Kells Kearney

Background

About Kells Kearney

I’m a seasoned infrastructure adventurer in a land found only in maps with large areas labelled “Here be dragons” (aka “Welcome to our hybrid cloud!”). I do fingerpaints and crayons work (architecture), landscaping and shrubbery (system integration and automation), resurrection services (resiliency + availability + recovery) and “I know what you did last summer” peeping (observability). I tend to find myself Where the Weird Things Are (“Is that supposed to be burning like that?”). Sometimes that’s because I’ve turned over the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign to see what’s been festering below. And there have been occasions where a team found the monsters (or is it the other way around?) and all they need is someone to cage the monster, herd the cats, untar the local wisdom, and rebuild the village (“By Tuesday, please!”). Sometimes I speak to tribes who worship at hidden temples (“This application is the Source of Truth!”) isolated from the world, and who only speak in undecipherable tongues. Like many guides, I have negotiated in many languages too numerous to mention, including the compiled (eg Golang, The Tribe of C), the interpreted (Python, Perl, JavaScript, Forth), high-level (SQL, PromQL), the functional (Lisp) and the accursed (Prolog). In less polite company, I have been known to converse in other Domain-Specific Languages, trafficked in ETL jobs with data warehouses of arguable repute, and dabbled in the care and Spark-ing of numpy parquets for Pets of Questionable Wisdom (aka the garbage-in/garbage-out of Machine Learning). I build the infrastructure with protocols large and small, by bespoke SDK or with terraform. I work with the Laws of the Land (meta-data management, PCI, PII, SOX) and spread their word, and generally try to leave the world a little better than how I found it. I build toolboxes, draw maps (aka “Diagram of Doom”), clean data and walkthrough runbooks for later travelers. And unlike some movie archeologists (“I’m looking at you, Jones!”), I’m not afraid of snakes. Heck! Some of my best friends are Pythonistas! I may also be suffering from a case of unrequited screenwriting — but nothing dramatic. But if you need the fire swamps drained, the flame spurts sputtered, the lightning sands excavated, and the Rats-Of-Unusual-Size removed, then let’s go on an adventure together!