whoami
Vincent Allen
Staff Platform Engineer / DevOps Architect
I build self-service infrastructure that lets scientists ship without ops bottlenecks. Fifteen years of cloud platforms, HPC clusters, and bioinformatics pipelines across biotech and scientific computing — writing the production Go, Python, and TypeScript as well as the Terraform and Kubernetes that runs it.
- AWS
- Kubernetes / EKS
- Terraform
- Slurm / HPC
- Go
- GitOps
$ neofetch
- role
- Platform Engineering
- uptime
- 15 years
- host
- STEMCELL Technologies
- region
- Coquitlam, BC · ca-central
- domain
- biotech · scientific computing
- shipped
- 20+ apps · 5 TF modules · 7-stage pipeline
open to staff / architect roles
ls -la projects/
3 entries- SpEKS UI screenshotspeks/
Self-service application platform — 20+ scientific web apps on EKS behind ShinyProxy. Deploys went from days to minutes.
cd speks/ → - HPC console screenshothpc-console/
Agentic console for research assistants — plain-language requests become reviewed, scheduled Slurm work with full provenance.
cd hpc-console/ → - Build tracker screenshotlc250-tracker/
AI-augmented build tracker for a Toyota Land Cruiser 250 — parts, fitment, and a weight budget that stays honest.
cd lc250-tracker/ →
git log --oneline experience/
Senior Systems Engineer
STEMCELL TechnologiesJun 2023 → present- Designed and built SpEKS, a six-component internal platform that replaced manual deployments with self-service delivery of 20+ scientific web apps.
- Architected multi-environment AWS infrastructure (EKS, ECS/Fargate, DynamoDB, EFS, FSx ONTAP) across three Terraform Cloud workspaces.
- Built a 7-stage bioinformatics pipeline (Illumina GTC → CNV detection) on Step Functions + Batch, and production Slurm clusters on ParallelCluster.
- Maintained 18 hardened base images with Trivy gates — zero critical vulnerabilities in production containers.
Senior DevOps Engineer
ZymeworksDec 2015 → May 2023- Designed and operated autoscaling HPC clusters (AWS + on-prem, SGE/Slurm) for computational drug discovery — 50+ researchers, hundreds of CPU and GPU nodes.
- Migrated petabyte-scale research storage from on-prem NFS/Lustre to S3/EFS without interrupting active workflows.
- Led GitOps-driven IaC adoption and cut annual cloud spend 30% through spot fleets, reservations, and right-sizing.
Systems / DevOps Engineer
Aretas Sensor NetworksJun 2011 → Dec 2015- Built AWS infrastructure for an IoT monitoring platform — thousands of sensor devices, CouchDB time-series ingestion, automated OS image pipelines.
Consulting Systems Engineer · Geographic Research — and earlier, Hastings Entertainment / Great Canadian Gaming
2006 → 2011
cat skills.yaml
languages:
- Go
- Python
- TypeScript
- Bash
- HCL
- SQL
- R
cloud_and_iac:
- EKS
- ECS / Fargate
- Step Functions
- Batch
- DynamoDB
- Aurora
- FSx
- Terraform Cloud
kubernetes:
- Karpenter
- FluxCD
- Kustomize
- Helm
- External Secrets
- CRDs / Operators
hpc:
- Slurm
- ParallelCluster
- GPU scheduling
- MPI / EFA
- FSx Lustre
delivery_and_observability:
- GitLab CI/CD
- GitHub Actions
- ArgoCD
- Trivy
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Loki
security_and_identity:
- Okta SSO / OIDC
- Active Directory
- IAM / IRSA
- KMS
- WAF
- Cognito