Mark Gardner

About Mark Gardner

Software engineer with 15+ years building production systems, now specializing in platform engineering, developer experience, and cloud infrastructure.Currently at LexisNexis Risk Solutions as Software Engineer where I focus on platform engineering and developer tooling for Azure-based data analytics applications. I build infrastructure that makes teams more productive:RECENT PLATFORM ENGINEERING WORK• Built multi-module development container orchestrating 8 services with Docker Compose, reducing team onboarding from 1 week to 30 minutes for 9 developers• Lead architectural migrations affecting multiple teams, including deprecating legacy crypto libraries and modernizing infrastructure• Improved CI/CD pipelines by aligning GitHub Actions linting with local developer tooling• Enhanced production debugging by reducing log noise across 35+ code call sitesTECHNICAL FOCUS AREASContainerization & Orchestration: Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes (OKD/Rancher), development containersCI/CD & Automation: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, BambooCloud Infrastructure: Microsoft Azure, AWS (EC2, S3, IAM), CloudflareObservability: Grafana, ELK Stack, log aggregationLanguages: Expert in Perl, proficient in JavaScript/Node.js, learning Go through production projectsPLATFORM ENGINEERING LEARNING JOURNEYI document my hands-on platform engineering skill development on my technical blog (phoenixtrap.com), including comparative analysis of building the same CLI tool in Perl and Go, Docker Compose infrastructure for self-hosted services (Mastodon, Calibre-web), and static site generation migrations.CAREER PROGRESSIONSoftware engineer roles at LexisNexis, EnergyNet, cPanel, ZipRecruiter, eBay Enterprise, and early-stage startups. Built everything from e-commerce platforms to SaaS applications to data analytics systems. Computer Science degree from Independence University.WHAT DRIVES MEI\'m passionate about developer experience—the infrastructure and tooling that lets engineering teams ship reliably. Whether it\'s shaving 6.5 days off onboarding time with a well-designed dev container, or preventing merge conflicts with better CI/CD alignment, I focus on making teams more effective through better platform engineering.Currently pursuing AWS certifications and expanding Kubernetes expertise. Open to senior software engineering roles with platform engineering focus, or full platform engineering positions.

Experience

1. Software Engineer Iii

   LexisNexis Risk Solutions

   Mar 2025 — Present · Boca Raton, FL, US

   Platform engineering and developer tooling for cloud-based SaaS applications on Azure infrastructure, focusing on containerization, CI/CD automation, and production reliability- Built and maintain multi-module development container orchestrating 8 containerized services using Docker Compose and Git submodules, reducing developer onboarding time from one week to 30 minutes for 9-developer team, with planned expansion to additional teams in 2026- Led architectural migration from deprecated Crypt:RSA and Crypt:Random (dependent on unsupported Math:Pari library) to modern alternatives, coordinating across 4 teams, delivering migration guide and wrapper tooling enabling secure transition- Improved CI/CD pipeline by aligning GitHub Actions perltidy linting checks with developer tooling, preventing spurious diffs and merge conflicts while catching formatting issues earlier in development cycle- Enhanced production debugging efficiency by remediating spurious runtime warnings at 35 code call sites, reducing log noise and improving signal-to-noise ratio for incident response- Identified and fixed CAPTCHA reuse security vulnerability, strengthening application security posture- Created risk indicator dashboard enabling customers to download analytics data as spreadsheet, improving data accessibility and customer self-service capabilities- Developed PII remediation tooling for sensitive data (names, SSNs) to support internal security policy compliance- Built correlation tool and documentation enabling QA team to map application search and reporting events to external SOAP web service method calls, streamlining integration testing.

Education

• DeVry University

  Computer & Information Systems

  2004 — 2009

• Independence University

  Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science

  2014 — 2017

• The University of Texas at Austin – Center for Professional Education (CPE)

  Certificate, Coding Boot Camp: Full Stack Development

• Drexel University

  Information Systems

  1991 — 1993

Skills

• Software Documentation
• Sdlc
• Xslt
• Perl
• Css
• Security
• Enterprise Software
• Oracle
• Web Applications
• Shell Scripting
• Subversion
• Mysql
• Pl/Sql
• Soap
• Software Engineering
• Php
• E-Commerce
• Git
• Sql
• Linux
• Xhtml
• Network Security
• Web Services
• System Administration
• Software Development
• Scrum
• Lamp
• Databases
• Release Management
• Windows
• Integration
• Software Development Life Cycle (Sdlc)
• Html
• Apache
• Soa
• Unix
• Ajax
• Xml
• Rest
• Agile Methodologies