Christian Turner

Senior Cloud Architect & DevSecOps Specialist - CV & Project Portfolio

View the Project on GitHub OttawaCloudConsulting/CV

Mr. Christian Turner

Comprehensive Technical CV & Project Portfolio
Detailed technical expertise documentation and project history
Senior Cloud Architect & DevSecOps Specialist specializing in AWS cloud transformation,
government sector compliance, and enterprise infrastructure modernization

Professional Profile

Role Description: Cloud Architect & DevSecOps Specialist

Resource Profile:

Mr. Turner is a Senior Architect and Technology Consultant with over 15 years of Platform Engineering and IT experience. He has extensive experience across multiple vertical and lateral markets and organizations, with a focus on managing change and transforming Infrastructure and IT Business Systems holistically, working with all areas of the technology stacks.

Mr. Turner’s expertise in the private sector includes successful project execution and complex migrations to the public cloud, particularly AWS, since 2011. He has worked with highly secure organizations in the Canadian Federal Government, USA Utilities markets, and Health Care markets, ensuring compliance with ITSG, NIST, and HIPAA standards.

He excels in innovating and architecting on-premise, hybrid, and cloud solutions, with a strong emphasis on AWS Cloud services. His proficiency in DevSecOps practices ensures the integration of security into every phase of the development process, enhancing the overall security posture of the solutions.

Mr. Turner drives the implementation of changes to support tracking metrics and KPIs for departmental improvement. He clearly defines vision, strategy, and objectives for change initiatives, ensuring strategic alignment of multiple technical facets with corporate goals.

His experience includes the transformation and integration of Agile processes and methodologies. As a Subject Matter Expert, he works directly with staff, management, senior management, and executives to achieve project success and organizational goals.

Language: English

Professional Development

Table of Contents

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

13. Project 13 - SSC - Cloud Platform Engineering / Hosting Services Branch

Shared Services Canada

Cloud Services Directorate, Cloud Platform Engineering

Role: AWS Cloud Infrastructure as Code DevOps Engineer & Architect

September 2023 - Current

Project 13.1 Description - Cloud Services Directorate, Cloud Platform Engineering

The Cloud Services Platform Engineering team operates within the Hosting Services Branch providing an Enterprise class Tenancy within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, supporting AWS ASEA (Secure Accelerator) and AWS LZA (Landing Zone Accelerator) platform designs.

Platform and enterprise services are provisioned and deployed using:

Project Outcomes: Successfully architected and deployed enterprise-class GitOps platform serving multiple government departments through AWS EKS and ArgoCD. Established Infrastructure as Code standards using Terraform and Crossplane, enabling rapid deployment of NIST 800-53 compliant workloads across SSC’s AWS Landing Zone Accelerator platform.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

Project 13.2 Description - Cloud Services Directorate, Automation and Orchestration Framework

The Cloud Services Directorate requires comprehensive automation and orchestration frameworks to support enterprise-scale cloud deployments across multiple government departments and regulated sectors. This initiative focuses on developing scalable, compliant, and secure cloud automation solutions through Ottawa Cloud Consulting’s federally incorporated consulting services.

Project Outcomes: Architected 3 multi-account AWS organizations managing 200+ workloads with governance, SCPs, identity models, and compliance baselines aligned to NIST, CIS, and ITSG. Improved deployment frequency by 30% through GitOps automation with ArgoCD and Azure DevOps, managing over 50 microservices. Designed 30+ serverless, event-driven, and containerized workloads reducing operational overhead by 40% and infrastructure costs by $25K annually. Engineered 3 production EKS clusters achieving 99.9% uptime while reducing Kubernetes onboarding time by over 60% through deterministic automation and developer Golden Paths.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

12. Project 12 - Agriculture Canada - Cloud Centre of Expertise / Cloud Operations

Agriculture Canada

Cloud Centre of Expertise

Role: AWS Cloud DevOps Architect (Part-Time)

January 2021 - September 2023

Project 12.1 Description - Cloud Centre of Expertise / Cloud Operations

The AAFC Cloud Centre of Expertise (CCoE) are focused on providing a secure and scalable managed public cloud environment to internal business users. The AWS Cloud environment is implemented using standard AWS Landing Zone foundations with layers of Infrastructure as Code governance resources deployed to meet both Operational and Security requirements, as well as achieve full ATO status for production workloads.

Project Outcomes: Achieved full ATO (Authority to Operate) status for Agriculture Canada’s AWS Cloud environment, meeting ITSG-22/33/38 requirements. Successfully implemented automated security and governance compliance tooling that exceeded GoC cloud guardrails, enabling secure cloud adoption across the department with integrated Azure AD SSO federation.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

Project 12.2 Description - DevOps & AWS Development

The Analytics team are focused on designing, developing and deploying applications for data analysis that operate in the AWS Cloud to meet departmental analytical requirements provided data.

Project Outcomes: Delivered critical analytics platform supporting analytics operations through AWS cloud-native architecture for client workload systems. Implemented comprehensive DevSecOps pipeline with automated security scanning and supply chain management, enabling secure data analysis capabilities.

Tasks Performed:

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11. Project 11 - SSC CSD R&D

Shared Services Canada

Cloud Services Directorate, Cloud Platform Engineering

Role: AWS Cloud Infrastructure as Code DevOps Engineer & Architect

September 2019 - January 2021

Project 11.1 Description - Cloud Services Directorate, Cloud Platform Engineering Project

The CSD R&D Project group are focused on generating a set of deployable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for re-use within SSC and partners. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) supports automation of “CSD Landing Zone” integrating AWS Landing Zone customisation, SAA Security Guard Rails, and generic multi-purpose tools.

Developed and drove success and security achievements to ATO with AWS Secure Environment Accelerator.

Project Outcomes: First team to achieve ATO status using AWS Secure Environment Accelerator (ASEA), establishing reusable Infrastructure as Code templates for government-wide adoption. Created foundational “CSD Landing Zone” architecture that became the standard for SSC cloud deployments, supporting critical workloads including SCED, DX, and Email systems.

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10. Project 10 - DND DPDCS SMMS Replacement Project

Department of National Defence

SMMS Replacement Project, DPDCS

Role: Cloud Architect - Resilient Systems

February 2019 - December 2020

Project 10.1 Description - SMMS Search and Rescue Replacement Project

This project will replace the current SARMASTER software and hardware while providing reliable backup Site capability. It will provide interface capability to accept “live data” and the Geographic Information System (GIS). Lastly, the software will include long term support to ensure continued SAR operational readiness.

Project Outcomes: Successfully modernized critical Search and Rescue operations system with zero downtime migration to AWS cloud infrastructure. Delivered containerized architecture using Docker/ECS with PostgreSQL, ensuring 24/7 availability for life-saving SAR operations across Canada while meeting stringent DND security requirements.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

9. Project 9 - IDS Data Systems (New Democratic Party)

IDS Data Systems

Cloud Architect

Role: Cloud Architect

November 2018 - January 2019

This project supplemented the organizations workforce to complete two key cloud migration projects.

Project 9.1 Description - Office 365 Skype Migration - New Democratic Party of Canada

The client was migrating from a traditional distributed on-premise phone system to a fully virtualized Office 365 tenanted system.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

Project 9.2 - Server Workload Cloud Migration - New Democratic Party of Canada

The client was migrating a bespoke server workload, comprised of local database, compute functions, and public accessibility into the public cloud from traditional on-premise VMWare 6 infrastructure. The cloud transformation platform selected was Microsoft Azure.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

8. Project 8 - SSC CITS SMG & CTMS

Shared Services Canada

CITS - Infrastructure Security

Role: Senior Business / Technical Architect

January 2018 - February 2019

Mr. Turner worked as a Senior Business and Technical Architect on several projects within the Cyber and Information Technology Security (CITS) Branch at Shared Services Canada. The CITS branch’s focus is to protect the Government of Canada’s (GC) systems and networks, as well as Canadians’ information from cyber threats. SSC also supports Canada’s foreign service, military and law enforcement personnel and contributes to national security by defending government systems and delivering information technology (IT) security services.

SSC’s role in strengthening cyber and IT security:

Project 8.1 Description - SharePoint 2016 Design - July 2018 - February 2019

The client was implementing a SharePoint solution for managing and tracking tasks performed by a number of Security Management and Governance teams. Existing processes relied heavily on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for reporting, with a non-standardized content.

Tasks Performed:

Project 8.2 Description - Atlassian JIRA Implementation - January 2018 - May 2018

The client was implementing JIRA for managing and tracking tasks performed by a number of Cyber Security teams. In addition to the JIRA implementation there were complimentary integrated implementations of Confluence and HipChat.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

7. Project 7 - Brookfield Renewable Energy Cloud Delivery

Brookfield Renewable Energy

Role: Office 365 & Cloud Delivery Manager

September 2017 - December 2017

Project 7.1 Description - Office 365 and Microsoft Azure Cloud Service Delivery Manager

The client was performing extensive internal change, due to growth via Mergers & Acquisition, requiring a change in support vendor. A consolidation of multiple Managed Service Providers was in flight to reduce to a more manageable number and create efficient internal workflows. The primary objective was to provide guidance and governance to the cloud services (Azure and Office365) support vendor, SoftChoice.

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6. Project 6 - Lowe Martin DevOps

Lowe Martin Group

Role: DevOps

March 2017 - September 2017

Project 6.1 Description - Dev Ops

Role: DevOps & Architecture

The client was performing extensive internal change, which required the re-organization of the Software Development team from an unstructured and chaotic team into a fluid Agile and Scrum based team.

Tasks Performed:

Project 6.2 Description - Office 365 Migration from Exchange & Domino Environments

Role: Infrastructure Architect

The client was performing a planned migration from an on-premise mixed environment of Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Lotus Domino 9 to a completely hosted Office 365 environment. The quantity of mail objects was 2000+, including user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, group mailboxes, shared calendars, and resources.

Tasks Performed:

Technical Environment:

5. Project 5 - HighRoads US Cloud Migration

HighRoads (US - Boston, MA)

Role: Cloud Transformation & Cloud Architect

January 2017 - April 2017

Project 5.1 Description - Exchange Email Cloud Migration

January 2017 - April 2017

The client was undergoing extensive internal restructuring, right-sizing staffing and migrating services to the cloud to reduce costs and mitigate risks. The Office 365 was selected as the premium marketplace leader, with rich functionality that could be scaled with simplicity. A fully cloud based environment was supportive to restructuring and streamlining of the internal IT department and facilitating outsourced and offshore support.

Tasks Performed:

Project 5.2 Description - Atlassian Project Management Cloud Migration

March 2017 - April 2017

Client was migrating all on premise services into cloud/SaaS versions to support a change in internal IT Strategy, and re-org reducing IT head count. The Atlassian JIRA and Confluence product was to be maintained, although utilizing the “on demand” cloud version. Primary objective was to migrate new projects into the cloud version, whilst maintaining legacy/historical projects in the on-premise version as read-only. As the project progressed, we strategized that migrating the historical projects into the cloud was a best fit, as the on-premise version could be fully deprecated, and no additional costs would be incurred with the cloud platform.

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4. Project 4 - HighRoads Canada Inc. Infrastructure Operations Manager

HighRoads Canada Inc. (Ottawa, ON)

Role: DevOps, Operations and Cloud Architect; Project Management

June 2015 - December 2016

Project Outcomes: Migrated 40+ production workloads from VMware to AWS, reducing costs by 35% and improving platform resilience. Delivered active-passive HIPAA-compliant DR architecture meeting strict NIST RTO/RPO objectives. Introduced DevOps and automation practices improving deployment frequency by 50% while operationalizing 3 hybrid AWS/on-prem architectures supporting 100+ workloads. Standardized engineering workflows enabling effective collaboration across 15-person off-shore engineering team.

Project 4.1 Description - AWS Cloud Migration (In-house custom SaaS platform)

December 2015 - December 2016

Architected and managed the migration and implementation of on-premise systems into the AWS cloud platform. This involved right-sizing systems, provisioning micro-service based architecture and leveraging cloud-based security principles. We realized a significant increase in simplicity to manage, time-to-implement and were able to leverage intelligent AWS native solutions for backup and DR.

Project Outcomes: Successfully migrated 40+ production workloads from VMware to AWS, achieving 35% cost reduction through cloud optimization and improved platform resilience. Implemented AWS-native solutions for backup and DR while transitioning to micro-service based architecture for enhanced scalability and manageability.

Tasks Performed:

Project 4.2 Description - SaaS System: DevOps Infrastructure

June 2015 - September 2016

A traditional hosted customer facing CMS system was in production that was originally designed for an alternate market, with simple web GUI drive access and a cumbersome offline client. Highroads was designing a new “V2” system and was in development as a fully SaaS product with both web GUI access and customer available API access. Infrastructure was required to support the SaaS product, provide reliable operations, secure access, and customer data, and enable customer driven Single Sign-On integration.

Project Outcomes: Introduced comprehensive DevOps and automation practices improving deployment frequency by 50% and eliminating manual deployment steps through CI/CD pipeline implementation. Standardized engineering workflows enabling effective collaboration across 15-person off-shore engineering team while implementing hybrid AWS/on-premise architecture patterns.

Tasks Performed:

Project 4.3 Description - Infrastructure Decommission & Migration

October 2015 - April 2016

An asset sale required a project to divest software, development environments, QA environments, staging environments, demo environments, training environments, DR environments, and production environments for the “V1” software product. Secondary systems including monitoring, security analysis, edge networking (firewalls, load balancers, etc.,) and backup systems had to be either migrated to the purchasing company with replacements provisioned in Highroads infrastructure, or newly provisioned identical systems provisioned in DirectPath infrastructure. Tertiary systems requiring migration and/or new provisioning included corporate applications (Wiki’s, CI/CD software, JIRA, etc.,) physical office installations and office hardware.

To be compliant with the Sale Agreement and Transitional Services Agreement 80% of the work had to be carried out by Highroads with zero down-time to either organization in a timely manner as defined in the sale documentation. A significant percentage of the sale value was held in escrow until completion and approval of the purchasing company.

Project Outcomes: Delivered active-passive HIPAA-compliant DR architecture meeting strict NIST RTO/RPO objectives while ensuring zero downtime migration of production systems. Successfully orchestrated complex asset divestiture with 80% completion requirement, achieving escrow fund release through comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity implementation.

Tasks Performed:

Project 4.4 Description - Operations Decommission & Migration

May 2016 - December 2016

In Q4 2016 Highroads announced the closure of their Canadian offices, with subsequent planned closure of the Canadian company. IT Operations was to be fully handed over to various outsourced vendors, physical presence within the Ottawa office was to be immediately deprecated and the closure of the data centre supporting the “V1” application was to be planned. Primary objective was to identify all internal IT Operations functions that we carried out purely from the Ottawa office, and relocate those processes and functions to outsourced vendors. Key focus was placed on risk mitigation from lack of presence and established staff.

Project Outcomes: Operationalized 3 hybrid AWS/on-prem architectures supporting 100+ workloads with scalable and secure patterns. Successfully transitioned operations to outsourced vendors while maintaining business continuity and ensuring seamless hand-over of production systems to parent operations in Boston, MA.

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3. Project 3 - Dymon Corporation - Infrastructure Manager

Dymon Corporation

Role: Operations and Infrastructure Architect

December 2014 - June 2015

Project 3.1 Description - Operations Virtualization

December 2014 - May 2015

The Dymon corporate infrastructure was operating on unique physical hardware per server and per service. We identified 8 physical servers of identical capacity that were running at less than 20% utilization, in one instance 0% utilization. Switching and network was analyzed, and we identified 3 totally unused Layer 3 switches with zero utilization. An architecture was created to migrate to a fully virtualized infrastructure, segregate corporate traffic with various VLANs to support operations, POS systems, publicly accessible web services, CCTV data, and credit transactions in addition to iSCSI traffic, virtualization traffic, monitoring traffic, and Building Automation traffic.

Tasks Performed:

Project 3.2 Description - Remote Desktop Services (RDS)/ Thin Client Implementation

January 2015 - June 2015

The Dymon Health Care retirement residences were operating with heavily aged systems that incurred excessive amounts of downtimes, ran various operating systems and various versions of software. A frequent churn of nursing staff required unique profiles to be created on each system repeatedly. We identified a number of different solutions, with selection being given to a Terminal Server (RDS) / Thin Client solution where roaming profiles were available to each staff member, and data was centralized into the corporate servers away from the local desktops. Our objective was to leverage technology to reduce the overhead of managing systems, and staff related issues, whilst consolidating services, centralizing data, and incorporating into corporate backups.

Tasks Performed:

Project 3.3 Description - Sales Software & POS Infrastructure System Upgrade

May 2015 - June 2015

A vendor driven change to end-user credit transaction PIN pads required Dymon Storage to update their credit transaction software, Line of Business integration module, merchant banking authentication and physical handsets with zero downtime realized to storage facilities. The POS Upgrade object was to replace the PIN pads, upgrade and reconfigure each unit and complete a site within 45 minutes. Pre-testing verification was performed, followed by installation testing a transaction verification of the installation, with post-implementation reporting verified the back-end allocations.

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2. Project 2 - GeoDigital International Inc. Infrastructure Manager

GeoDigital International (GeoSpatial Engineering)

Role: Operations and Infrastructure Architect

September 2011 - December 2014

Project Outcomes: Successfully designed and deployed GIS SaaS platform on AWS serving 500+ global clients across 15 countries with 99.5% uptime. Engineered 1-2 TB/day data ingestion pipeline improving engineering timelines by 50%, while managing infrastructure operations for 8 production and engineering environments supporting 25+ engineering staff with 99.8% data processing reliability.

Project 2.1 Description - “PAS - Photo Acquisition Service” SaaS Cloud Application

May 2012 - December 2014

GeoDigital created a market pioneering SaaS application utilized by premium US insurance companies to provide a Photo Acquisition Service (PAS) system to provide on-the-fly imagery and extrapolated engineering metrics for roofing claims. API integration provided the customer’s agents the ability to receive zip bundles of imagery along with PDF descriptors of building dimensions, including pitch, slope, and height via single click integration to customer’s proprietary Line of Business (LoB) application. Primary objective was to design, architect, and develop a fully sustainable and scalable SaaS infrastructure that could grow vertically and horizontally as utilization increased with growth of customer of customer base, and could grow in feature functionality as additional market requirements were serviced. The Application was deployed with a cloud-first initiative delivering integration with client desktop delivery with a hybrid-cloud backend.

Project Outcomes: Successfully deployed market-leading SaaS platform serving 500+ global insurance company clients across 15 countries with 99.5% platform uptime. Delivered scalable cloud-first architecture supporting real-time imagery processing and automated PDF report generation, enabling single-click integration with client Line of Business applications.

Tasks Performed:

Project 2.2 Description - Data Centre Migration (Vancouver, BC - Ottawa, ON)

May 2012 - September 2012

The client required the migration of physical data centre from Vancouver On-Premise location to Ottawa Tier 2 Data Center. Architecture migration of 750TB production IBM FC SAN storage, IBM FC SAN & Tivoli System 200TB Backup/Archival Storage, 2000 Windows 2008R2 Servers, and VMWare 5.0 IBM Cluster. An expedited timeline was in place due to the termination of facility contracts, and no local staff. Additional risk was identified due the size of data, and GIS Airborne Acquisition data loss would require the physical re-flight of areas and financial exposure and damage to the organization.

Tasks Performed:

Project 2.3 Description - Corporate Private Cloud (Data Centre Architecture)

September 2012 - August 2013

As a multi-petabyte data handling organization, GeoDigital required a robust and richly featured solution for handling data archiving, data retention, and data integrity. Leveraging Tier II and Tier III secure data centres with enterprise scale storage platforms for automated scaling data storage management this project served the identified requirements of all Business Units. The solution had to create and manage a complete ‘corporate software directory’ of internal tools for workflow maximization based on business requirements, providing fully self-serve managed environments.

Tasks Performed:

Project 2.4 Description - On-Premise Data Centre Virtualization

September 2012 - August 2013

Due to growth by corporate acquisitions, the client operated multiple physical locations without a centralized standardized IT Infrastructure platform. This project managed the migration from physical servers and unstructured virtual servers, to a standardized virtualization platform leveraging Hyper-V as a single vendor platform. It provided full license management and auditing, ensured right-sizing of resources for daily operations and future growth. Mr. Turner steered strategy to ensure maximization of virtualization platform and resources.

Tasks Performed:

Project 2.5 Description - Corporate Hybrid Cloud (Production & Field Acquisition Systems)

December 2013 - September 2014

The client expanded operations and business markets out of North America and into the Australasia region. The client requirement was to limit expansion, and cost, to only airborne data acquisition teams without incurring any significant support staff, or production staff footprint. Leveraging public cloud partners in Sydney, Australia (RackSpace,) cloud partners in North America (Amazon AWS US,) colocation Data Centre partners (Rogers) and on-premises data centre to create an holistic and end-to-end data management system for hands-off and lights-out management of acquisition data. Data was acquired in Sydney, Australia at the rate of 1TB per day, and handed off by GIS field staff to RackSpace Cloud’s data centre personnel. Data was then processed via automation scripts and replicated across cloud partners and to on-premises sites for production staff.

Project Outcomes: Engineered automated 1-2 TB/day data ingestion pipeline improving engineering processing timelines by 50% through multi-cloud architecture spanning Australia, North America, and Asia. Achieved 99.8% data processing reliability across global cloud partners while managing 8 production and engineering environments supporting 25+ engineering staff.

Tasks Performed:

Project 2.6 Description - Office 365 Cloud Migration

September 2011 - December 2012

The client intended to manage risk and centralize mail management into a streamlined cloud platform after growth through mergers and acquisitions. With various offices having been integrated from separate companies and organizations a number of mail systems, and mail domains were operating in stand-alone silos. A targeted strategy was created to consolidate mail and migrate directly into the new Office 365 platform, with a zero-mailbox loss, and zero interruption requirement.

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1. Project 1 - Central Wire Industries Infrastructure Manager

Central Wire Industries

Infrastructure & Operations

Role: Operations and Infrastructure Management

May 2007 - September 2011

Project 1.1 Description - IT Integration of fully automated production systems (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin)

January 2010 - March 2011

Central Wire Industries, as a $500 million annual revenue enterprise, expanded its operations with purchase of a smart-factory requiring integration of all aspects of automation, including IT Systems, ERP and MRP systems. This project required the introduction of GE Fanuc Smart Automation, and various smart SCADA systems into the manufacturing process, configuration of smart-factory automation platform software, and integration via scheduled interfaces and data transform XML process into centralized AS/400 based Lawson Movex (M3) and Info BPCS ERP/MRP suites.

Tasks Performed:

Project 1.2 Description - ADP Payroll Systems Migration (Citrix Virtualization, Platform Upgrade, Database Migration)

January 2010 - March 2011

The client had expanded its market share and physical locations by an increase of 60% over the previous few years, seeing a growth in staff with the final onboarding of nine physical sites across the United States of America and Canada. ADP was selected as the corporate vendor for providing consolidated payroll services across the company, requiring the implementation of new infrastructure to support a significantly larger application cluster. Corporate directive required that the physical infrastructure be managed from Canada, with HR and Finance Payroll staff operating from USA locations, and corporate finance operating out of Canada.

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TECHNOLOGY INDEX

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