Hi everyone,
I'm pleased to announce Mukunda Modell, a new member of our Release
and QA group[1] in Platform Engineering. He'll be working on the
multitude of things that need to be done to make the process of
getting code from the first developer submission out into production
in a reliable and timely way that doesn't compromise the quality of
the site. He has the title "Release Engineer", which is something you
shouldn't read too literally if you're familiar with these things.
More on this in a bit.
Mukunda lives and works in Springfield, Missouri (not far at all from
Zack Exley, i.e. far away from any direct flight to SF). He most
recently worked in the past few months as an independent consultant
specializing in deployment issues. Prior to that worked for deviantArt
(remotely) for several years, and came highly recommended by his
colleagues that worked with him there (Gilles specifically prodded
Mukunda to apply). Mukunda started off as a PHP developer there, and
then gradually moved into more operations and release focused
activities. Prior to that he's worked on network-attached storage
(Niveus Media) and on the back-end for web games (D.Lux Games)
I'm going to borrow a quote from Ori's interview feedback on Mukunda
as to one big reason we hired him. Ori wrote “what impressed me the
most was the palpable gratification he seems to derive from improving
developers' workflows. It motivates him to scrutinize tools and
configurations and to look for ways in which they fit poorly with
developer requirements. Which is exactly what we need for this role.”
Indeed. One big thing that Mukunda did at deviantArt was to champion
the choice of Phabricator for their organization, and he was
responsible for the subsequent migration to and maintenance of their
installation. His timing coming into this organization is
impeccable[2]
We chose the title "Release Engineer" because it's a reasonably
standard term in the industry for the skills and responsibilities that
we have. In Wikimedia world, we call what Mukunda is doing
"deployment", and really, it's going to be everything from improving
the Beta Cluster, to improving our Vagrant setup, to improving scap,
to setting up Phabricator. If you look at work that Bryan Davis and
Antoine Musso have been doing recently, you won't be too far away from
the work that Mukunda will be tackling.
Please join me in welcoming Mukunda to the Wikimedia Foundation!
Rob
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Release_and_QA_Team
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Phabricator