Nick Berry

Principal Staff Engineer @ LinkedIn, Site Engineering | Jun 2017 - Jul 2025

• to be updated...

Director @ LinkedIn, Site Reliability | Apr 2014 - Jun 2017

• Lead the Infrastructure SRE organization across three sites (SF, NYC, India) which included Security, Monitoring (Observability), Traffic, CDN, DNS. Responsible for hiring and/or developing senior management as the team grew to 40+.
• Focused on delivering and enabling self-service solutions used across Engineering, with guardrails to minimize human error and expense.

Sr. Manager @ LinkedIn, Site Reliability | Oct 2012 - Apr 2014

• Expanded embedded SRE support across Growth, Identity, Higher Education, Presentation and Internationalization, Security (Product, Infra, House), and Gateway/Proxy (GaaP).
• Team scope grew to include both Bay Area and NYC regions, as well as building and hiring future leads and managers for individual teams.

Manager @ LinkedIn, Site Reliability | Aug 2011 - Oct 2012

• Responsible for growing a team of embedded SREs to support numerous platforms including Presentation Infrastructure, Identity Management, Engagement, Higher Education and Growth/Registration.
• Key contributor to building, deploying, and supporting Apache Traffic Server as the proxy routing tier across all frontends, marking the start of LinkedIn's edge infrastructure strategy.

Principal Service Engineer @ Yahoo! | Sep 2010 - Aug 2011

• Responsible for Frontpage (www.yahoo.com). Maintained GSLB configuration and load distribution, enhanced application-level metric aggregration/reporting/alerting to maintain Frontpage's ability to have the lowest service impact in the event of an outage.
• Improved deployment/release process from 2.5 hours down to ~20 minutes.
• Implemented emergency failover static solution, streamlining operations from >1 hour to execute to under 10 seconds.
• Worked on a tight knit team w/Engineering and QA, on new Frontpage implementation (codename Metro). Instrumented application metrics for visualizations and alerting.

Sr. Service Engineer @ Yahoo! | Oct 2007 - Sep 2010

• Managed Open Content Platform for global RSS feed caching and data normalization on the scale of 14+ million feeds across eight data centers. GSLB management (through Akamai DNS + load feedback), hardware/software load balancing, data replication and validation (yahoo-specific technology plus MySQL replication), system/application tuning for web services and MySQL, custom application level monitoring/reporting use for troubleshooting and capacity planning. Improved ops insight for service impacting events to identify sources.
• Managed User Profile Service for middle-tier application providing consistent client interface for multiple backend datastores. Dealt with monitoring challenges of +12,000 service checks along with application-level metric aggregation and reporting, building infrastructure for Yahoo's APT product (600+ servers) to scale beyond 200,000 queries per second coupled with a 25ms response SLA.

Sr. Unix Admin @ Walkers Office Supply/Internet49 | Dec 2002 - Oct 2007

Office supply focused on small-medium businesses, also providing dialup/DSL internet access

• Designed/documented/implemented L4-balanced Qmail with Vpopmail on FreeBSD systems which included custom SpamAssassin/ClamAV/GreyListing performance tweaking to handle 1,000,000+ emails per day. Set up dns, mail, and web hosting automation.
• Managed/upgraded unix web hosting and upgraded/tuned centralized NFS server used for email, web and log storage. Implemented network-based monitoring utility, Nagios with NRPE to check service and server availability as well as notification when services/servers fail.
• Contracted to United Auburn Indian Community (UAIC) to provide IT management as well as desktop support. Supported a small office environment of 50-70 employees with group policy management, management/implementation of Symantec Corporate AntiVirus, and monitoring all servers and network connections between four offices. Environment included two domain controllers, Exchange 2003, Veritas BackupExec, and PowerSchool + Destiny used for the tribe's school district.

Sr. Unix Admin @ Copart | Aug 2004 - Dec 2006

Auction salvaged title vehicles on the behalf of insurance companies over the internet

• Responsible for managing 200+ Solaris/Linux servers across two data centers. Services provided include web, java web applications (resin/tomcat), mysql, monitoring (cacti/nagios/custom scripting), ldap, cvs + cvs automation tools (CruiseControl/Fisheye), as well as several internal web-based applications written to support other departments within the company.
• Managed Solaris Jumpstart automation using FlashArchive and the linux-based counterpart, Kickstart. Managed NetBackup by automating backup image verification and media auditing, as well as Vault configuration and implementation for off-site rotation. Rewrote NetBackup's distribution script to use SSH instead of RSH.
• Designed and implemented several internal tools to automate various tasks and reports:
  • Logviewer provided socket-based access to log files on remote servers with the ability to perform a variety of tasks on log files (including list, get attributes, get the file, search with regex, and perform head/tail) while providing several degrees of security to limit access to defined log files.
  • Transparent watermarking system integrated with Netcache to display appropriate watermark based on HTTP referrer.
  • VB² Monitor provided the ability to track/monitor/display status of all auctions for Copart providing near real-time status on auction completion, website health-checks and the ability to auto-join any running auction.
  • VB² Plotter displayed a map of the earth with points plotted throughout to represent active connections to Copart's auction servers based on data from GeoIP.
  • Support Contract Manager provided a repository for all support contract/contact information as well as notification for contract expiration.

PHP developer @ Sacramento SPCA | May 2005 - Nov 2010

Non-profit providing shelter and adoption services for abandoned/unwanted pets

• Working on a volunteer basis, currently support existing web infrastructure (LAMP).
• Worked on several e-commerce interfaces from accepting donations to registering for classes online. Introduced the use of unobtrusive Javascript and AJAX to improve the user experience with new projects as well as the existing management interface.

Systems Engineer @ RagingWire Telecommunications | Jan 2001 - Jan 2004

Enterprise-class data center located in Sacramento, CA

• Designed/documented/implemented all system infrastructure using Solaris 8 on 18 Sun servers ranging from Netra T1 to SunFire 4800 as well as helped design network infrastructure to provide complete redundancy.
• System infrastructure included HDS Lightening 9960, 3Par Inserv, NetApp F840c filers (clustered, using NFS and CIFS), Veritas NetBackup 4.5 (upgraded from 3.4) using Spectra Logic Gator 64k robotic library, load-balanced and replicated LDAP for Solaris authentication, BIND for DNS, load-balanced Apache, load-balanced and replicated MySQL, as well as remote access capabilities (MS RRAS for VPN and Lucent Max for dialup using MS IAS).
• Managed the clustered Exchange environment and handled all improvements to Exchange ranging from migrating Exchange database to a larger volume to adding capabilities to Outlook Web. Managed and defined Active Directory users/user roles/security policy, implemented roaming profiles/folder redirection within the domain policy for specific departments. Designed/implemented intranet website based on PHP and ported employee information into a centralized Oracle database.
• Wrote several management scripts to automate tape duplication and rotation with Veritas NetBackup for off-site storage to improve disaster recovery planImplemented Qmail spooling server to identify spam and provide a localized buffer in case Exchange became unavailable. Wrote procedures to perform any administration task within Solaris, NetBackup, NetApp and SAN storage. Provided level 3 (end-of-line) support for the Operations department.

Co-Founder @ Scurvy | Oct 2000 - Jul 2025

Web programming/design/hosting service

• Built web/email hosting solutions under Debian Linux. Utilized Qmail with Vpopmail for email infrastructure, tied in qmailadmin to allow customers control over their email administration. Built several automation scripts to minimize time spent building and managing websites and email.
• Designed and coded an online photo gallery with the abilities of assigning photographer, description and people of each photo with full search capabilities for all fields, CANDIDv2 (GitHub).
• Designed and coded a template based mailto CGI which allows users to process information from a HTML form, process the input and send an email with the information formatted to a specified template. Additional features include timezone translation and script execution for further processing of data.

Systems Engineer @ Wavve Telecommunications | Mar 2000 - Jan 2001

Large data center located in Sacramento, CA

• Designed redundant services solution covering Radius, Web, FTP, DNS, News, and MailWorked with EMC in designing scalable storage solution for over 30 Sun servers.
• Designed, implemented and administered systems interacting with MS-SQL, Oracle 8, L4 switches, and Cold Fusion. Secured all Linux servers; optimized (and fixed) DNS servers. Designed and implemented VLAN setup/configuration on BigIron 8000 to decrease broadcasted/unnecessary traffic. Responsible for security auditing of Linux and Windows NT servers.

Network Admin @ JPSNet/OneMain | Dec 1999 - Mar 2000

Internet Service Provider offering service primarily in California (with limited national service)

• Managed nation-wide network - which included Cisco routers (25xx, 72xx, 75xx series), Catalyst (26xx, 29xx, 55xx series), PIX 520, Ascend SA 100 and 600 CSU/DSU bridge, Ascend TNT (1/2/3 generation), Ascend Max 4000-4048, NetApp; managed Netcache via WCCP. Managed point-to-point connections (from DS0 to DS3). Managed unix shell hosts on BSDI (3.x-4.x). Responsible for BIND 4 -> 8 migration and cleaning up zone file management.
• Created Perl web interface to allow technicians to administer web servers and DNS servers, as well as custom scripts to monitor bandwidth usage reports via SNMP.
• Managed DNS, RADIUS, SMTP, POP3, and HTTP servers.

Systems Admin @ Ulink Internet | Feb 1999 - Nov 1999

Sacramento-based Internet Service Provider

• Managed DNS and responsible for BIND 4->8 migration. Migrated several services from Windows NT 4 to Linux (RedHat 6) including web, email and radius authentication. Implemented and managed hold music server via developed CGI interface with Perl. Implemented conversion to new billing software (Quickbooks to ISP Companion) through a series of Perl scripts. administered Livingston Radius 2.3, Microsoft Exchange 5.5, and IIS 4.0.
• Consulted and assisted in converting an NT based ISP to UNIX, as well as configured Ascend Max 4048s. Advised and implemented current network layout for increased security and performance. Assisted with the creation of a web-based user management interface to create/modify/delete users from the system. Set up Lucent RADIUS, BIND, Qpopper, and Sendmail.

Systems Admin @ Mission Ave Open School, SJUSD | Jan 1999 - Jun 1999

K-6 Elementary School

• Managed and upgraded 89 Macintosh and 4 PC (running Windows NT) computers, supporting a staff of 20+ teachers and 5+ office staff. Performed system support for teachers to help them and students to improve their skills for multimedia presentations and usage of the network resources (network drives and printers). Managed all systems through remote applications (ANA, Timbukto).
• Optimized network layout of school for frame-relay T1. Worked with HP Procurve switches for interconnecting all computers within the location.

Tech Support @ JPSNet | Jan 1998 - Nov 1998

Dial-up Internet Provider

• Phone support for PC and Mac customers. Dialup, ISDN, POP/SMTP troubleshooting galore. AT&F1 is your friend!