Jacob Evans

Sr Engineer; IT Security

St. Petersburg, FL (Remote)

• Lead architect of the global Splunk Cloud and on-premises environments including search heads, indexers, deployment servers, heavy/universal forwarders, and a distributed Syslog-NG infrastructure
• Saved hundreds of thousands of dollars accelerating data models, creating summary indexes, tuning hundreds of scheduled searches and dashboards to reduce resource utilization
• Led the large-scale upgrade of 42k Splunk universal forwarders across 10 siloed global teams
• Design and implement automated workflows for incident detection through ticket creation and resolution, removing visibility gaps and improving MTTR
• Collaborate cross-functionally with SRE, DevOps, IAM and security teams to deliver tailored solutions aligned with security and operational goals
• Drove end-to-end migration to the Splunk Victoria Experience leading planning, prerequisite validation, execution, and post-migration support

Sr DevOps Engineer

Indianapolis, IN (Remote)

• Utilized Puppet to automate the configuration management of Splunk environments including Splunk upgrades (reducing upgrade time from hours to less than 15 minutes)
• Automated deployments using API/ACS to eliminate human error and decrease deployment times by over 90%
• Moved all Splunk configurations into GitHub to ensure ISO compliance and enforced proper Splunk source control management and SDLC
• Standardized SDLC documentation using Confluence templates and Jira automation to automatically create subtasks and documentation
• Initiated and created Azure DevOps pipeline to increase Splunk development automation
• Created Splunk automated testing using Python and the Splunk API to automate unit tests and quality assurance
• Created monitoring searches to proactively alert the team on issues in the system, and display the current status of any potential issues in real-time dashboards

Splunk Administrator [Sr DevOps Engineer]

Indianapolis, IN (Remote)

• Primary contact for all Splunk development, testing, and operations
• Created, configured, and maintained two Splunk Enterprise instances for development and testing
• Migrated all Splunk servers from Windows to Linux
• Eliminated over 95% of custom data processing scripts to reduce overhead and potential failure points
• Created Confluence documentation for Splunk configuration, testing, and high-level code explanations
• Created monitoring searches to proactively alert the team on issues in the system, and display the current status of any potential issues in real-time dashboards
• Mentoring seven team members in Splunk development and best practices

Splunk Administrator

Arlington, VA

• Created interactive dashboard to display security compliance for Oracle 12c databases based on client’s standard operating procedures. Components include: data inputs (custom logs, SQL, PowerShell scripts, file security auditing), advanced searches, and dashboards to visualize security compliance
• Created fully-documented custom JavaScript/CSS-based Splunk executive dashboard used throughout the bureau to monitor all 20+ critical applications using the Splunk Web Framework
• Built dynamically to allow new features (KPIs) to be implemented in minutes
• Includes the entire pipeline from Splunk architecture, data ingestion, normalization (CIM), transformation, field extraction, and analysis to user-facing reports, alerts, and dashboards with <1 second load times
• Includes multiple dashboards granting privileged users limited abilities to make changes normally reserved for Splunk administrators (e.g. temporarily disabling alerts or updating lookups)
• Implemented automatic resolution for common issues freeing 10% of system administrators’ time to focus on non-repetitive tasks
• Created dynamic, templated Splunk apps giving system owners a holistic view of their entire application with the ability to customize individual dashboards to each owners’ needs
• Rebuilt environment including system architecture, data ingestion, data normalization, search optimization, reusable macros, automated forwarder updaters, deployment restructuring, and UI modifications with best practices and the Common Information Model (CIM) in mind to enhance functionality, readability, and simplicity
• Significantly enhanced production monitoring for quicker issue identification and resolution
• Decreased internal production Splunk error counts by 80% (down from millions per day)
• Added dynamic recipients to alerts based on conditions in the results to optimize alert distribution
• Installed, upgraded, and configured Splunk Enterprise and splunkbase apps
• Built and configured a brand new development Splunk environment on Azure
• Wrote technical documentation in Confluence for most work especially architectural and best practice updates

Senior Consultant

Arlington, VA

• Built Splunk up from a fresh install to actively monitoring hundreds of VMs from architecture to GUI components
• Architected indexes, indexers, cluster master, and deployment server according to Splunk best practices
• On-boarded and normalized hundreds of log types into Splunk such as: OS data, Active Directory, IIS, Oracle database (DB Connect), Tuxedo, Control-M, WebLogic, and webMethods data including many DoS external integrations
• Created numerous Splunk reports, alerts, and interactive dashboards to track: successful and failed transactions (in to, out of, and/or through the system), system errors, timeouts, interactive log analysis, security, etc.
• Automated the maintenance and monitoring of three production systems and 25 non-prod environments with Splunk, Control-M, webMethods, batch, and PowerShell to reduce resolution time and automatically resolve issues
• Acted as the main point of contact to identify and resolve production issues involving the full application stack containing: Oracle database, webMethods, Tuxedo, WebLogic, IIS, and ext. integrations (SOAP, HTTP, JMS, API)
• Automated code deployments using Control-M, SQL, Windows cmd, and PowerShell to reduce development and production upgrade time by up to 80% and eliminate human error
• Optimized slowest multi-day database SQL statements saving over 80 hours of production downtime for a major upgrade, and reduced execution time of sensitive data scrub SQL scripts by 70% while improving data integrity
• Provided day-to-day technical support as the primary point of contact supporting 15 functional analysts for issues, enhancements, script reviews, and other technical inquiries especially related to advanced SQL data analysis
• Mentored four new hires on business processes, development, system monitoring, and issue resolution
• Wrote technical documentation in Confluence for all work performed (code deliveries, production issues, etc.)

Consultant (PeopleSoft Developer)

Arlington, VA

• Improved performance on five paramount data conversion applications by up to 30%
• Created three end-to-end custom conversion programs to populate application with legacy data
• Wrote and updated SQL for Oracle database optimization, customization, maintenance, and reporting
• Identified, documented, tested, and reapplied all conflicting customizations to upgraded environments
• Mentored college hire to fulfill client’s expectations and deadlines

Technical Consultant (PeopleSoft Developer)

Durham, OR

• Tested and verified functionality of Agile development; tracked with Jira
• Created design documents on evolving Siebel, OPA, and Oracle database logic, infrastructure, and integration

Indiana University - Bloomington

GPA: 3.10