Rick Davis AI infrastructure · platform engineering
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01 Systems, teams, and operating leverage

AI Infrastructure & Platform Engineering Leader

Hands-on engineering leader building automation, observability, data platforms, and AI-assisted operating systems across enterprise and blockchain infrastructure.

Explore the work
LeadershipHands-on player-coachWorking styleEvidence-drivenCore systemsCloud · Data · AI
02 / Experience

Selected operating record

Eight chapters. One through-line: turning complex infrastructure into systems teams can operate with confidence.

Nirvana Labs

Head of Nodes

Led a five-person global node DevOps team operating more than 125 L1 and L2 networks across 1,000+ servers in 13+ regions.

  • Standardized Ansible and Terraform inventories, reusable roles, and runbooks, cutting new-network provisioning from 15+ days to under 24 hours.
  • Introduced reusable AI agents, tracing, and AI-assisted review; new-network role development became 5× faster and MTTR fell from 4+ hours to under 15 minutes.
  • Built GitHub Actions preview environments, autoscaling EKS runners, and Grafana fleet dashboards for safer releases and shared operating visibility.
AI-assisted operationsAnsible + TerraformFleet observability

Verizon

Product Analytics Engineering & Data Platform Leadership

Progressed from contract data engineer to engineering leader for a large-scale FiOS and 5G Home router telemetry analytics platform.

Career journeyContract-to-leadership progression

  1. Contract via Insight Global

    Data Engineer

  2. Verizon Product Analytics

    Associate Director, Software Engineering for Product Analytics

  • Led architecture for a platform designed for 20M routers, 200M Wi-Fi clients, 1.5M transactions per second, and 120TB of daily ingest.
  • Designed a hot/cold data plane spanning compressed Postgres/Citus and Dremio over Iceberg/Parquet in S3.
  • Prototyped an LLM-assisted text-to-SQL workflow using schema and telemetry context in vector search for self-service analytics.
Telemetry at scaleData platformsLLM-assisted analytics

Cube.Exchange

Head of DevOps

Built a hardened production foundation for a hybrid decentralized exchange, spanning automated infrastructure, data, and secrets operations.

  • Created Python and Ansible automation for PostgreSQL backup, restore, scaling, tuning, and migration workflows.
  • Built HA PostgreSQL and HashiCorp Vault clusters, KVM hosts, blockchain RPC nodes, and Datadog/Vector observability with Terraform and Ansible.
  • Published an open-source Ansible Galaxy collection so partners could launch self-hosted Cube Guardian and Vault clusters with automated provisioning.
Secure infrastructureDatabase automationOpen source

Figment.io

Principal Engineer & Senior Engineering Manager

Led blockchain automation at fleet scale, then moved into principal-level work on security-sensitive operations, network diligence, and platform efficiency.

Career journeyPeople leadership + principal IC

  1. People leadership · fleet automation

    Sr Engineering Manager, Blockchain Automation

  2. Principal IC · security-sensitive infrastructure

    DevOps Principal Engineer

  • Designed and led automation for deployment, configuration, and maintenance of 60+ blockchain networks across 1,300+ servers and 13 providers.
  • Improved the interview system, hired 10 engineers, and coached five engineers to promotion while aligning team roadmaps and OKRs.
  • Co-founded a security-focused infrastructure initiative and established standards for network diligence, cost reporting, incident response, and validator onboarding.
Blockchain automationEngineering leadershipSecurity-focused operations

Dell Technologies

Enterprise Automation & DevOps Leadership

Progressed from hands-on systems advisory to leading DevOps delivery for strategic enterprise, telecom, and service-provider customers across EMEA.

Career journeyUnited States → Amsterdam, Netherlands

  1. Enterprise infrastructure advisory

    Advisory Systems Engineer

    United States

  2. EMEA customer automation leadership

    Director of DevOps

    Amsterdam, Netherlands

  • Led a DevOps engineering team delivering infrastructure automation and cross-training for strategic EMEA customers.
  • Translated customer requirements into enterprise architectures and deployment pipelines spanning IaaS, containers, hybrid cloud, and telecom environments.
  • Led Terraform module development for Dell server configuration and BIOS, RAID, and firmware lifecycle management through Redfish/BMC APIs.
Enterprise automationCustomer architectureServer lifecycle

Verizon

Platform Architecture Across Verizon Businesses

An eleven-year progression through hands-on architecture and technical management for cloud media, nationwide video delivery, and telematics platforms.

Career journeyFour Verizon business units

  1. Verizon FiOS

    Architecture, Design & Development

  2. Redbox Instant by Verizon

    Manager of Infrastructure

  3. OnCue · Verizon next-generation video

    Architecture & Design

  4. Verizon Telematics → Verizon Connect

    DevOps Manager

  • Architected OnCue for 1,000+ edge locations and a designed scale above 15 Pbps; hardware and vendor evaluations produced $80M in cost savings.
  • Formed and led a Telematics DevOps team and built a multi-site active-active container platform that maintained 100% uptime for 1.5+ years.
  • Automated network and server provisioning through Ansible and GitLab CI, reducing a 30-day deployment cycle to eight hours.
Nationwide architecturePlatform transformationTeam building

Florida Department of Transportation

Web Administrator

Supported production systems, server consolidation, and operational controls for public-sector web and GIS infrastructure.

  • Built and maintained production servers while creating standard build guides and supporting inventory and audit processes.
  • Installed VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 nodes and helped migrate physical and virtual systems into the consolidated environment.
  • Created applications to collect administrator and software inventory data and supported new ArcIMS/Esri GIS systems.
Systems operationsVirtualizationInventory controls

TSYS

Senior Network Analyst

Automated secure enterprise operations and compliance across payment-processing environments in the United States and United Kingdom.

  • Managed the zero-downtime migration of more than 30 critical systems into a new UK data center.
  • Built a zero-touch patch deployment system that replaced monthly manual maintenance and reclaimed 500+ engineering hours each year.
  • Created compliance analysis and remediation workflows spanning seven environments and sustained a 100% audit pass rate.
Secure automationCompliance engineeringData center migration