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 delivering secure, scalable, and automated infrastructure across bare-metal and cloud environments.
Skilled in building and operating Kubernetes platforms, CI/CD pipelines, and integrated observability and monitoring systems.
Proficient in designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, build automation, and infrastructure-as-code workflows that enable rapid, reliable delivery across multiple environments.
Experienced in embedding security, monitoring, and performance visibility throughout the deployment lifecycle; from pipelines to production.
Strong background in DevSecOps and MLOps, supporting data-intensive and AI-driven workloads through reliable, automated, and well-observed platforms.

Core Skills

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (ECS, EKS, Lambda, CloudFormation, CDK, Kinesis), GCP, bare-metal systems, Terraform, Ansible, Terragrunt
• Kubernetes & Platform Engineering: Kubernetes, OpenShift, ArgoCD, container orchestration, service mesh, multi-cluster management
• CI/CD & Automation: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, build pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code, release automation
• Observability & Monitoring: Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, DataDog — centralised monitoring, alerting, and performance visibility
• Security & Compliance: DevSecOps practices, Prisma Cloud, AWS Shield, Twistlock, cfn_nag, policy-as-code, vulnerability management
• Programming & Scripting: Python, Bash, Java, Typescript, FastAPI, REST APIs, automation tooling, data integration
• Data & MLOps: ClickHouse, NLP (MiniLM, GPT4All), clustering (HDBSCAN), model governance & monitoring, data validation, performance & bias testing, local AI inference, ETL pipelines

Recent Experience

Shell (Apr 2023 – Present)

• Designed and maintained CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Terraform to automate infrastructure provisioning and application delivery.
• Supported and optimised global Kubernetes platforms on AWS EKS, ensuring scalability, reliability, and compliance with enterprise standards.
• Developed reusable automation modules and internal tooling aligned with AWS and DevSecOps best practices.
• Implemented comprehensive observability with Dynatrace, including synthetic monitoring, alerting, and performance dashboards to improve system visibility and uptime.

Ubloquity (Nov 2022 – Apr 2023)

• Designed, built, and managed hybrid Kubernetes environments across AWS EKS and bare-metal OVH using Rancher and Terraform, enabling consistent provisioning and lifecycle management from development to production.
• Built and deployed blockchain networks using Multichain to support the company’s applications and developer environments.
• Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines with GitHub, ArgoCD and DockerHub to automate container builds, testing, and deployments.
• Established centralised logging and observability using OpenSearch and Fluentd, improving visibility, troubleshooting, and operational reliability across distributed systems.

RS Components (Mar 2022 – Nov 2022)

• Designed and developed reusable Terraform modules with Terragrunt to standardise AWS infrastructure provisioning and reduce duplication across teams.
• Built and maintained GitLab CI pipelines to build, test, promote, and deploy containerised microservices with automated quality and security gates.
• Implemented secure, scalable deployments using GitLab Runners on AWS ECS and Nomad.
• Led migration of workloads from on-prem to AWS, modernising the delivery stack and replacing Jenkins with GitLab CI for streamlined automation.
• Integrated monitoring and DevSecOps tooling including DataDog and Prisma Cloud to enhance visibility, compliance, and runtime security.

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

Built a scalable analytics platform ingesting DVLA MOT and STATS19 datasets into ClickHouse.
Applied MiniLM embeddings with HDBSCAN clustering to reveal common MOT defect patterns.
Developed automated Python pipelines and dashboards, integrating infrastructure, CI/CD, MLOps and AI-driven insights.

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

Developed and Published an iOS crossword app in Swift with Python FastAPI backend for dictionary lookups and clue parsing.
Integrated MiniLM and GPT4All for AI-assisted problem solving, optimising inference for local performance.
Delivered full-stack solution from mobile front-end to backend APIs and AI workloads.

Publications

• Extending Jenkins (Book) – 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