Denis Lemire

denis@lemire.name

Summary

20+ years in systems and infrastructure. Moves easily from packets and PCAPs through platforms and identity to carrier voice and Kubernetes—domains that rarely sit in one role. DIY by temperament: Verilog and FPGAs on one end, production clusters on the other. Identity, GitOps, observability, and AI-assisted workflows at depth—including when DNS, storage, and identity need to stay in the same pair of hands. Engineering leverage with Cursor and Claude-class workflows—skills, rules, MCP, and tight loops with Git and review—not a stand-in for judgment or ownership. Strong at bridging engineering and customers when problems are messy: pre- and post-sales, escalations, troubleshooting. Linux/FreeBSD since the 90s; IPv6 since 2007.

Career highlights

• CircleCI — Staff Support Engineer: Staff escalations with Engineering; mentors teammates and improves triage (e.g., escalation severity). KB and OIDC documentation across Server, cloud identity, and registries; Kubernetes lab on CircleCI Server with deployment parity to customer on-prem for validation, reproduction, and air-gapped QA.

• ThinkTel / Distributel: Rebuilt Zazeen IPTV end-to-end (encoding, delivery, DRM); Canada’s first certified Microsoft Teams Direct Routing solution; Think 365 SBC among the first three certified globally for Teams Direct Routing.

• CTO, AirSurfer Wireless (WISP): end-to-end ownership of a multi-community rural Alberta fixed-wireless ISP—billing, mail, access, and edge network at real customer scale.

Professional Experience

• CircleCI

  Edmonton, AB (remote)

  Staff Support Engineer — September 2024 – present

  • Runs a Kubernetes lab (KubeVirt, Longhorn, MetalLB) on CircleCI Server for validation, bug reproduction, and air-gapped QA on Server 4 topologies aligned with customer on-prem deployments (VM provisioning, S3, machine executor).

  • Keeps customer-facing guidance accurate: authors and maintains KB and self-serve content (config validation, migrations, air-gapped support-bundle/crew install, troubleshooting); aligns with Documentation and training stakeholders so external guidance matches product behavior in the field.

  • Tests and documents OIDC across CircleCI Server, AWS, Hashicorp Vault, Terraform Cloud, GCP Identity pool federation, and NPM registries; collaborates with Product and Engineering on integration behavior and support readiness for new and existing features.

  • Staff escalation path for Premium Support (Zendesk, PagerDuty): prioritizes near-breach and complex tickets, coordinates research and reproduction with Engineering on cross-service issues, and partners across CE, Product, Engineering, and SRE when incidents touch platform reliability; contributed to escalation severity matrix and broader triage/workflow thinking.

  • Mentors and pairs with support engineers on Server, Kubernetes, and identity; confirms defects with reproducible steps and collaborates with Engineering on fixes and backports.

  DevOps Customer Engineer — January 2023 – January 2024

  • Customer Success consulting: delivered scoped and recurring engagements with Technical Success Managers to put CircleCI into production on circleci.com and in customer private clouds (Server), including custom integration and runner topologies.

  • Performed enterprise config and security reviews; led an internal config review workshop and defined a Confluence-based review format; guided server-to-cloud and Server 3→4 migrations; validated OIDC patterns (AWS, Vault, GCP Identity pool federation) for secrets and identity.

  • Assisted with Kubernetes-oriented private-cloud work—container runner installs, Server incident and support-bundle workflows—and hands-on troubleshooting across OIDC and platform integration.

  • Delivered and recommended in-depth technical training for customer teams; partnered with advanced and premium accounts on CI/CD efficiency and platform value; channeled customer needs to Product and Engineering as voice of the customer.

• ThinkTel / Distributel

  Edmonton, AB

  Solutions Architect — April 2017 – December 2022

  • Rebuilt acquired Zazeen IPTV from the ground up: custom Dockerized FFmpeg transcoding pipeline and HLS packaging; migrated content acquisition (SRDU → TRDU); deployed Qumulo and Broadpeak for cloud nDVR; replaced middleware and DRM; rebuilt HTTP caching; hand-coded monitoring for live channel delivery. Sustained the rebuilt platform in production through Zazeen decommission (March 2025).

  • Integrated Open Source and custom components into a certified solution for delivering Canadian PSTN to Microsoft Teams Direct Routing

    • Think 365 SBC listed among Microsoft Certified SBC Vendors; among the first three certified globally, alongside Audiocodes and Ribbons.
    • First certified Teams Direct Routing solution in Canada.

  • Moved IPTV and platform delivery onto repeatable automation (Ansible, CircleCI, Docker, Kubernetes)—less one-off operations, faster iteration.

  Manager, Systems Operations — January 2017 – May 2017

  • Led team responsible for systems peripheral to nationwide ISP operations (DNS, RADIUS, SQL, etc.).

  • Scaled internal SBC implementations from monolithic blade servers to multiple VMs and orchestrated containers; accelerated and standardized rollout of dedicated, geo-redundant SBCs via Docker container images.

  • Developed a "shim" SBC to front-end legacy PBXs and migrate thousands of lines to Metaswitch; protected end-of-life platforms from security vulnerabilities; dynamically routed clients line-by-line.

  Operations Manager, Commercial Cloud Services — July 2015 – January 2017

  • Managed infrastructure for hosted Lync/Skype for Business and Office 365 Cloud Connector; oversaw development and deployment of custom SBC implementations for carrier-grade SIP.

  Manager, Sales Engineering — January 2013 – July 2015

  • Expanded sales engineering beyond carrier SIP into hosted Lync, PBX, and dedicated SBC colocation; grew and mentored team of sales engineering SMEs.

  • Turned up cross-vendor IPSEC interop with customers to secure VoIP traffic before SIP TLS+SRTP was viable.

  • Coordinated turn-up of private VoIP paths over private networks, including Alberta SuperNet.

  Team Lead, Sales Engineering — May 2011 – January 2013

  • Mentored junior sales engineers; coordinated technical escalations and complex SIP deployments for carrier accounts.

  Sales Engineer — December 2010 – May 2011

  • Onboarded carrier-grade SIP customers; engineered end-to-end solutions; conquered interoperability and direct peering.

  • Conducted technical pre-sales; designed and validated SIP trunks, codecs, and peering for carrier and enterprise customers.

• Generic dot Business Ltd. generic.business

  Edmonton, AB

  Owner — November 2016 – Present

  • Technology advisory and integration for small business. Personal liaison enabling adoption of tools and platforms (web development, VoIP, IP networking, Office 365, Linux/FreeBSD) while clients focus on their core business.

  • Multi-year embedded IT for a promotional marketing firm: greenfield Windows Small Business Server and desktop fleet from first hardware delivery; Asterisk-based VoIP through an office relocation; ongoing desktop operations; Microsoft 365 migration—single accountable relationship through the company’s eventual sale.

  • Boutique Edmonton real estate brokerage: custom workstation builds; pandemic-era network redesign and VPN for remote agents; backup and email modernization after taking technical ownership from a troubled outsourced arrangement; migrated line-of-business workloads from desktop sprawl to hosted infrastructure—with materially lower recurring IT spend.

  • Greenfield carrier network for Habu Wireless (habu.ca)—Habu’s rural Alberta fixed-wireless ISP arm: secured ARIN ASN and provider addressing, led technical engagement with Axia Supernet for backbone turn-up, and designed and deployed BGP peering, OSPF core topology, CGNAT, switching, routing, DHCP, and NAT as an end-to-end provider design.

  • Fixed-term engagement with a Nunavik regional ISP during a wide, multi-community edge migration: remotely redesigned and rebuilt MikroTik infrastructure—RouterOS upgrades and ground-up reprogramming—stabilizing dependable internet access for communities across the region.

  • Obtained and operate an independent ASN and IPv6 allocation, enabling direct BGP peering and full-stack network control outside traditional ISP constraints.

• Tera-Byte Dot Com Inc.

  Edmonton, AB

  Software Developer / System Administrator — April 2008 – November 2010

  • Reduced WISP provisioning toil across vendors with automation scripts; migration of mail, databases, and financial data during network acquisitions; escalation point for internal tech and customer support.

  • Deployed and maintained monitoring, patching, and backup systems across acquired and legacy infrastructure.

  • Built provisioning abstractions for heterogeneous WISP gear; reduced rollout time for new sites and acquired networks.

  • Consolidated billing and customer data from acquired networks; maintained service continuity through cutovers.

  • Documented systems and handoff procedures for acquired infrastructure; reduced operational risk during integrations.

• Triton Networking Solutions Ltd. / AirSurfer Wireless

  Edmonton, AB

  Chief Technology Officer — July 2002 – April 2008

  • Ran AirSurfer WISP at operating scale across many rural Alberta communities—small towns, industrial areas, and metro fringe outside the urban core (800+ locations, 1,500+ mail users across 50+ domains). Custom qmail MTA; MySQL/mod_perl billing and ticketing; Nagios/Cricket monitoring; DOCSIS network for 2,800 users; OpenLDAP; Asterisk PBX migration; HotSpot platform; Explorer Hotel (Yellowknife) network design.

  • Version-controlled qmail patch tree (CVS); integrated community and custom patches for feature-competitive mail hosting.

  • Wrote the full billing and ops stack: Perl/MySQL backend, customer web portal with real-time bandwidth monitoring, BSD-level traffic capture, and DOCSIS provisioning. One hand-rolled codebase tying billing, ticketing, and self-service together.

• OA Group Inc.

  Edmonton, AB

  Retail Sales — January 2001 – July 2002

  • White-box PC retailer (OA Computers). Sold and spec'd custom systems and components, averaged ~$100K/month in parts and builds.

  • Designed desktop configurations to customer requirements; retail arm of OA Group's ISP and technical-products operation.

Expertise

Skills

Education & Training

LFCE

Linux Foundation Certified Engineer — The Linux Foundation · 2015

IPv6 Silver (CNE6-1)

IPv6 Forum Network Engineer — Nephos6 / GoGo6 · 2014

Data Privacy, GDPR

Information Security V2 — Professional Development · 2022

SSCA

Sip School Certified Associate — The SIP School · 2012

MCITP Lync

Lync Server 2010 Administrator — Global Knowledge · 2012

IPv6 Sage

IPv6 Certification — Hurricane Electric · 2009

References

• References available upon request.