James Snell
Manager, DevOps Software Engineering at Columbia College Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJames Snell is a seasoned DevOps and SRE leader with 12+ years building and operating Linux-first infrastructure, currently managing DevOps Software Engineering for Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division in Calgary. He combines hands-on engineering—from embedded and IoT firmware contributions to cloud-native deployment and automation—with people leadership and project coordination across product R&D and operational systems. Early hardware tinkering evolved into expertise across Java, Python, Ansible, Postgres/PostGIS, VMware and AWS, and he’s contributed pragmatic fixes to notable open-source projects like Marlin firmware and the Amon monitoring agent. Known for prototyping and systems thinking, he drives long-term roadmaps while mentoring teams to ship resilient, production-grade services. He’s motivated by continuous learning and collaborating with clever peers, and maintains a public portfolio of work and resume at jamessnell.com.
12 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science Computer Engineering, Bachelor of Science Computer Engineering at University of CalgaryAlberta High School Diploma, Alberta High School Diploma at Springbank Community High School
English
Stackoverflow
1,648reputation
214kreached
35answers
5questions
elasticsearch
top-5%
kibana
top-5%
Github Skills (38)
monitoring10
firmware10
configuration-management10
bash10
3d-printing10
script10
agent10
configuration-file10
system-administration10
configurations10
arduino10
kibana9
c-language9
cprogramming-language9
elasticsearch9
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
amonapp/amon
May 2017 - May 2017
Amon is a modern server monitoring platform.
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:5 commits, 1 PR, 3 comments in 8 days
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the `amonapp/amon` repository by modifying the agent installation script. They addressed issues related to 32-bit architecture support, ensuring the correct agent binary was called based on the system architecture. Additionally, the user updated the script to correctly identify the agent's installation directory and improved the installer's robustness by adding checks for unsupported architectures and ensuring proper string comparison in conditional statements. This work focused on improving the agent's compatibility and installation process across different systems.
monitorgrafanaprometheusdashboardalarm
MarlinFirmware/Marlin
Feb 2015 - Feb 2015
Marlin is an optimized firmware for RepRap 3D printers based on the Arduino platform. Many commercial 3D printers come with Marlin installed. Check with your vendor if you need source code for your specific machine.
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:6 commits, 2 PRs, 6 comments in 16 days
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the configuration and settings files of the Marlin firmware. Their work involved normalizing section headers, adding help URLs, and correcting spelling errors within the configuration files. Additionally, they merged branches and addressed minor issues to refine the firmware's overall structure and usability, with a focus on 3D printer configuration and settings.
vendorreprapmarlinesp32commercial
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