Ben Agricola

Hi! 👋 I'm Ben - a mostly-self-taught tinkerer and Software Engineering grad (back in 2008 - time flies 🤯), and I now spend more time on infrastructure automation, hosting, (dev)-ops and ☁️ side of things.

I've spent 11 years in the field professionally and had my first experiences of software development and networking around 20 years ago.

I dabble in Golang, Typescript, Python, Lua, bits and pieces of C and various other languages and Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, Crossplane, k8s, CF/CDK etc). I have languages that I favour for various things, but I can generally look at code written in anything upwards of Assembly and work out what's going on.

I use a lot of open-source software, and I like to contribute back to the projects that I use - as much on a personal level as a professional one. I'm not heavily involved with any in particular, but I pop up here and there with a PR or two when I find an annoyance that I think might affect others _{^{(the Boy Scout Rule)}} 👍

I have in depth, hands-on experience designing, building out, supporting and maintaining complex infrastructure, from the hardware all the way up to API's - this includes:

• Metal: Dell + Supermicro equipment, Rack design / layout, cabling.
• Networking: Juniper MX, Extreme Networks and Mellanox physical devices, Linux routing using FRR, and userspace routing using Snabb. OSPF, BGP and DFZ Routing, LIR management via RIPE.
• Storage: MooseFS, MinIO, NVMEoF, FreeNAS.
• Scheduling: Kubernetes, Nomad.
• Orchestration: Crossplane, Terraform, Ansible, CDK, Puppet.
• Private Cloud: oVirt.
• Public Cloud: AWS, Linode.
• CI/CD: GitLab.

I'm available for consultancy around any of these things - find me on LinkedIn, UpWork or guess my email (hint: first name at domain) if you want to get in touch.

Outside of computers, I'm a bit obsessed with bikes (with and without engines) - Supermoto, Dirt bikes, Electric MX, Mountain bikes, you name it. I like to get my hands dirty and learn about things by working on them. I'm currently rebuilding a motorbike engine from the cases up because I've always wanted to know I can fix anything that goes wrong with it.

If I can't ride a bike I'm happy enough outdoors doing whatever (🏔and 🌲), but also like to play PC games when I have some downtime - I've just got a Steam Deck so that's taking up an almost unhealthy amount of free time right now!