Divine Sona Akama

PMP SAFe CSM DevOps/Platform/Cloud Engineer RHSA CKA AWS Solution Architect Windows M. Sc

Address: Clinton MD, 20735

Phone: 240-***-****

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/meet-divine-sona

I am a people-centric Agile/DevOps SME with extensive technical and organizational leadership experience, delivering end-end on complex enterprise IT innovative solutions on time and within budget. Skilled with project management and Software Development Life Cycles, championing process improvement, cross functional team collaboration, change and release management. I have extensive experience managing; IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, IaC and On-Prem Infrastructures while leveraging resources on AWS, Azure and GCP. Effective communicator and value-based transformational thought leader committed to eliminating waste, improving ROI and building motivated/ dedicated teams.

Accomplishments

~ Provided project leadership across broad technical, and business teams. Focused teams on business objectives and tracked progress to ensure project milestones were completed and delivered on time & budget

~Developed great working relationships by supporting Product Owners and key project stakeholders to understand their roles, improve backlog health and evangelize team successes to executive leadership, reversing years of poor performance.

~ Recommended, setup and trained team on tracking tools – Jira, MS Project, TFS

~Grew and scaled Agile program, attaining 75% of agile maturity within six months.

~Guided organization to identify and remove communication impediments, increasing productivity by 40%.

~Increased revenue by $3.7M through acceleration of delivery cycles, and early feedback loop from customers

~ Led team in building highly available, reliable, and secured API services.

~Built and maintained complex Automated CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and multiple interconnected tools to automate the provisioning and configuration of infrastructure in AWS, GCP, Azure and On-prem.

~Successfully led project on decoupling monolithic applications to micro-Service and AWS cloud migration.

~Wrote, modified, and maintained ansible playbooks, Jenkins pipeline Scripts, Kubernetes Manifest files, terraform scripts, Dockerfile, Bash Shell, Python and PowerShell Scripts for full automation.

~ Mitigated project risks through careful analysis, planning and prioritization, delivering on hard deadlines. ~Anticipated and managed change effectively in rapidly evolving global business environments~

~Defined processes and tools best suited to each project. Moved between Agile and Waterfall based on project specificities and client goals, creating detailed project roadmaps, plan, schedules, and work breakdown structures~

~Top masters class graduate (MIT), class of 2018 with 3.92 on 4.0 GPA~

Qualifications:

M.Sc. degree IT

Certified: CSM, SAFe, PMP, AWS SA

Product, Project & Program Management Experience

Project Scheduling, Planning, and Budgeting

Release Management planning and coordination.

Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, TDD and XP experiences.

Onsite/remote team coaching, mentoring and supervision.

DevOps Automation, CI/CD pipelines, Config Management

Platforms: AWS, GCP, Microsoft AZURE, Salesforce

Operating Systems: Windows and Linux

Applications: Java, Dotnet, Python, Mobile and Web

Databases: SQL, Postgre, DynamoDB

Languages; Bash Shell, Python, Power Shell, Yaml/Json, Golang

Tools: ALM, Jira, TFS, Rally, Confluence, SharePoint, MS Teams

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

CoStar Group, Washington DC 09/2022- Present.

Agile Project Manager

- Organized and led agile ceremonies, code reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions to foster collaboration and continuous improvement

- Utilized Microsoft tool suite, including Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, to create project documentation, presentations, and reports

- Monitored, tracked, and reported progress to senior leadership

- Mentored and help team members adapt agile/scrum best practices to deliver quality products

- Prioritize and track outstanding defects in Jira. Coordinate between development team/project leadership to resolve any conflicts/defects in terms of requirements.

- Designed and implemented scalable and secure cloud infrastructure using AWS, reducing operational cost by 23%.

- Implemented CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and Azure DevOps, enabling seamless integration and code delivery

- Optimized system performance and monitored application health using Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana and ELK Stack

- Migrated terraform modules from GitLab to terraform registry. Also assisted in migrating on-premises applications to AWS cloud Infrastructure, enhancing scalability and performance

- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to troubleshoot issues, resolve bottlenecks, ensure high availability and reliability of services

CareFirst Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Owings Mills, MD 06/2020- Present

Group Project Manager

Lead API lifecycle development in Agile environment; responsible for software development and code quality

Establish and nurture productive relationships with key stakeholders to further strategic goals

Conduct cross-team retrospectives and drive change initiatives across program

Manage weekly backlog grooming sessions with teams, ensuring work items are estimated, ready-for-work and teams’ ‘Definition of Done’ (DoD) are well defined on the story, sprint, and release levels

Successfully implemented multiple releases for Enterprise Program Releases for 10 applications

Organized and participated in customer facing communications, facilitating daily standups, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives etc. and reporting on Sprint progress, burn down, velocity and story points to stakeholders

Oversee analysis and documentation of customer’s business requirements and processes to improve and support business activities

Support teams in removing blockers, managing inter-team dependencies, and mitigating risks

Change agent championing continuous improvement mindset and efforts, recommending adjustment to established delivery practices.

Work with Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and engineering leads to ensure cross team collaboration and coordination of release plans.

Assist in research and assessment of business goals, objectives and needs to align IT solutions with business initiative

Drive a customer-focused culture throughout program teams to deepen client relationships and leverage broader relationships, systems, and knowledge

Perform Agile Maturity assessments for teams, providing proactive coaching and input to reach higher levels of maturity, continuous improvement for optimum team productivity

Grow three distributed, cross-functional teams building services for member portal

Assist in facilitating Program Increment Planning and cross-program workshops/training

Assist RTE, product management and stakeholders in PI planning

Collaborate, organize, and facilitate SOS with onsite and offshore SMs and technology leads

Work with PMO for audits, metrics reporting, and best practice standardization

Designed and implemented the strategy that fulfills the objectives, maximizes revenues, profits and market share of the company while streamlining overall operations pertaining to business development, and customer service

Wells Fargo, Charlotte, NC. 12/18- 06/2020.

Implementation Manager, Agile and DevOps Transformation

Value stream leader in agile PMO, supporting multiple teams building complex automated CI/CD pipelines from scratch using multiple interconnected tools to provision and configure infrastructures in AWS Cloud

Develop a community of expertise to create consistency and scale for Scrum and Operation teams

Created and updated Sprints and Release calendars

Established operating model and roadmap to deploy or support automation across the organization efficiently

Assist with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information

Organized weekly scrum of the scrum to discuss progress, blockers, and team health

Owned and managed multiple middleware applications, collaborating with business partners and stakeholders to provide quality software for customers

Work with resource management in assigning and designing cross-functional teams

Coordinated application and project releases, collaborating with release management and program managers in organizing implementation checkpoints and Go/No Go meetings

Manage and track project budget on a monthly basis- forecasting, actuals, and recovery invoice recovery

Collaborated with PMO governance to ensure project deliverables met enterprise quality, security, and regulatory standards

Worked with multiple scrum masters/ team leads in the value stream, analyzing the team's current state, coaching, and supporting the teams towards PMO vision for future or goal state

Developed and implemented metrics reporting across multiple agile teams within the program office for accurate and timely communication of the team's/project's accomplishments or project health

Served as the primary point of contact between management, project stakeholders and delivery team

Supported two (2) distributed agile teams, facilitating all scrum ceremonies, and assisting product owners in backlog prioritization and deployment

Strategically planned & conceptualized creative, out-of-the-box strategies to enhance business accounts and ensured business growth strategies are met

Charles Schwab, Dallas, TX. 04/18-12/18.

Sr. Scrum Master, Agile and DevOps Adoption

Led enterprise global data project coordinating requirements gathering and ensuring client sign offs

Created and managed project/program resources, budgeting, and risks radiation to Leadership

Organized and ran effective recurring status meetings with the product, portfolio, and delivery managers

with Product Owner to define project scope and objectives

Works effectively with others to remove delivery team roadblocks

Guides team through the continual improvement process

Designed and implemented the strategy that fulfills the objectives, maximizes revenues, profits and market share of the company while streamlining overall operations pertaining to business development

Worked with other departments to ensure alignment of company goals, as set by senior management, and ensured that the business growth strategies are met

AT&T, Phoenix Az. (Remote) 06/17- 03/18

Agile Project Coordinator – Consultant

Organized, trained, and directed team leads to follow Scrum or Kanban based frameworks for project delivery

Facilitated project communications and provided daily scrum notes, reviews, retrospectives, and regular snapshots of project velocity

Contributed to the development of a detailed 38-month roadmap for all CDR infrastructure

Consulted with clients on holistic IT strategy: including investment in new assets and optimization of current infrastructure, cost reduction, and implementation strategies

Identified, understood, and educated stakeholders on risks in the current environment and future growth aligning with IT spend patterns

Create high-level illustrations documenting step-by-step procedures to complete identified process gaps, providing more effective communication with primary decision-makers, and mitigating associated risks

Planned & conceptualized various strategies to achieve business goals aimed towards the growth in business volumes as well as profitability.

Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, OH 9/16 – 06/2017

DevOps Engineer / Manager

Oversaw 3 teams of 30+ professionals and led all aspects of project including capacity planning, resource allocation, project documentation, client engagement and change management

Built and configured Kubernetes Clusters ensuring that nodes/pods auto scaled and load balance.

Configured managed continuous application performance monitoring using NewRelic, Prometheus, Grafana

Enhanced security configuration in Linux, Windows, Docker and Kubernetes

Used terraform, AWS SDK, AWSCLI/UI, kops and ansible to provision and configure infrastructures in AWS Cloud including; VPC, Route53, Private and Public subnets, route tables, IGW, EC2 Instances, IAM, ELB, Autoscaling, CloudWatch, EFS, NFS, EBS, S3, Databases, Security groups, NACLs, EKS, among others.

Wrote, modified and maintained; ansible playbooks, Jenkins pipeline scripts, Kubernetes manifest files, terraform scripts, Dockerfile, Docker-compose file and Bash Shell Scripts for full automation

Participated in establishing SOP documentations

Revamped company’s system’s setup, developed automated server generation routines, optimized system performance, installed upgrades/patches and set system monitoring and maintained security protocol.

Enhanced project-wide efficiencies by creating 13+ filters and dashboards in Jira to monitor the progress of 350 to 400 bugs and enhancement tickets

Addressed and resolved project risks, and roadblocks while securing resources to efficiently complete deliverables.

Facilitated internal training to build in-house expertise and product awareness and staff confidence

Xerox, Elkridge, MD, 04/13 – 9/16

Scrum/ Agile Coach

- Organized and ran effective recurring team/program meetings with the product, portfolio, and delivery managers

- Supported Product Owner to groom backlog and sprint goals

- Collaborated with program team leaders to rapidly remove roadblocks and meet delivery timelines

- Provided one-one coaching and guidance to team member, driving product and process improvement

- Worked with other departments to ensure alignment of company goals, as set by senior management, and ensured that the business growth strategies are met

- Developed and facilitated Agile/Organizational trainings

I/O Spaces, Silver Spring, MD 5/10 – 1/13

System Administrator

- Configure network to DHCP or Static, familiar with TCP/IP protocol and maintaining network.

- Manage system process in areas like boot process, startup and system shutdown System Hardening.

- Controlling network traffic using firewall such as IP tables and systemctl.

- Setting up system security using TCP wrappers and SElinux.

- Experienced in Troubleshooting basic software and hardware issues and other day-to-day user trouble tickets.

- Setting up Multiple MySQL instances on one Linux machine.

- Configuring Vhost on Apache to host multiple websites.

- Creating backups for virtual machines using snapshots.

- RPM and YUM package installations, patch and other server management.

- Managing systems routine backup, scheduling jobs, disabling and enabling cron jobs.

- Installing and configuring Apache and providing support on CentOs and Redhat boxes.

- Troubleshooting Linux network, security related issues, capturing packets using tools tcp damp.

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