Donald Simpson

DevOps Engineer | SRE | AI & MLOps Platform Engineering
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

📇 Contact Details

📧 Email	donaldsimpsonATgmailDOTcom
🌐 Website	www.donaldsimpson.co.uk
💼 LinkedIn	linkedin.com/in/donaldsimpson

Profile

Senior DevOps Engineer with 15+ years’ experience building secure, scalable, automated cloud infrastructure using AWS, Kubernetes, and CI/CD tools. Passionate about DevSecOps and platform engineering. Beyond core DevOps, I actively explore applied AI and data platforms through personal projects such as CarHunch (vehicle insights on ClickHouse + MiniLM clustering) and Crossword Wiz (Swift iOS app with Python FastAPI middleware and local AI inference). This breadth enables me to design DevOps and MLOps solutions tuned to the realities of data/AI workloads and end‑user applications.

Core Skills

• Cloud & DevOps: AWS (ECS, EKS, Lambda, CloudFormation, CDK, Kinesis), Kubernetes, OpenShift, GCP, Terraform, Ansible
• CI/CD & Automation: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Docker, Terragrunt
• Security & Compliance: Prisma Cloud, AWS Shield, Twistlock, cfn_nag, DevSecOps practices
• Monitoring & Observability: Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, DataDog
• Programming & Scripting: Python, Bash, FastAPI, REST APIs
• Data & AI: ClickHouse, NLP (MiniLM, GPT4All), clustering (HDBSCAN), local AI inference
• MLOps – Model governance/monitoring, data validation, model accuracy tests, bias/fairness checks, performance benchmarks, ETL with Python

Recent Experience

Shell (Apr 2023 – Present)

• Developing CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions to manage infrastructure and application deployment
• Supporting AWS EKS-based Kubernetes platforms used by global teams
• Building shared tooling and automation modules with AWS best practices
• Setting up observability using Dynatrace, including synthetics, alerting and performance monitoring

Ubloquity (Nov 2022 – Apr 2023)

• Blockchain integration using Multichain
• Kubernetes management on AWS EKS and bare-metal OVH using Rancher
• Set up centralised logging using OpenSearch and Fluentd
• Built CI/CD pipelines with ArgoCD and DockerHub for container management

RS Components (Mar 2022 – Nov 2022)

• Developed reusable Terraform modules using Terragrunt for AWS infrastructure provisioning
• Built GitLab CI pipelines to build, test, promote and deploy containerised services
• Implemented secure deployment using GitLab Runners on AWS ECS and Nomad
• Migrated workloads from on-prem to AWS and replaced Jenkins with GitLabCI
• Integrated monitoring and DevSecOps tooling (DataDog, Prisma Cloud)

Registers of Scotland (Jan 2020 – Mar 2022)

• Built and automated cloud infrastructure using AWS CDK, CloudFormation, and StepFunctions
• Designed and deployed secure centralized logging platform using Kinesis Firehose, Lambda, and Cognito
• Created self-mutating pipelines with AWS CodeBuild/Deploy/Commit
• Integrated DevSecOps controls using Prisma, CFNGuard, AWS Inspector, WAF, GuardDuty, SecurityHub
• Built cross-account monitoring using CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Elasticsearch and Grafana
• Produced Architecture Decision Records, supported product roadmaps and governance

Royal Bank of Scotland (Oct 2019 – Jan 2020)

• Automated Kubernetes provisioning via Pivotal Cloud Foundry on VMWare
• Onboarded teams to CI/CD and container platforms with Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes
• Delivered DevSecOps pipelines with Twistlock integration

People’s Postcode Lottery (Apr 2019 – Oct 2019)

• Migrated infrastructure from VMWare ESX to AWS
• Automated backup and disaster recovery with AWS Lambda
• Built Jenkins/Docker CI/CD pipelines and integrated security scans (cfn_nag, Twistlock)
• Optimized cost-efficiency using SpotFleet, ECS and Fargate tasks

Tesco Bank (Nov 2018 – Apr 2019)

• Built cloud-native CI/CD pipelines using AWS CloudFormation, Lambda, Jenkins and Ansible
• Integrated Selenium, JMeter and accessibility/security testing tools
• Introduced Docker and Kubernetes proof of concept and adoption roadmap

Earlier Experience (1999 to 2018)

Back before ‘DevOps’ was a thing, I was a Build Engineer/Manager focusing on automating builds and deployments
having started off as a Middleware Developer (Java, Weblogic/Websphere with Oracle on Solaris)

• Registers of Scotland – Built OpenShift-based CI/CD pipelines using Docker, Jenkins, RHEL, Grafana & Prometheus
• RBS – Introduced CI pipelines, Docker, Red Hat Satellite, and continuous deployment strategies
• HSBC – Designed CI/CD systems for Oracle & middleware, using Jenkins, Docker, VMWare
• BSkyB – Led CI for mobile apps and automation for Red Hat/VMWare/ESX and Oracle environments
• Tesco Bank – SCM architect for greenfield bank, enabling fully automated builds and deployments
• Intelligent Finance – Migrated platforms from Solaris to HP-UX; automated J2EE builds and monitoring
• 3DMS – Designed email scanning software and managed IIS/Apache-hosted websites

Projects

CarHunch (2025) – Vehicle Insights Platform CarHunch

Designed a platform ingesting DVLA MOT and STATS19 datasets into ClickHouse for large-scale analytics. Applied MiniLM embeddings with HDBSCAN clustering to identify common MOT defect patterns. Built automation in Python for data ingestion, and dashboards for trend analysis. Demonstrated integration of DevOps skills (infra, pipelines, scaling) with applied AI/data insights.

Crossword Wiz (2025) – iOS App Crossword Wiz on the App Store

Built a published iOS crossword app in Swift. Connected via FastAPI middleware in Python for dictionary lookups and clue parsing. Integrated MiniLM and GPT4All for AI-assisted clue solving, optimizing inference for local performance. Demonstrated full-stack understanding from mobile front-end to backend APIs and AI workloads.

Publications

• Extending Jenkins – Amazon | Sample Chapter
• Beginning Docker (Video) – Packt | Preview

Education & Certifications

• Postgraduate in Information Systems – Napier University
• Bachelor of Land Economy – University of Aberdeen
• MCP & MCSE (Microsoft)
• Advanced WebLogic Admin (BEA)

Projects & Interests

• Runs the Automated IT Solutions Meetup in Edinburgh
• Personal Kubernetes lab with CCTV, facial recognition, ML, and blockchain projects
• Woodturning: blog & gallery
• Guitar, motorbike maintenance, and home automation tinkering

References available on request. Full CV and download options: donaldsimpson.co.uk/my-cv-resume