Isaiah Duncan

About Isaiah Duncan

Site Reliability Engineer with 6+ years of experience improving reliability, reducing MTTR, and scaling cloud systems across AWS and hybrid environments. Proven track record in automation, observability, and performance engineering, with expertise in Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD. Specializes in building end-to-end monitoring, SLI/SLO-driven reliability strategies, and incident response workflows that reduce downtime and improve system performance. Leverages AI-assisted tools to accelerate troubleshooting and enhance automation. Passionate about designing scalable, cost-efficient, and self-healing systems. Tech Stack: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Python, Bash, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Dynatrace, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, JMeter, Java, SQL

Experience

1. Senior Site Reliability Engineer

   Cognizant

   Oct 2024 — Present · Smyrna, DE, US

   Increased system availability to 99.9%+ and reduced incident volume through proactive monitoring and observability strategies.• Reduced MTTR by ~25–30% by enhancing alerting, Splunk dashboards, and incident response workflows.• Optimized AWS infrastructure and scaling strategies, reducing cloud costs by ~10–15% while improving performance.• Automated configuration management using Ansible, reducing manual effort and minimizing configuration drift.• Built and optimized CI/CD pipelines (GitLab, Jenkins), improving deployment consistency and release velocity.• Implemented observability using Dynatrace and Splunk across Kubernetes and AWS environments, enabling proactive issue detection.• Led incident management and RCA efforts, reducing recurring issues and improving system stability.• Leveraged AI tools (GitHub Copilot, Windsurf) to accelerate troubleshooting and automation workflows.

Education

• Full Sail University

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Recording Arts Technology/Technician

• Wilmington University

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Software Design and Development