.com/palvarez89
• GitLab: https://gitlab.com/palvarez89
• Open Hub: https://www.openhub.net/accounts/palvarez89