Travis Walentin

Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Cloud infrastructure, deployment automation, and production reliability for distributed cloud services.

Senior SRE in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Networking Services team. Leading large-scale infrastructure engineering, unattended deployment automation, fleet management tools, and continuous network validation across worldwide cloud regions.

100+
Global Regions Deployed
40h → 2h
Unattended Build Duration
1,000+
Fleet Hosts Managed
50% → 10%
Ingestion Failure Reduction

Technical Skills

Infrastructure & Cloud

Terraform Ansible Oracle Cloud (OCI) Linux Bare Metal Virtual Machines Service Configuration Network Routing

Languages & Delivery

Python Go Bash / Zsh Docker CI/CD Pipelines AI Agentic Skills & Configs Deployment Orchestration

Testing & Reliability

Connection Canaries Cross-Region Testing Region Build Tests Configuration Tests Monitoring & Alerting Incident Diagnostics Linux Filesystem Repairs

Operations & Collaboration

Host Maintenance Tools Runbooks & Documentation Cross-Team Troubleshooting Technical Onboarding Operational Reviews Accessibility Advocacy

Professional Experience

Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure • Networking Services

Dec 2019 – Present

Site Reliability Engineer (2019 – 2021) • Promoted to Senior SRE in Networking Services (2021 – Present)

• End-to-End Service Deployment Automation: Co-developed comprehensive Terraform automation for production deployments on a 3-engineer team, scaling the service to over 100 regions worldwide. Replaced disparate scripts, Ansible, and manual procedures requiring ~40 engineer-hours per build with an unattended deployment completing in ~2 hours. Served as team subject-matter expert (SME) for diagnosing and resolving region build failures.

• Cross-Region Connection Canary: Designed and implemented an external connection canary testing customer network paths across regions and distinct cloud environments. Uncovered connectivity issues missed by existing monitoring, slashing response times from hours to minutes with automated dynamic onboarding as new regions launch.

• Host Ingestion & 1-Click Recycling: Drove host ingestion improvements reducing failure rates from 50% down to 10%. Built 1-click operator recycling workflows with automated error handling and retries into a full service, halving ingestion time and enabling fleet-wide migration of 1,000+ hosts to fresh machine images.

• Resilient SSH Tooling & Regional Access: Automated regional SSH access and configuration, saving hours of manual setup per region. Standardized access across partner teams with dynamic host resolution and cached fallback inventory to ensure operational access during dependency outages.

• Fleet Audits & Filesystem Reliability: Led a fleet reliability initiative to eliminate bare-metal disk-full incidents. Created an auditing tool scanning 1,000+ hosts and partitions across regions in under 5 minutes. Architected and validated online root-filesystem expansion with automated safety checks.

• Bare Metal to VM Migration: Partnered across engineering teams to migrate core services from bare metal to virtual machines. Evaluated images, qualified VM instance types, and modernized application deployment pipelines.

• Hardware Migration & Ephemeral Regression Testing: Owned hardware migration across differing network architectures. Integrated three internal platforms and engineered an ephemeral test environment to catch regressions prior to production region builds.

Customer Support Engineer

ExtraHop

Oct 2017 – Nov 2019

• Appliance & Platform Diagnostics: Remotely diagnosed and resolved ExtraHop appliance issues across Linux, physical hardware, virtual appliances, and web interfaces across customer deployments on VMware, AWS, and Azure.

• Full-Stack Network Troubleshooting: Analyzed packet-level network feeds across the OSI model (TCP, UDP, DNS, HTTP, SSL), guiding enterprise customers through complex performance investigations.

• Diagnostic Automation & Tooling: Built automated diagnostic tools with Python, Go, Bash, PostgreSQL, and REST APIs to accelerate root cause analysis.

• Internal Workflow Services: Developed full-stack proof-of-concept web services with React, Python, and Docker to streamline internal support and operational workflows.

                        
100+ Region Deployment Automation

Full-Service Deployment Automationclose
                                    Terraform
                                    Python
                                    Ansible
                                    OCI Networking
                                    100+ Regions
                                
Challenge & ScopeDeploying networking services across global regions previously required significant manual work, Ansible playbooks, and individual shell scripts, consuming roughly 40 engineer-hours per regional build.
Solution & ArchitectureCo-developed end-to-end Terraform orchestration automation on a 3-engineer team. Unified regional dependencies, security parameters, network routing, and artifact deployment into an unattended, declarative pipeline.
Impact• Deployed the networking service into over 100 regions worldwide.
• Slashed regional rollout duration from 40 engineer-hours to ~2 hours unattended.
• Acted as the primary SME for diagnosing edge-case failure modes and dependency errors during new-region bringups.

Cross-Region Connection Canary

Cross-Region Connection Testingclose
                                    Go
                                    Python
                                    Synthetic Monitoring
                                    Network Routing
                                
ChallengeStandard host-level monitoring frequently missed subtle cross-region customer routing degrades or boundary issues between distinct cloud environments until reported by users.
SolutionArchitected and deployed an external connection canary that continuously exercises real customer network paths across global regions and separated cloud environments. Designed automatic dynamic registration so new regions and environments are tested automatically without manual configuration.
Impact• Reduced connectivity incident detection and response times from hours to minutes.
• Provided ground-truth validation for global network reachability and latency.

Fleet Host Ingestion & 1-Click Recycling

Host Ingestion & Fleet Recycling Serviceclose
                                    Python
                                    Automation Service
                                    Bare Metal Fleet
                                    1,000+ Hosts
                                
ChallengeHost ingestion had high manual intervention overhead and suffered from a ~50% failure rate due to provisioning timing issues, network drops, and image verification failures.
SolutionBuilt an autonomous host replacement workflow into a full-fledged operator service. Implemented comprehensive error handling, intelligent state machine retries, and a 1-click recycling mechanism for on-call operators.
Impact• Dropped host-ingestion failures from 50% down to 10%.
• Cut average host ingestion time by 50%.
• Replaced the entire 1,000+ host fleet with new machines bearing the latest production images without downtime.

Fleet Partition Audits & Online Disk Expansion

Fleet Audits & Online Disk Reliabilityclose
                                    Linux Storage
                                    Filesystem Expansion
                                    Incident Prevention
                                
ChallengeAccumulating logs, application updates, and patch rollouts triggered repeated disk-full emergencies on bare metal hosts, threatening service availability.
SolutionWrote a rapid distributed audit utility that inspected partition tables and expandability across 1,000+ hosts in approximately 5 minutes. Engineered an online root-filesystem expansion tool equipped with automated pre-flight safety checks.
Impact• Proactively detected at-risk nodes before outages occurred.
• Enabled safe, non-disruptive online storage expansion that permanently remediated patching failures.

Zero-Touch SSH & Regional Inventory

SSH Tools That Grow With the Serviceclose
                                    SSH Automation
                                    High Availability
                                    Operator Tooling
                                
Challenge & SolutionManual SSH key configuration and regional bastion setups created operational friction during new region rollouts. Furthermore, external dependency outages could disable live host lookups, locking operators out of critical systems during emergencies.
Engineered automated regional SSH configuration tooling that scales effortlessly with new cloud regions. Incorporated local cached inventory snapshots and fallback resolution algorithms.
Impact• Saved hours of manual configuration per regional rollout.
• Adopted by partner teams to ensure uninterrupted operational access during external service degradations.

Diagnostic Systems & Workflow Tools

ExtraHop Diagnostic & Workflow Engineeringclose
                                    Python
                                    Go
                                    PostgreSQL
                                    React
                                    Docker
                                
Technical ScopeBuilt specialized internal diagnostic utilities using Python, Go, Bash, PostgreSQL, and REST APIs to accelerate root cause analysis across physical, VMware, AWS, and Azure deployments.
Developed containerized full-stack proof-of-concept web services with React, Python, and Docker to optimize customer engineering workflows.

                                     Interactive Software & Web Archive
                                
View earlier full-stack applications & game algorithms (Cribbage AI, Under the Hood, Mean Coach, MadLibs)

Software Development FoundationscloseHighlights from early software engineering projects and full-stack applications:
Cribbage AI CloneFully functional browser-based Cribbage game against an AI engine featuring complex hand-counting scoring algorithms, pegging state machines, and bitwise optimization.
View Code
Under the HoodFull-stack vehicle maintenance tracker with authentication, CRUD operations, PostgreSQL database, and Edmunds API integration.
View Code
Mean CoachFull-stack MEAN application (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node) for tracking fitness activities and dynamic goal adjustments.
View Code
Movie MadLibsInteractive fill-in-the-blank screenplay generator built with AngularJS and dynamic DOM manipulation.
View Code

Leadership & Community

Accessibility Advocacy

Halted a company-wide tooling rollout after identifying it lacked adequate testing for red/green color blindness, making it unviable for affected employees. Championed accessibility standards and inclusive design across engineering tooling.

Teaching & Mentoring

Volunteered as a high school coding instructor through an Oracle-sponsored educational initiative. Conducted interviews and provided continuous 1-on-1 mentorship for Ada Developers Academy interns and incoming engineering hires.

Background

My story begins in the late '80s when my step-father came home with a 486DX computer. You know... the one that only ran MS-DOS and had a monochrome display?

He showed me how to explore command-line syntax and discover what tools were available. With that knowledge, at 8 years old, I was writing text-based menu systems, drawing ASCII boxes, and launching programs with single keystrokes.

Working with hardware, electronics, and computers has been a lifelong calling. Growing up, I was the one friends and family called to diagnose electronics, tune home networks, and rebuild systems. In high school, I learned TI-BASIC on my own and engineered a complete slot-machine simulator that maxed out the 128KB memory of a TI-85 calculator.

After high school, I deepened my knowledge of hardware and network troubleshooting as a Geek Squad agent, followed by studying business and sales management to launch an enterprise business distributing industrial-grade scientific instrumentation.

Following that entrepreneurial chapter, I returned full-time to software engineering and systems architecture. That passion evolved into scaling large-scale distributed systems and networking infrastructure as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Outside of engineering and infrastructure, my passions include car racing (autocross, track days), beach volleyball, tennis, video games, and continuous learning.

Contact Me

Interested in discussing cloud reliability, unattended deployment automation, or engineering leadership? Let's connect.

travis.walentin@gmail.com View Resume (PDF)

Travis Walentin

Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Technical Skills

Infrastructure & Cloud

Languages & Delivery

Testing & Reliability

Operations & Collaboration

Professional Experience

Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure • Networking Services

Customer Support Engineer

ExtraHop

Key Systems & Projects

Full-Service Deployment Automationclose

Challenge & Scope

Solution & Architecture

Impact

Cross-Region Connection Testingclose

Challenge

Solution

Impact

Host Ingestion & Fleet Recycling Serviceclose

Challenge

Solution

Impact

Fleet Audits & Online Disk Reliabilityclose

Challenge

Solution

Impact

SSH Tools That Grow With the Serviceclose

Challenge & Solution

Impact

ExtraHop Diagnostic & Workflow Engineeringclose

Technical Scope

Software Development Foundationsclose

Cribbage AI Clone

Under the Hood

Mean Coach

Movie MadLibs

Leadership & Community

Accessibility Advocacy

Teaching & Mentoring

Background

Contact Me

Full-Service Deployment Automation

Cross-Region Connection Testing

Host Ingestion & Fleet Recycling Service

Fleet Audits & Online Disk Reliability

SSH Tools That Grow With the Service

ExtraHop Diagnostic & Workflow Engineering

Software Development Foundations