01
1998–2008
IT Support — Rias plc / JRL plc
Progressed from Help Desk through first-, second- and third-line systems support, building the operational troubleshooting and customer-support foundations for my infrastructure career.
ABOUT JAMES ROBERTS
20+ years of infrastructure experience.Modern engineering focus.
I have more than 20 years of experience supporting UNIX, Linux, enterprise infrastructure and operationally critical services, with a current focus on building and operating modern infrastructure platforms.
HOW I WORK
Build it. Secure it. Monitor it. Operate it.
Infrastructure and systems professional combining long-term operational experience with modern platform, cloud, security and automation engineering.
I focus on practical, supportable solutions. I consider how systems will be monitored, maintained, secured, tested and documented after deployment rather than treating implementation as the end of the work.
My background in support and operations means I naturally consider resilience, supportability, troubleshooting, monitoring and service continuity when designing technical solutions.
CAREER JOURNEY
Experience that has evolved with the technology.
From operational foundations to modern platform and cloud engineering.
02
2005
Red Hat RHCT & RHCE Certifications
Achieved Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certifications, formally validating Linux systems administration and engineering skills developed through hands-on commercial experience.
03
2008–2012
Level 2 IT Consultant — Hampshire County Council
Moved into enterprise UNIX and Linux infrastructure, including Solaris-to-IBM AIX migrations, AIX LPAR administration, Red Hat on VMware, hosted LAMP services, monitoring, backups and recovery testing. Served as a required technical member of the Change Advisory Board (CAB) and was part of the VMware virtualisation team, contributing to controlled infrastructure change and the support of the virtual environment.
04
2012–2020
Technical Operations Analyst (UNIX) — LV=
Provided BAU and out-of-hours UNIX/Linux support in a 24/7 enterprise environment, handling incidents, senior escalations, patching and recovery activity. Worked with Puppet for Linux configuration management and automation, automated Red Hat patching from Bash into Ansible, and acted as a technical lead during major infrastructure change.
05
2017
Patching Service Transition — LV=
Led the transition of the Linux patching process to a third-party team based in India. Documented and transferred the operational process, trained the engineers who would carry out the work, and supported the team through the handover to establish a repeatable and supportable service.
06
2019
Network Migration Project Delivered — LV=
Delivered a major network migration project, coordinating technical implementation and troubleshooting through the migration window to complete the change successfully and maintain service continuity.
07
2020–2024
Technical BC/DR Manager — LV=
Led technical business-continuity and disaster-recovery activity across on-premises and cloud services, including Microsoft Azure and AWS. Defined recovery requirements, coordinated annual recovery testing and multi-team physical DR exercises, and drove remediation from test findings.
08
2025
Infrastructure Manager — Yunex Traffic
Managed and mentored a team of infrastructure engineers supporting AWS services, acting as an escalation point and focusing on availability, reliability, automation, monitoring and operational improvement. Contributed to ISO audit activity and Cyber Essentials Plus, supporting the technical controls, evidence gathering and infrastructure assurance required for security and compliance.
09
2025–Present
Third Line Product Support Technician — Appello Group
Provides third-line escalation for complex incidents and service requests, coordinating technical investigation across teams, restoring services within SLA and supporting the development of first- and second-line engineers.
10
Current Engineering
Modern Infrastructure & Systems Engineering
Continues hands-on development across Linux, virtualisation, containers, automation, monitoring, networking, security, backup and recovery, combining current technologies with more than 20 years of operational infrastructure experience.
WHAT I BRING
Technical depth with operational perspective.
Infrastructure Operations
Supporting Linux, UNIX and enterprise systems through incident resolution, maintenance, performance investigation, patch management and operational improvement.
Virtualisation
Extensive virtualisation experience across VMware, Oracle VM (OVM) and Proxmox VE environments, covering virtual machine administration, operational support, troubleshooting, migration, platform maintenance, backup and recovery. Current hands-on work includes the design and operation of a clustered Proxmox VE environment.
Platform Engineering
Building and operating practical Docker and Kubernetes platforms, with container lifecycle management, service health checks, networking and production deployment processes.
Automation and Configuration Management
Automating repeatable infrastructure work with Ansible and Bash, backed by Git-controlled configuration, validation, idempotency checks and rollback-aware change practices.
Cloud and Infrastructure as Code
Developing practical capability across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Terraform, Git-based workflows and repeatable infrastructure and application deployment.
Monitoring and Observability
Building operational visibility with Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Blackbox Exporter and custom metrics, dashboards and alerting across multiple hosts and services.
Networking and Troubleshooting
Working across switching, VLANs, routing, DNS, VPNs, firewalls and service dependencies, using evidence-led troubleshooting to isolate faults across the infrastructure stack.
Security Engineering
Applying layered security through Suricata, CrowdSec, Greenbone vulnerability scanning, firewall controls, authentication, secure external access and continuous security checks.
Delivery and Technical Leadership
Leading implementation activity, coordinating teams and suppliers, mentoring engineers, managing technical risk and turning complex infrastructure work into supportable operational services.
CAREER DIRECTION
Continually developing while building on experience.
01
Continue moving toward Platform Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps-focused roles.
02
Apply long-standing Linux and infrastructure experience within modern cloud and container environments.
03
Develop further technical leadership, project delivery and service-management responsibility.
04
Continue building practical evidence through documented engineering projects and production-grade automation.
PRACTICAL EVIDENCE
See the engineering work behind the profile.
Explore the projects, architecture and live engineering lab that demonstrate the technologies and approaches described here.