Sean Jain Ellis
ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP - DEVELOPMENT - INFRASTRUCTURE - DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
Generalist with a breadth of knowlege supporting secure, reliable and scalable
software deployment operations. Deep technical expertise spanning coding,
systems and networking. Proven technical leader adept at solving complex
challenges, driving architectural decisions and elevating operational
excellence across teams.
Engineering Highlights
- Automated and standardized golden signal alerting at Upstart, improving
incident detection times
- Led Twitter’s system resource management initiative, with $200M+ in
projected CapEx savings
- Designed a network access control policy management platform at Box
- Developed automated service monitoring and observability dashboards at
DreamWorks Animation
- Designed a network and systems configuration management platform at First
Victoria National Bank
- Key contributor to OnDataSuite, a student management SaaS platform, at Aloe
Software
- Unix developer for the hot check management system within CLASS, used by
Texas district attorneys
Management Highlights
- Led two SRE teams at Twitter, embedded within real-time storage software
development groups
- Managed the platform team for Nova, a cloud-based live 3D rendering SaaS
startup
- Established DreamWorks Animation’s infrastructure organization in India,
hiring systems, network and tooling engineers while overseeing a 25,000-server
data center build
- Grew MobiTV’s systems and networking organization from 3 to 20 engineers and
established a NOC
- Co-founded Aloe Software, hiring developers for OnDataSuite, a student
management SaaS platform
- Built and led a B2B Internet services organization at Information Alliance,
hiring engineering staff
Upstart
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| Principal Site Reliability Engineer |
2023 - 2025 |
- Reduced time-to-detect by 25% by automating golden signals alerting based
on historical trends
- Founded a postmortem bar raisers guild to perform retrospectives and
enforce accountability
- Standardized MADR and Conventional Commits as means to enhance change
documentation
- Aligned Compliance and Engineering incident management pipelines onto a
single tracking platform
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| Staff Site Reliability Engineer / Storage Technical Lead |
2020 - 2023 |
- Led a system resource management initiative with $200M+ projected
five-year CapEx savings
- Unified C and C++ caching products into a single Rust service with
integrated SRE tooling
- Drove hardware homogenization that avoided system procurement during 15%
data growth
- Migrated storage support services from Mesos to Kubernetes, and from
Python to Go
- Key contributor to implementing RocksDB for Manhattan, Twitter’s key-value
database
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| Engineering Manager / Real Time Storage SRE Teams |
2018 - 2020 |
- Managed 6-8 direct reports embedded within two teams of ~35 storage
software developers
- Directed a Python v3 migration ahead of the v2 EOL; moved 300MB of legacy
code to a monorepo
- Achieved 85% at-rest and 100% in-transit encryption adoption, with 50%
mTLS coverage
- Developed promotion documents with all engineers, 1 promotion from senior
to staff
Box
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| Staff Site Reliability Engineer |
2017 - 2018 |
- Designed a distributed firewall for Linux hosts, Kubernetes, OpenStack and
network gear
- Standardized edge proxies on NGINX from a mix of Apache Traffic Server and
HAProxy
- Developed a traffic monitoring service, used to validate network access
controls
DreamWorks Animation
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| Engineering Manager / Nova Rendering SaaS Platform |
2015 - 2017 |
- Managed the platform group of 8 engineers for Nova, a cloud-based live 3D
rendering SaaS
- Migrated services from HPE Helion to Rackspace managed OpenStack
environments
- Strengthened incident response procedures for coordination with external
partners and customers
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| Principal Engineer |
2011 - 2015 |
- Designed a managed proxy architecture to migrate rendering pipelines to
HTTP from NFS
- Wrote Go software to synchronize software deployments and infrastructure
configuration updates
- Developed Python programs to automate load balancer and downstream service
observability
- Assembled proof of concept rendering environments with manycore processors
and GPGPU
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| Engineering Manager / Bengaluru Dedicated Unit (India) |
2008 - 2011 |
- Hired network, systems and tooling engineers (10-15 in total) for a new
studio
- Oversaw the initial build and expansion of a datacenter with 25,000
servers
- Conceived a cross-studio proxy architecture, implemented for India, later
adopted globally
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| Senior Network Engineer |
2007 - 2008 |
- Automated an OpenVPN and BGP solution for 6,000 listeners
- Implemented TRILL within a datacenter for switching operations without
spanning tree protocol
- Updated routing protocols from OSPF to BGP and switching redundancy from
RSTP to MSTP
MobiTV
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| Engineering Manager |
2005 - 2007 |
- Expanded systems and networking teams from 3 to 20; established a global
NOC
- Scaled platforms critical for Sprint TV and IPTV launches, during extreme
channel and client growth
- Migrated operations from Rackspace to distributed colocation; secured
content ingestion
First Victoria National Bank
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| System Architect |
2000 - 2005 |
- Established Ethernet-based IP and IPX networking standards for systems and
telecom
- Developed custom applications and decommissioned legacy Unix systems,
saving $400+k annually
- Implemented Tarantella and telecom enhancements to optimize remote
application access
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| Software Engineering Manager |
1995 - 2000 |
- Assembled 3-5 systems engineers and developers for a B2B Internet services
team
- Oversaw software projects that replaced more than 200 Unix implementations
with Linux solutions
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| Software Developer |
1992 - 1995 |
- Key contributor to FirstPage, a Unix-based document processing system for
distributed companies
- Unix developer for CLASS (Criminal Law Attorney Support System), used by
25 Texas counties
Relevant Skills
- Development: C, Go, Python, Rust, TCL; CI/CD, git, GitHub Actions
- Systems / Services: Linux, Unix; Kubernetes, Mesos, Openstack, Project
Calico, Puppet, Chef, Terraform
- Networking: L2-L7: switching (TRILL, STP), routing (BGP, IS-IS, OSPF),
TCP/IP, IPsec, HTTP
- Formal Education: Texas A&M University, Physics
Past Certifications
- Novell: Novell NetWare Engineer (v3, v4, v5), Compaq Intel/NetWare
Specialist (ASE)
- Red Hat: Linux 7.2 Engineer, Enterprise Linux Engineer v2
- Cisco: Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP)
Other
- /dev/reno: Presenter, Call Go Functions From Python, 2026
- Kona House of Palms and Sunrise Hale: Owner of short-term vacation
rentals, 2018 - Present
- Puu Lani Ranch HOA: Board member and Website Administrator, 2021 -
2023
- Twitter University: Instructor, Go, 2019 - 2022
- Twitter University: Instructor, Python and the Twitter Build System,
2018 - 2022
- San Francisco Site Reliability Engineering Meetup: Coordinator, 2018 -
2020
- DreamWorks: Technical Achievement Award,
Managed Tiered Proxy Architecture, 2014
- DreamWorks: Technical Achievement Award, Production Asset Manager,
2014
- Home of Hope: Technology Coordinator, 2012 - 2018
- Large Scale Production Engineers: Presenter,
Anycast Service Redundancy and Traffic Balancing, 2012
- Aloe Software: Co-Founder for a public school student management SaaS
company, 2000
- VALUE (Victoria Area Linux and Unix Enthusiasts): Presenter,
The Slackware RPM, 1998