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soakes/README.md
Simon Oakes profile banner Animated headline: automation-first infrastructure, Linux DevOps platform engineering, automation, network, security, build platforms, and AI

Linux DevOps Ansible Terraform Docker Kubernetes Git AI

25+ years
production infrastructure
DevOps
automation-first delivery
Network security
BGP, RTBH, threat feeds
AI
ops, reporting, tooling

I help turn complex infrastructure into platforms that are easier to operate, easier to recover, and easier for teams to trust.

I Build Infrastructure That Keeps Its Promises

I'm Simon, a UK-based Senior Linux, DevOps, and Platform Engineer with 25+ years of experience building, fixing, automating, and improving production systems.

My work sits where infrastructure, automation, networking, storage, security, and pragmatic software engineering meet. I have spent my career keeping real platforms alive: ISP environments, build systems, Docker and Kubernetes estates, virtualisation platforms, storage, DNS, mail, routing, monitoring, backup, and the operational tooling around them.

These days I am especially interested in the layer between operations and software: the Go and Python tools, CI/CD workflows, Ansible roles, Terraform plans, AI-assisted workflows, and small internal services that turn repeated human effort into reliable platform behaviour.

I am also actively exploring AI-assisted operations: not hype for its own sake, but useful automation, summarisation, reporting, developer support, and internal tools that help engineers understand systems faster and make better decisions.

Animated operator terminal showing whoami, mission, and current interests

What I Bring

Area Signal
25+ years in production infrastructure Linux, networking, ISP operations, virtualisation, storage, mail, DNS, monitoring, support escalation, and mentoring
DevOps and platform engineering Ansible, Terraform, Packer, GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, CI/CD, Docker, Compose, Kubernetes, and automation-first operations
Systems programming for operators Go and Python CLIs that are small, inspectable, automation-friendly, and built around real operational workflows
Network and service reliability BGP-aware routing, VPNs, HAProxy, Postfix, Dovecot, DNS, observability, backups, and high-availability service design
Modern internal tooling Python Flask apps, PowerShell automation, API integrations, web scraping where needed, and AI-assisted reporting workflows
AI adoption Applying AI where it improves operational clarity: summarisation, internal reporting, workflow assistance, and human-in-the-loop automation

How I Tend To Help

Stabilise
Understand the platform, find the real failure modes, and reduce operational noise.
Automate
Replace fragile manual steps with code, pipelines, checks, and repeatable workflows.
Modernise
Move systems forward without losing sight of reliability, recovery, and the people operating them.

Selected Public Work

A few public examples of the kind of tooling I like to build: practical, operator-facing, and designed to solve specific production problems cleanly.

Automates network threat response by turning threat feeds into BGP blackhole announcements in real time.

CLI for provisioning S3 buckets, scoped IAM credentials, and batch operations across object-storage estates at scale.

Production-ready S3 mirroring with parallel transfers, safe deletion, and automation-friendly config for disaster recovery and data migration.

Recovers and exports Telegram messages offline on macOS, decrypting local databases to HTML, Markdown, and CSV.

Lightweight CLI for tracking quota usage and reset windows, designed as a daily developer/operator utility.

Built For Operators

Small, inspectable tools that work in shells, CI jobs, cron, systemd timers, Ansible workflows, and real incident-response situations.

Operating Principles

Calm Production
Designing infrastructure that is boring for users and clear for operators.
Useful Automation
Replacing manual runbooks with tested automation and readable code.
Operator Tooling
Building CLIs and services that fit cron, systemd, CI/CD, and Ansible.
Platform Clarity
Making storage, networking, routing, and services easier to reason about.
Developer Velocity
Improving build platforms so engineers can ship without fighting machinery.
Team Lift
Mentoring engineers, documenting well, and raising the operational quality bar.

Engineering Style

Automate the repeatable.
Document the surprising.
Design for recovery.
Keep production calm.
Make the next fix easier than the last one.

Core Toolbox

Linux        Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat-family systems, macOS, Windows Server
Automation   Ansible, Terraform, Packer, GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins
Runtime      Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes, systemd, HAProxy
Code         Go, Python, Bash, PowerShell, Flask, API integrations
Network      DNS, BGP, OSPF, VPNs, VLANs, NAT, routing, firewalls
Services     Postfix, Dovecot, Nginx, Apache, Bind, monitoring, backup
Platforms    Proxmox, VMware, XenServer, Nutanix, KVM, NetApp, Pure, Nimble

GitHub

This profile is a public slice of the work I care about: infrastructure tools, operational notes, experiments, and production-minded utilities from years spent close to the metal.


Useful infrastructure. Clear automation. Calm production.

Pinned Loading

  1. blackhole-threats blackhole-threats Public

    Go-based RTBH daemon that turns threat feeds into controlled BGP blackhole announcements.

    Go 3

  2. s3mirror s3mirror Public

    Production-ready Python utility for mirroring buckets and objects between S3-compatible endpoints with parallel transfers, comprehensive logging, and automation-friendly CLI.

    Python 7

  3. s3ctl s3ctl Public

    Go-based S3 provisioning CLI for bucket creation, scoped IAM credentials, and batch operations.

    Go 1

  4. quotai quotai Public

    A small CLI for showing Z.ai quota usage and exact reset windows.

    Python 1

  5. telegram-message-exporter telegram-message-exporter Public

    Offline recovery + export tool for Telegram (macOS). Decrypts local db_sqlite and exports to HTML/Markdown/CSV.

    Python 19