Hello, I'm Dara

I'm a Senior Engineering Manager

Passionate about AI and its potential for positive global impact through thoughtful technology leadership.

About Me

With over a decade in the technology sector, I've built a solid career in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Platform Engineering, and Production Operations. I focus on leading engineering teams and managing complex projects, including major cloud migrations.

My work involves designing and improving digital infrastructures for resilience. I believe that effective technology leadership means creating environments where teams can innovate, supported by smooth and stable systems and easy to understand processes. It's about setting up the right foundation so we can build and iterate quickly.

As a technologist, I have a particularl passion and interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI). I'm convinced that when used thoughtfully, AI can be a powerful tool for good, simplifying complex tasks and making technology more intuitive and helpful in our daily lives.

Core Expertise

Platform Engineering
Site Reliability Engineering
DevOps & CI/CD
Cloud Migrations
Production Operations
Team Leadership
Digital Transformation
Artificial Intelligence

Experience

Senior Engineering Manager

2022 - Present

Platform Engineering Team

Leading cross-functional engineering teams in designing and implementing scalable platform solutions. Focused on cloud-native architectures and developer experience improvements.

  • Orchestrated major cloud migration affecting 50+ microservices
  • Reduced deployment time by 75% through CI/CD pipeline optimization
  • Built and led a team of 12 platform engineers

Site Reliability Engineer Lead

2019 - 2022

Production Operations

Established SRE practices and culture, focusing on system reliability, observability, and incident response processes.

  • Improved system uptime from 99.5% to 99.95%
  • Implemented comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems
  • Developed disaster recovery procedures and runbooks

DevOps Engineer

2016 - 2019

Infrastructure Team

Built and maintained CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and automated deployment processes for multiple product teams.

  • Automated infrastructure provisioning using Terraform
  • Implemented container orchestration with Kubernetes
  • Established infrastructure security best practices

Featured Projects

AI-Powered Infrastructure Optimization

Developed machine learning models to predict infrastructure scaling needs, reducing costs by 30% while maintaining performance SLAs.

Python TensorFlow Kubernetes Prometheus

Multi-Cloud Platform Migration

Led the migration of critical services across multiple cloud providers, implementing zero-downtime deployment strategies.

AWS GCP Terraform Docker

Developer Experience Platform

Built internal platform tools that reduced developer onboarding time from 2 weeks to 2 days, improving team productivity significantly.

React Node.js GraphQL Jenkins

Thoughts & Insights

Occasionally, I share thoughts on technology leadership, AI ethics, and the future of platform engineering. Here are some topics I'm currently exploring:

AI in Infrastructure Management

Exploring how artificial intelligence can revolutionize infrastructure monitoring and predictive maintenance.

Building Resilient Teams

Strategies for creating engineering teams that thrive under pressure while maintaining work-life balance.

The Future of Platform Engineering

How platform engineering is evolving and what it means for developer productivity and system reliability.

Give me a shout!

Interested in discussing technology, AI, or potential collaborations? I'm always open to meaningful conversations about the future of engineering.

hi@daramcgann.com LinkedIn