ss[sean@stoves ~]$ ss

Sean Michael Stoves Sr.

SecOps & Platform Engineer

Remote

Summary

SecOps and Platform Engineer with 23+ years in systems administration, DevOps, and software engineering. Five years in cloud, the balance on-premises. Core focus: AWS hardening, SOC 2 and security compliance, and CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code on Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, GitHub Actions, and AWS CodePipelines. Additional strengths in incident response, security automation, and full-stack development. 15+ years remote or hybrid-remote.

Technical skills

Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS · Terraform / OpenTofu / Pulumi · Proxmox · VMware · VirtualBox · Docker · Kubernetes
Security & Compliance
SOC 2 audit readiness · Vulnerability management (Wiz, Snyk) · IAM & secrets rotation · Cloudflare Zero Trust (Access, Tunnel) · IPTables · Bastille · Snort · OSSEC · Nmap · Rapid7 · BitDefender · Wiz
CI/CD & DevOps
GitHub Actions · AWS CodePipelines · Azure DevOps · TeamCity · GitLab · SaltStack · Bacula
Languages
TypeScript · Python · Bash · PowerShell · PHP · C#/.NET · Ruby on Rails · C/C++ · Java · Batch · VBScript
Databases
MySQL · PostgreSQL · MSSQL · MongoDB · Elasticsearch · MS Access
Monitoring & Observability
Datadog · SolarWinds · Zabbix · Nagios · ZenOSS
Networking
Cloudflare (DNS, CDN, WAF) · Cisco · Juniper · Dell · SonicWall · DHCP · WINS · TCP/IP · SMTP
Operating Systems
Linux · Unix · Windows · macOS
Servers & Services
Apache · Nginx · Postfix · Qmail · Bind · PowerDNS · LDAP · Active Directory
AI Tooling
Claude (plugin authoring, prompt engineering) · LLM-assisted development workflows

Experience

Wizards of the Coast (D&D Beyond)

2022 – Present

Remote (Renton, WA)

SecOps-Focused Platform Engineer

2025 – Present
  • Track and triage CVEs impacting D&D Beyond services, routing remediation work to the owning teams
  • Keep platforms aligned with security best practices and internal compliance standards
  • Harden AWS IAM, secrets rotation, and least-privilege access across accounts
  • Expand logging, monitoring, and alerting coverage for security-relevant events
  • Authored an internal Claude plugin that codifies and enforces company policies, naming conventions, and security guardrails, and accelerates RCA and incident-response workflows for D&D Beyond engineers

Software Engineer, Discord

2024 – 2025
  • Developed new features in Python for Avrae, the open-source Discord bot powering D&D play
  • Served as primary pull-request reviewer and maintainer for the open-source codebase
  • Maintained Avrae's automation database for 1PP and 3PP content
  • Owned the release process and ongoing modernization of the platform

Platform Engineer

2022 – 2024
  • Built and ran CI/CD on GitHub Actions and AWS CodePipelines
  • Wrote Terraform IaC for production AWS infrastructure
  • Owned monitoring and weighed in on AWS architecture decisions across teams

Fandom (D&D Beyond)

2021 – 2022

Remote (San Francisco, CA)

TechOps Engineer

  • Built and ran CI/CD on GitHub Actions and AWS CodePipelines
  • Wrote Terraform IaC for AWS infrastructure
  • Owned production monitoring and AWS architecture recommendations

Momentum Telecom, Inc.

2016 – 2021

Remote (Philadelphia, PA)

Software Engineer

2019 – 2021
  • Built billing-implementation processes for telecom customer onboarding
  • Built Elasticsearch integrations for fraud detection and CDR delivery
  • Ran Azure DevOps CI/CD for the Billing Engineering team
  • Operated and monitored the .NET production application stack

Sr. SysOps Engineer

2016 – 2019
  • Kept production servers healthy across multiple ESX clusters via vCenter
  • Built SaltStack automation for config management at scale
  • Wrote internal tools and processes for engineering and ops
  • Ran GitLab and Active Directory for the org
  • Ran continuous stress testing against production-bound systems

Web Agent Solutions

2012 – 2016

Hybrid Remote (Chalfont, PA)

Sr. Server Administrator, Project Manager & Product Developer

  • Designed and shipped web-based tools and products end-to-end
  • Managed an outsourced dev team and reviewed code on delivery
  • Owned server health, MySQL maintenance, and stress testing
  • Handled customer technical support by phone and email as needed

Go 2 Strategies

2011 – 2026

Remote

Sr. SysOps Engineer (Freelance)

  • System administration and operations across Linux, BSD, and Windows servers
  • Ongoing server maintenance, performance tuning, and uptime monitoring
  • Custom WordPress development and ad-hoc PHP work as needed

Earlier experience

NMG LLC2011 – 2013

Server Administrator & Developer. VoIP network operations across Linux, BSD, and Windows environments

Digital Bridge Communications2010 – 2011

Network Operations & Server Administrator. WiMAX 4G operations, SolarWinds monitoring, and Bacula backups

Penn Warranty Corporation2008 – 2010

Desktop Support & Network Administrator. Windows 2003 domain administration, CloneZilla imaging, and MSSQL support

NEPA Web Hosting2008 – 2010

Web Developer & Server Administrator. Custom PHP/MySQL hosting applications and server administration

INetU Managed Hosting2007 – 2008

Linux/Unix Systems Administrator. Qmail, Apache, and MySQL administration for managed hosting

Network Solutions2004 – 2007

Technical Support Specialist. Web hosting support, scripting, and internal tooling

Education

Chubb Institute

Diploma, Network Security and Server Administration (4.0 GPA)

Carbon County Vocational Technical School

Integrated Information Systems Program