James Cassell is a Master Software Engineer in platform engineering with 12 years of hands-on experience automating and securing large Linux estates across disconnected and regulated environments. A CISSP and dual B.S. graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Computer Science and Computer & Systems Engineering, he combines deep systems automation (Ansible, Chef, SaltStack) with operational rigor from his Navy submarine officer background where he led engineering teams and built safety-critical control software. He has managed hundreds of servers, built end-to-end provisioning pipelines, implemented STIGs, and operated OpenStack and Docker at scale, often in offline or air-gapped networks. An active contributor to the core Ansible project, he focuses on bug fixes and module hardening, and has a track record of making complex security and availability requirements auditable and repeatable. Based in Greater Boston, he brings a rare mix of military-grade decision-making, networking chops (former CCNA), and pragmatic automation that keeps large, sensitive systems both secure and maintainable.
12 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Navy Nuclear Power School, Charleston, SC
Navy Prototype School, Ballston Spa, NY
Bachelor of Science (B.S.) Computer and Systems Engineering, Bachelor of Science (B.S.) Computer and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:42 commits, 103 PRs, 438 comments in 2 years
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the Ansible project by addressing bugs and implementing improvements within the core modules. They fixed issues related to connection resets, PAM module regressions, and command module functionalities. The user also worked on adding support for all projects in the `os_server_facts` module and standardizing connection variable names.
Contributions:14 commits, 6 pushes, 1 branch in 1 month
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James Cassell - Master Software Engineer, Platform Engineering