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2024-01-12: DevX Status Update

By pmcmaw |
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Happy New Year from the DevX Team

We have all had a few weeks off and are now looking forward to getting stuck in and working with you all in 2024. As the past few weeks have been quiet, I decided that I should reintroduce our team so you know exactly who you are working with, rather than just a username.

With David Sandilands based in Scotland and everyone else in Belfast this is the only picture with us all together (I did run it past Gavin P and hes is totally okay with this one).

(left to right, Jordan Breen, David Sandilands, Lukas Audzevicius, Paula Muir, David Swan, Gavin Didrichsen.)

David Sandilands - Product Manager

Hello I’m David I have been at Puppet for 2 and a half years, I work as a product manager of Puppet’s development ecosystem and integrations. I previously worked in the Solutions architect team assisting our largest and most complex customers. Previous to this I worked 7 years at Natwest creating their IaaS Platform and converting them from OSP to PE.

I have two boys aged 4 and 2 and two cats. I am a keen hillwalker (Munroist number: 3085), enjoy sci-fi and fantasy books and regularly visits most of Scotland’s tractor parks the family.

I am generally on all social and development networks as davidsandilands (David Sandilands) (github.com), @davidsandilands@fosstodon.org or David Sandilands (on Slack) except on x/twitter where the driving instructor from Greenock beat me to the username so I settled for @DNSandilands.

Paula Muir (me) - Engineering Manager

Hey! I’m Paula and I have been with Puppet for over 7 years and have been involved with many variations of this team with multiple different roles. I joined Puppet as an Associate QA Engineer and progressed through the following roles of QA Engineer, Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead, Engineering Supervisor and most recently I am now the Engineering Manager for the team.

I have a husband, 2 children (age 4 and 2) and a dog called Benny. My evenings and weekends are spent doing all the generic parenting things, although I am keen but not very good at gardening, baking and I have had a couple of attempts at sewing.

You may see me surfacing in GitHub sometimes, my handle is pmcmaw, which probably does seem random however it is my maiden name. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever need anything and you think I can help. You will find me on the Puppet Community Slack as ‘Paula’.

Gavin Didrichsen - Principal Software Engineer

Hello I’m Gavin and have been at Puppet for almost 3 years. Most of this time has been with our fantastic support team, but more recently I’ve started working with the CAT team focusing on Tools to ease and enhance the developer experience forPuppet Developers. I’ve been a Puppet enthusiast ever since introducing Puppet to a TV set-top box development team almost 10 years ago. After automating a backend test system and reducing a week-long manual process to 10 minutes, I was prettymuch sold. They still use the Puppet automation!

I’m married and have 2 sons. We all love hanging out, going for walks. My wife and I try to go as often as we can to a local keep fit class nearby. Sometimes we just go for coffee.

I am on github as “gavindidrichsen” and community Puppet Slack as “Gavin Didrichsen”.

David Swan - Software Engineer

Hey, this is David Swan and I have hit my seventh anniversary working here at Puppet. I’ve spent much of that time working on our open-source modules with some work done on our tooling and so hopefully should be known to most of you already.

I’ve recently moved fully onto working on our supported tools as part of the DevX team and I am looking forward to the change in routine and the new challenges I may face.

You can find me on Github as ‘david22swan’ and on the community Puppet Slack as ‘David The Anvil’

Lukas Audzevicius - Associate Software Engineer

Hi, I’m Lukas Audzevicius. I’ve been working on and around the block for 2 years. I am an Associate Engineer and previously I’ve been doing a lot of bugfixing/maintenance around the modules side of the team.

I’ve spent a good chunk of my life moving from place to place and ended up speaking fluent Spanish from all my time in the country. I’m also an habitual airsoft player and an habitual gamer, especially enjoying challenging or story rich entries.

I tend to like interacting with the community and lending a helping hand where possible. You should be able to find me on Github by LukasAud, or on Slack by my full name. Feel free to ask me any questions in regard to Tooling.

Jordan Breen - Associate Software Engineer

Hey everyone, I am Jordan and I have been with Puppet over 1 year now. I joined puppet as an Associate Software Engineer having joined after graduating from Ulster University after finishing four years learning all about Software Engineering.

I have a 2-year-old son, who just like his ‘Da’, is a staunch Manchester United supporter (whether he knows that just yet or not is unclear…). So, it goes without saying that you can find me watching every football game on the tv, much to the dismay of my partner, or in the John Vesey Stand at Brewster Park cheering on my local GAA club Enniskillen Gaels.

On a more professional note, I do love software. I really enjoy automation, having done extensive work with our teams GitHub actions infrastructure since joining. I am particularly fond of coding server-side applications in Ruby, Golang and Java, as well as composing automation scripts in bash. You can find me on GitHub with my handle jordanbreen28, or reach out on the puppet community slack!

Who owns what?

I know sometimes its hard to keep up and know who owns what. Therefore the DevX team currently own everything listed here. We try our very best to keep it up to date.

Community Contributions

We’d like to thank the following people in the Puppet Community for their contributions over this past few weeks: