Sebastien Couture

As a Senior Systems Engineer, and subsequently a Lead Site Reliability Engineer at Bandwidth Inc., I was responsible for spearheading the implementation of "Infrastructure as Code" principles in order to codify, streamline, and automate the testing, deployment, and monitoring of critical "Core Voice" systems and components. I also worked closely with other teams to help them identify areas that could benefit from automation to increase efficiency, as well as reduce toil and the potential for human errors.

• Developed several automation workflows to allow deployments to be carried out without human interaction (unless an issue is identified), while still adhering to the company's strict change management policies (Ansible/AWX, Python, REST APIs);
• Developed automation workflows and the necessary backend software components to carry out and report/alert on daily SOX auditing of packages and configuration files on critical core voice systems (Ansible/AWX, Python, REST APIs, jFrog Artifactory);
• Migrated and rewrote several legacy Jenkins CI/CD pipelines to GitHub Actions workflows (CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions);
• Developed several custom Datadog Agent checks, metrics, and dashboards in order to gain increased visibility into critical components of the “Core Voice” infrastructure (Datadog, Python);
• Developed a RESTful API to act as a secure, scalable abstraction layer over the various management interfaces used to communicate with core voice components, allowing immediate fleet-wide operations and changes to be carried out to, for instance, quickly re-route call traffic during an outage (Python, Nginx, REST APIs, OpenSIPS);
• Designed, advocated for, and implemented a mechanism spanning multiple technology stacks that would allow for programmatically taking critical core voice systems in and out of operation in order to safely and transparently carry out changes and deploy new code (Python, REST APIs, Ansible/AWX, OpenSIPS);
• Created automation and assisted in deploying several critical components of the “Core Voice” infrastructure in a cloud-based computing platform as part of a geo-redundancy and disaster recovery initiative (Ansible, Amazon AWS);
• Reverse-engineered, then refactored, or entirely rewrote countless legacy Python, Perl, or BASH scripts to make them easier to test, deploy, and monitor through automation workflows.

As a CTO at Ubity Inc., I was responsible for leading the company's shift from its standard business telephony offering, to what would become a broad set of unified communications and contact center functionalities. As a smaller player in the industry, we inevitably had to do a lot with very little, and thus I remained very hands-on throughout my tenure, even as my managerial duties grew.

• Introduced infrastructure-as-code mindset within the company (Ansible);
• Built custom Ansible modules and also contributed to existing Ansible modules (Python);
• Designed and implemented a centralized logging infrastructure using the Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana (ELK) stack;
• Developed software (Python) that is used by the company's voice platform to transcribe voicemail messages on the fly using the Google Cloud Speech API (and alternatively the Nuance Speech-to-Text API);
• Designed and implemented the company's Business SMS service, including carrier evaluations and interoperability tests, SMPP connectivity (Kannel), custom software (Python) to tie into the company's internal REST API, configuration of the voice platform (Asterisk) and instant messaging platform (Ejabberd) to allow end-to-end support for SMS through SIP and XMPP;
• Developed a cluster-wide firewall solution (Ansible, Python, IPTables, VoIPmonitor) that feeds into several IP and SIP monitoring platforms to quickly restrict access to the company's entire voice cluster in situations where a potential attack is detected.

As a Systems/VoIP Architect at Ubity Inc., I was responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining a scalable, highly-available cloud-based business telephony and contact center platform.

• Designed and implemented a multi-tenant, database-driven (MySQL), Asterisk-based telephony platform with scalability and high availability in mind;
• Designed and implemented a centralized Least Cost Routing mechanism (Python) that can be used on an Asterisk-based SBC cluster;
• Designed and implemented an OpenSIPS load-balancing cluster to allow the company's Asterisk-based SBCs to scale horizontally;
• Designed and implemented a centralized media streaming infrastructure (for hold music and IVR prompts) using Nginx, Icecast, and Ezstream;
• Heavily involved in developing the company's fax platform (Asterisk, Python, BASH);
• Heavily involved in developing the company's device provisioning platform (Nginx, Python, MySQL);
• Built several custom Ejabberd modules (Erlang) and XMPP components (Python) in order to support the company's presence and instant messaging functionalities;
• Built custom modules and contributed several patches to the Asterisk project since 2008;
• Built custom daemon software (Python) that allows an Asterisk voice cluster to reliably fetch data from a MySQL or MongoDB database, handles database fail-over, and caches results (Memcached) when necessary.

• Taught classes on Debian GNU/Linux as a desktop and server operating system, as well as a more in-depth class on Linux server security;
• Updated all course materials, including manuals and exams, for all three classes related to the Debian GNU/Linux operating system;
• Created the outline for what would become the "IP Telephony using Asterisk" course.

• Intro to DevOps (UD611)
• Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes (UD615)

• Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part I (University of Virginia)
• Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part II (University of Virginia)
• Competitive Strategy (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
• Advanced Competitive Strategy (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
• New Models of Business in Society (University of Virginia)

I presented my work on the Canadian interactive web series "Émilie" and how Asterisk, as an open source toolkit, is the perfect engine to an interactive media framework that can be used in TV shows, advertisement or art, and allow for countless new and inventive ways to experience and engage with content.

I helped review the draft, and provided feedback/suggestions (see “Acknowledgements”).

I was brought in to consult on "Émilie", a Canadian interactive web series produced by national public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada which makes extensive use of telephony, text messaging, and voice recognition to engage and interact with its viewers.

I was brought in to consult on an art installation project imagined by Indian artist Vishal Rawlley where we designed a public voice mailbox system (Asterisk) with a structure similar to an internet blog, allowing a person to record an audio message for the world to hear (post), and potentially receive audio responses (comments) from other users on the system, with the hope of fostering a human connection.

I was brought in to consult on an art installation project imagined by Indian artist Vishal Rawlley where people attending an event would be able to call a phone number and press digits (Asterisk), which would be sent to a computer running Pure Data and wired to an array of lights scattered around the venue, which allowed the callers to control the lights' color and intensity.