Sara Smollett
sara@simons-rock.edu

Please note that I am not currently seeking employment.

Employment History:

• Site Reliability Engineer, Mountain View, CA (Apr 2007 - present)
• Systems Administrator, Mountain View, CA (Oct 2005 - Mar 2007)
• Informations Systems Associate II, CIS, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MA (Nov 2003 - Sep 2005)
• Systems and Network Administrator, Simon's Rock College, MA (May 2000 - Oct 2003)
• Computer Consultant, Simon's Rock College, MA (May 1999 - May 2000)
• Network Engineer and Tech Support, MedIT, Stanford University, CA (Jun 1999 - Nov 1999)
• Network Administration Intern, CIS, Stanford University, CA (Jun 1999 - Aug 1999)
• Computer and Networking Assistant, Simon's Rock College, MA (Aug 1998 - May 1999)
• Network Engineer/Installer, Simon's Rock College, MA (Feb 1998 - Aug 1998)

Computer Systems Support:

• 10+ years Linux systems administration experience (Debian GNU/Linux, RedHat, Ubuntu, and at least minimal experience with a dozen other distros)
• 5+ years OpenBSD systems administration experience
• Experience with nearly all Apple/Macintosh operating systems (I think the only exception is A/UX)
• Limited Windows support experience (from 3.11 through W2K)
• Some experience with a variety of operating systems, including Solaris, FreeBSD, AIX, BeOS (minimal HP-UX, Irix, NeXTSTEP)
• Experience building, upgrading, troubleshooting, and repairing PC and Mac hardware for servers, workstations, desktops, and laptops (not recent experience though)
• Provided technical support and oversaw a help desk
• Set up and maintained college computer labs (Mac, Windows, Linux)
• Oversaw campus-wide network setups during college orientation week for four years

Systems Administration:

• Installed and maintained $num web and mysql/postgresql database servers
• Set up extensive monitoring for web and database servers
• Installed and maintained production Debian GNU/Linux servers with roughly 1000 user accounts
• Shared responsibility for Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Solaris, and AIX servers
• Installed, configured and secured, maintained, and documented many services in production environments, including (buzzword bingo):
• Email: postfix, sendmail, courier pop3(s)/imap(s), cyrus, mailman, ezmlm, spamassassin, procmail, ravantivirus, clamav, (minimal qmail, exim)
• Networking: dhcpd, bind, squid, ppp, (minimal djbdns, vpn)
• Web Services: apache, custom web servers
• Database Services: mysql, postgresql, openldap, (minimal oracle, filemaker)
• File Sharing Services: samba, netatalk, nfs, ftp, sftp
• Other Services: ssh, lprng, cups, ntp, (minimal lpd, irc)

Network Administration:

• Set up and maintained Cisco routers, including filtering and traffic shaping (residential college network)
• Set up and maintained Linux routers and firewalls (iptables and older)
• Experience with a variety of network, services, and bandwidth monitoring and shaping tools (snmp, mrtg, rtg, mon, spong, ntop, iptraf, tcpdump, libpcap, custom Perl, etc.)
• Experience with security monitoring (intrusion detection using snort and argus, vulnerability assessment using nmap and nessus)
• Experience with setup, installation, and maintenance of 3Com, Asante, ATI, Cabletron, Cisco, Extreme, and HP switches (not recent experience though)
• Network design, installation, and maintenance (ST/SC fiber termination, cat5/cat3, thinnet, localtalk)
• Experience network troubleshooting (at multiple layers)
• Responsible for monitoring and maintaining 24/7 network operations
• Oversaw two campus-wide IP readdressings

Programming, DB, and Web:

• Administered high-availability MySQL servers
• Modified and deployed a network host inventory/registration system based on CMU NetReg
• Wrote many Perl and shell scripts to automate systems and network administration tasks (services monitoring, log parsing, account management, backups, etc.)
• Developed and maintained several websites
• Developed several small PHP/PostgreSQL web applications
• Programming Languages: Perl, Python, Bash; dormant Scheme, Java, and AppleScript knowledge; minimal C
• Web: HTML/XML/CSS (one of those W3C compliant purists), PHP, CGI (Perl, Python)
• Database/directory: MySQL, PostgreSQL, OpenLDAP, FileMaker Pro
• Formatting: LaTeX, groff

Substantial Projects:

• Implemented and tested disaster recovery environment and procedures for multiple applications
• Maintained a large number of web and database servers
• Thoroughly documented and automated server build, configuration, and maintenance tasks
• Modified, deployed, and maintained a network host inventory/registration system based on CMU NetReg (using Perl, Apache, MySQL, BIND 9, DHCPd, Squid, Nessus, CiscoWorks, etc.)
• Migrated people/account information from Netscape LDAP to OpenLDAP servers (using the eduPerson and custom schemas)
• Installed and maintained several web, DNS, and DHCP servers
• Migrated mail servers from qmail to postfix; regularly improved spam/virus filtering
• Devised and implemented firewall policy and bandwidth management/shaping for residential college needs
• Automated many system administration tasks (mostly using Perl and bash)
• Wrote and maintained a network acceptable-use policy and volumes of helpdesk and user documentation
• Performed much of the network design and fiber termination for a small college campus

Other Experience:

• Provided launch review for internally developed applications
• Served as tech lead/mentor for other sysadmins
• Oncall duties for high availability (3 nines) services
• Interviewed many sysadmin candidates
• Familiarity with a variety of issues relevant to academic computing and residential networking
• Experience devising best security practicies and increasing awareness; experience with incident response
• Developed and implemented many server procedures (default installation standards, security guidelines, privacy policies, backup procedures, etc.)
• Assumed many managerial responsibilities, including project management, supervision of student workers, and shared responsibility for purchasing and hiring decisions
• Some experience with mathematical software packages, including MATLAB, Maple, and Mathematica
• Taught an undergraduate course on system administration and the Linux operating system
• Assisted with a VoIP (Asterisk/SIP) deployment

Academic:

• University of Copenhagen:
  Presented history paper at Denmark and the Black Atlantic conference (May 2006)
• Tufts University, Medford, MA:
  M.A. in Philosophy (May 2005)
  Completed comprehensive exams in core subjects and philosophy of science (May 2002 - Jan 2005)
  Cumulative GPA 3.519 (Sept 2001 - Dec 2002)
• Simon's Rock College of Bard, Gt Barrington, MA:
  B.A. in Mathematics and Computer Science, magna cum laude (May 2000)
  Cumulative GPA 3.534 (Aug 1996 - May 2000)
  High honors on thesis in math and creative writing (May 2000)
  Robert Hutchins Scholarship (Aug 1998 - May 2000)
  Acceleration to Excellence Scholarship (Aug 1996 - May 1998)
• Amherst College, Amherst, MA (Aug 1997 - Dec 1997)
• Hampshire College, Amherst, MA:
  Summer Studies in Mathematics (summer 1994, summer 1995)
• Antilles High School, St Thomas, VI (Aug 1994 - Jun 1996):
  Presidential Scholar Nominee
  National Merit Scholar

Tech Conferences:

• Linux World Conference (Jan 2001)
• Educause - NERCOMP (2002-2005)
• Ubucon (Aug 2006)
• Grace Hopper (Oct 2007, Oct 2008)
• LISA (Nov 2008)

References:

• References available upon request.

Last updated 2008