Ben Copeland is a seasoned infrastructure and DevOps leader with 12+ years building and operating Linux-based systems, virtualization, storage, and test automation. Currently TSC Chair and Software Developer for the KernelCI Project and Senior Tech Lead at Linaro, he leads large-scale kernel functional testing and engineering infrastructure teams. He combines hands-on skills from running a 50+ site web hosting business to contributing backend modules to the widely used Ansible project, including SMTP authentication fixes and a Status.io maintenance module. Comfortable across Bash, Python, PHP and server-side stacks, he’s known for pragmatic automation, robust monitoring and improving deployment pipelines. Based in the Greater Bristol Area, he brings both entrepreneurial ownership and open-source collaboration to complex platform problems. A detail people miss: he’s blended early web-hosting ops experience with formal computer science training to drive both product-facing services and deep system testing.
12 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Bachelor of Science, Computer Science at Anglia Ruskin University
Farlingaye High School
BTEC, National Diploma for IT Practitioners, BTEC, National Diploma for IT Practitioners at Ipswich College
Ansible extra modules - these modules ship with ansible
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Contributions:2 commits, 3 PRs, 27 comments in 5 months
Contributions summary:Ben contributed to the `ansible-modules-extras` repository by implementing features in the `notification/mail.py` module, adding support for SMTP authentication (username/password) with SSL/TLS encryption. They fixed errors and added example configurations for the module. Furthermore, the user added a new module, `statusio_maintenance.py`, demonstrating skills in module creation and integration within the Ansible framework.
Ansible is a radically simple IT automation platform that makes your applications and systems easier to deploy and maintain. Automate everything from code deployment to network configuration to cloud management, in a language that approaches plain English, using SSH, with no agents to install on remote systems. https://docs.ansible.com.
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Contributions:5 commits, 2 comments, 1 issue in 2 years
Contributions summary:Ben contributed to the Ansible project by primarily modifying the `mail.py` module, adding features and fixing bugs related to sending emails. This involved implementing support for SMTP username/password authentication, catching errors for non-SSL SMTP connections, and adding example configurations. They also introduced a new module, `statusio_maintenance.py`, enabling users to manage maintenance windows within the Status.io platform. This includes functions for creating, deleting, and configuring maintenance windows, with options for notifications and automation.
everythingpythonit-automationdevopsdeployment
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