Daniel Shafer headshot

Daniel Shafer

Senior Site Reliability Engineer | Ex-GoDaddy SRE Lead | Prometheus / Observability
Relocating to Bucharest, Romania (Feb/Mar 2027) · Hybrid in Bucharest preferred · Remote elsewhere

Professional Summary

Senior Site Reliability Engineer with 15+ years at Fortune 500 companies including Apple, GoDaddy, and 20th Century Fox. Promoted to SRE Supervisor at GoDaddy in two years; led an enterprise migration from Icinga 2 to Prometheus, Thanos, and Grafana across Domains, Registrar, and Investors while supervising five engineers and remaining hands-on. Relocating to Bucharest in February/March 2027 — seeking hybrid roles in Bucharest to integrate locally; open to fully remote for the right opportunity outside the city. Deep experience in observability, OpenStack, AWS, Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes, and Python, with a strong track record in sprint leadership, mentoring, performance reviews, and bridging SRE and development teams. Available for immediate start.

Recognition

Featured in GoDaddy’s Pride and Dedication: Meet Daniel Shafer (GoDaddy Life, 2023)

Core Skills

  • Observability: Prometheus, Thanos, Grafana, Datadog, Icinga
  • Cloud Platforms: AWS, OpenStack, CloudStack
  • Development: Python, Django, Golang, PHP, APIs
  • Automation: Ansible, Chef, Terraform
  • Containerization: Docker, Kubernetes
  • Linux: RHEL, Ubuntu, CentOS
  • CI/CD & Incident Response: Pipelines, On-call, SLO/SLI
  • Team Leadership: Mentoring, Performance Reviews, Sprint Planning

Professional Experience

Apple logo Apple (ASE Cloud Compute Team)
Site Reliability Engineer (Contract)
Oct 2024 – Mar 2025
  • Enhanced infrastructure monitoring for CloudStack by implementing Apple's internal monitoring tools, improving system visibility and incident response.
  • Developed comprehensive documentation and automated onboarding processes for new engineers.
  • Designed and implemented an end-to-end testing framework for cloud components.
GoDaddy logo GoDaddy
Supervisor, Site Reliability Engineering (DRI)
July 2022 – June 2024
  • Led enterprise migration of Domains, Registrar, and Investors monitoring from Icinga 2 to Prometheus, Thanos, and Grafana — secured senior management buy-in, built infrastructure on OpenStack with Ansible, and reduced alert fatigue while improving visibility.
  • Supervised a team of 5 SREs supporting DRI infrastructure, conducting performance reviews, mentoring engineers, and driving promotions.
  • Managed sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retros, and Jira workflow while bridging SRE and development teams.
Site Reliability Engineer II
July 2020 – July 2022
  • Joined as a contractor and converted to full-time employee after 18 months.
  • Improved infrastructure performance by analyzing system metrics and implementing optimization strategies, reducing response times by 35%.
  • Automated repetitive tasks for the Production Engineering team using Python and Ansible, increasing team efficiency by 50%.
  • Participated in 24/7 on-call rotation ensuring 99.95% uptime and rapid incident response within SLA targets.
A10 Networks logo A10 Networks Inc
Python Developer
Jan 2019 – Dec 2019
  • Developed automated testing environments for OpenStack infrastructure.
  • Participated in Agile sprint planning and conducted code reviews for high-quality software delivery.
  • Enhanced server reliability through infrastructure automation and monitoring solutions.
Kount logo Kount
Site Reliability Engineer
Apr 2018 – Oct 2018
  • Led migration of critical payment processing code from Python 2 to Python 3, ensuring compatibility before EOL while maintaining 99.99% service availability for fraud detection systems.
  • Upgraded fleet of Ubuntu servers to newer LTS versions, implementing security patches and enhancements while ensuring strict PCI compliance for financial transaction processing.
  • Established Python best practices through technical workshops and code reviews, mentoring junior engineers and improving team code quality by standardizing development patterns.
MediaMath logo MediaMath
Site Reliability Engineer
May 2017 – Apr 2018
  • Managed infrastructure hosted on AWS and in on-premises data centers using Chef and Ansible.
  • Handled Linux system administration and engineering across hybrid environments.
  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams and participated in on-call rotations to resolve incidents promptly.
20th Century Fox logo Twentieth Century Fox
DevOps Engineer
Jul 2015 – Feb 2017
  • Managed vendor requests for Apache configurations, databases, S3 buckets, and Git repositories.
  • Automated tasks using Python scripts for GitHub, AWS, and Splunk.
  • Monitored infrastructure with Datadog, New Relic, Splunk, and AWS for optimal performance.
Mirantis logo Mirantis
OpenStack Engineer
Feb 2015 – Jun 2015
  • Enforced quality standards for Mirantis OpenStack by reviewing product requirements and participating in design discussions.
  • Designed and automated test cases, maintained CI infrastructure, and performed reliability and performance stress testing.
  • Implemented benchmarking tools and supported the Fuel engineering team.
HP Helion logo HP Helion
Cloud Data Center NOC Engineer
Feb 2014 – Jan 2015
  • Monitored thousands of servers in an OpenStack environment, rapidly responding to alerts and incidents.
  • Coordinated with data centers on maintenance and repairs in a Linux environment.
  • Collaborated with service teams to diagnose and resolve problems across the platform.
HostGator logo HostGator
Linux System Administrator
Apr 2013 – Jan 2014
  • Managed support queues, handling escalated tickets and server issues across thousands of CentOS servers with cPanel.
  • Conducted software installations and content restoration for customers.
  • Handled server reboots and maintenance through the data center management interface.

Military Experience

US Army logo United States Army
Combat Engineer (12B), Wheeled Mechanic (91B)
Jan 2008 – Oct 2012

Deployed to Iraq (2010–2011) in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn.

Decorations & Awards

  • Iraq Campaign Medal (Campaign Star)
  • Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
  • Armed Forces Reserve Medal (M Device)
  • National Defense Service Medal
  • Overseas Service Ribbon

Honorably discharged