# James Burns > Answering Questions with Data and AI at Scale Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/jamesburns ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer @ Databricks Jan 2023 – Present ### Lead Cloud Observability Engineer @ Snowflake Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 Implemented two generations of metrics pipeline improvements handling petabytes of data weekly while reducing cost by more than 70%. Created cloud service provider telemetry streams widely used for critical operations and security workflows. Rolled out multiple global changes across regions and cloud providers and across generations of infrastructure configurations. Worked with teams across the organization to solve specific observability and operational issues, improve the observability baseline, and plan for systemic improvements. Advocated for Snowflake’s needs with vendors and open source leaders. ### Developer Advocate @ LightStep Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 Develop Lightstep Research initiative to provide in depth technical information and working code for practices, techniques, and observations using cloud service APIs. Initiative to monitor cloud APIs in real time at global scale. Experience based technical writing on development, observability, organization structures and challenges, and other topics as requested. Interact with customers on various media providing guidance for building and using observability effectively. Product feedback from a practitioner’s perspective. Public speaking on research and organizational practices including Chaos Engineering. Public Relations quotes and interviews for various publications. ### Software Architect @ Stitch Fix Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 Prototype, develop, demonstrate, and advocate for shared instrumentation and metrics libraries usage across company. Present about and advocate for microservices strategies and best practices. Present about and train teams on effective operational troubleshooting. Requirements gathering, systematic analysis, design, and prototyping of new merchandising data platform services. Mentorship of engineers at all experience levels. Participation in and guidance of various subject matter working groups including observability / operability, messaging, microservices, and platforms. Analysis and suggested prioritization of company wide security posture including ad-hoc pentesting. ### Technical Lead, Insight Engineering @ Twilio Inc. Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area ​Design, implementation, and production deployment of log aggregation system handling more than 500k messages per second and 500 MB/s with best in class operational insight. Lead, implement, and advocate use of distributed tracing system using the OpenTracing API across a large portfolio of microservices. Applied insights from distributed tracing to isolate previously invisible failure modes. Lead investigation of container based deployment models and container orchestration systems. Reviewer / editor for Twilio Cloud Security Standard. Participate in on call rotation and incident handling. Lead and participate in Chaos Gamedays to verify system resilience. Languages, services, and platforms used: Go, Python, Java, OpenTracing, Datadog, BigQuery, Kinesis, HAProxy, AWS, Google Cloud Platform. ### Technical Lead, Platform Infrastructure @ Twilio Inc. Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area Drive initiatives for decreasing MTTR and increasing developer happiness by lowering boot / configure cycle times, increasing reliability of process, driving higher resolution monitoring, and creating visibility for metrics related to all aspects of the deploy process. Develop and lead development of monitoring to improve cluster level awareness of service discovery, network, cloud platform, and host health. Participate in high value special project initiatives around cost identification and reduction, reliability and resilience, log aggregation and custom metrics, containerization, and security improvement. Design and implement full mesh network between private cloud regions with small team. Participate in on call rotation and incident handling. Technologies and languages used: AWS, Chef, ElasticSearch, Go, Python / Flask, NGINX, HAProxy, Nagios, Packer, Docker, SOA / Microservices. ### Director of Security @ True Link Financial Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 Manage all cloud and on premise host and network operations. Create, escalate, and resolve issues with all vendors including live troubleshooting and in depth analysis of complex host and network issues. Review and deploy product updates to certification and deployment environments. Create and test disaster recovery plans. Use AWS EC2, RDS, VPC, Elastic Beanstalk, Packer, SaltStack, Chef, and other tools to create highly available systems. Monitor and manage low latency VPN links to partners. Create and test on-call runbooks for all major issue classes. Participate in all levels of on-call. Perform cost optimization for deployed instances and instance types while preserving performance. Provide guidance and review to developers for security, architecture, and correctness concerns for all aspects of the system. ### Director of Engineering @ Mocana Corporation Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 Manage 4 teams of 1 - 5 people (12 total) working on products and projects for OEM division selling to handset and tablet manufacturers as well as IoT device makers. Provide engineering best practices guidance around all aspects of development. Lead from the front doing hands-on onsite integration for critical customers including CAC reader support. Guide product development, issue resolution, and customer interaction to realize shipment of Mocana Key products on millions of devices. Make all products more agile through continuous integration and increased test automation. Provide security architecture guidance for all products on a day to day basis. ### Principal Security Solutions Architect @ Mocana Corporation Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 Provide security guidance across product lines. Be the single point of contact for all security architecture questions for entire sales staff and engineering. Oversee penetration tests against products and monitor remediation plans. Demonstrate Mocana’s security competence to customers in meetings, design reviews, and at trade shows. Guide day to day development for efforts involving critical customers. ### Senior Solutions Architect @ Mocana Corporation Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 Technical leadership in the presentation of security solutions to large enterprise, Federal, and international government customers or potential customers. Cooperative investigation of security requirements and trade-offs with internal teams and external customers. Tracking of security trends in various embedded device spaces with a primary focus on smart phones. Internal review of security approaches taken in products. RFI and RFP response creation for technical answers. New product proposals based on security needs received from customers. ### Senior Member of Technical Staff @ Mocana Corporation Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 Driver design and implementation for new RTOS support of crypto acceleration. Assessment of different security product sales opportunities. Security protocol design on highly resource constrained platforms. Management of professional services team. Review and approval of Statements of Work. Management of technical support team. Update support methodology and ticketing integration. Review and guidance on network and host security posture. Customer training including code use and security considerations. Product management, technical leadership, and development for products on Android. ### SW Engineering Manager @ LSI Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 Day to day management of a team of 7 to accomplish a variety of development, sustaining, and support tasks. Leading next generation architecture and technology planning based on understanding of current challenges and market situation. ### Staff Software Engineer @ LSI Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 System level and component level performance testing and presentation of results. Implementation of software model for new hardware components. Prototype and implement new algorithms in proprietary compiler. Provide guidance in person and by phone to international team working on ports of libraries and drivers to embedded platforms. ### Webmaster @ Zeta Phi Eta Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 ### Senior Security Architect @ Integralis Jan 2005 – Jan 2008 Sales support for opportunities ranging from small deployments to global networks. Analysis of complex security and networking problems including solution design, presentation, and implementation. Customer centered service based on business driven needs. ### Network Software Engineer @ Tarari Jan 2002 – Jan 2005 Design and implementation from the ground up of security appliance acceleration software including interaction with hardware acceleration agents. Support visits to vendor sites in the United States and abroad for engineering assistance as well as sales engineering work. Extensive performance assessment work both in house and on site at various companies. ### Network Software Engineer @ Intel Jan 2001 – Jan 2002 Participation in design and implementation of SSL and HTTP acceleration products in both user and kernel space. System and component level performance analysis. Participation in architecture design. Interaction with customers for requirements gathering and implementation support. In depth knowledge of many Internet protocols including TCP, UDP, IP, NTP, SSL, PKI, and others. ### Software Engineer @ IPivot Jan 1998 – Jan 1999 Security assessment of products. Kernel development and testing. In field upgrade design and implementation. Test application design and implementation. System test including fix implementation or assignment. Code repository management (Perforce). Product build system design and implementation. ### Intern @ ElectriCiti Jan 1991 – Jan 1995 ## Education ### Master of Arts in Religion, Ethics Yale University ### Bachelor of Arts (BA) Ohio Wesleyan University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/james-burns-7816a82 --- Source: https://flows.cv/jamesburns JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/jamesburns/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12