Ernest E. Teem III

Forward Deployed Engineer | Customer Solutions | AI & Platform Engineering
Holly, MI | (313) 405-7682 | ernieteem@gmail.com | github.com/sovereign313 | codeberg.org/refuge | linkedin.com/in/eteem
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Forward Deployed Engineer at Aivato owning customer-facing technical delivery from discovery and live demos through deployment, SSO setup, integrations, troubleshooting, onboarding, and production handoff. Combines AI development and AI-assisted Ansible/AWX and Terraform automation with deep SRE, Linux, cloud, and production operations experience.

Professional Experience

Aivato
2026 - Present
Forward Deployed Engineer / Senior Software Engineer
  • Lead customer-facing technical delivery from discovery and live product demonstrations through solution configuration, deployment, onboarding, and production handoff.
  • Deploy Aivato solutions into customer environments, configure SSO and technical integrations, validate service health, and troubleshoot implementation and adoption blockers.
  • Translate customer workflows and field feedback into product requirements, implementation decisions, and engineering changes.
  • Build production AI-agent workflows including tool execution, guardrails, MCP integrations, and RAG-backed retrieval patterns.
  • Use Ansible and AWX-style automation patterns to standardize service setup, repeatable deployments, environment configuration, and operational runbooks.
  • Developed DeltaManager, a harness comparison tool for analyzing engineering changes, compare reports, 3DXML parsing, and CATIA-assisted workflows.
  • Deliver customer-relevant capabilities including KBL Creator, Ldorado-XD conversion, compare reporting, QA checks, parts and cost data, PDF-to-BOM, exports, and wire tracing.
Credit Acceptance, Southfield, MI
2017 - Apr 2026
Senior Site Reliability Engineer
  • Used AI-assisted development to author, refactor, review, and troubleshoot Ansible playbooks and reusable roles for Linux configuration and maintenance.
  • Applied AI assistance to develop and debug AWX job templates, inventories, surveys, and workflows supporting controlled, repeatable operations.
  • Used AI to develop, explain, and troubleshoot Terraform and Terragrunt infrastructure code and review proposed platform changes.
  • Developed and refined Python and Bash operational tooling with AI assistance for automation, debugging, and repeatable administrative tasks.
  • Used AI to interpret logs, errors, and configuration differences, investigate incidents, and develop troubleshooting and remediation steps.
  • Used AI to draft and improve operational runbooks, automation documentation, and validation steps for infrastructure changes.
  • Worked with observability and incident-response tooling including DataDog, PagerDuty, Dynatrace, Splunk, ELK, Prometheus, and Nagios to support alerting, dashboards, escalation paths, and production troubleshooting.
  • Built an automation framework that enabled Splunk and monitoring events to trigger operational remediation and workflow actions.
  • Built and maintained Ansible/AWX automation for Linux operations, including playbooks, reusable roles, inventories, job templates, surveys, credentials, and controlled self-service workflows.
  • Integrated Ansible Automation Platform-style workflows with monitoring and incident response paths so common remediation tasks could run consistently with auditability and guardrails.
  • Used Terraform and Terragrunt to manage infrastructure-as-code workflows and support repeatable platform changes across Linux, SRE, and cloud engineering responsibilities.
  • Engineered automated Oracle installation processes to improve consistency and reduce manual deployment effort.
  • Automated server configuration, package management, service changes, and repeatable maintenance tasks across large Linux estates using Ansible-driven execution patterns.
  • Supported DNS operations, including BIND and Route 53 work, as part of Linux engineering, service delivery, and production reliability responsibilities.
  • Supported mixed Linux and Windows production environments, coordinating service checks, access, monitoring response, and cross-platform troubleshooting with application and infrastructure teams.
  • Developed a Vault-integrated credential rotation tool for daily password changes and secure secret storage.
  • Designed and implemented an AWS-based SFTP solution for dealer inventory workflows.
  • Re-architected legacy SFTP infrastructure into a containerized platform to improve maintainability and deployment consistency.
Credit Acceptance, Southfield, MI
2016 - 2017
Senior Linux Systems Administrator
  • Automated on-call changeover processes to reduce coordination overhead and operational risk.
  • Automated Cache database refresh workflows to improve repeatability and turnaround time.
  • Built a Go-based server inventory tool using vSphere data as the source of truth.
  • Supported Linux engineering fundamentals across DNS/BIND, service configuration, package management, SSH access, and operational troubleshooting.
  • Worked across Linux and Windows operational handoffs, including service dependency checks, access coordination, and monitoring-driven troubleshooting.
  • Created monitoring and response automation to detect and react to server reboots.
TEKsystems / Sears, Troy, MI
2015 - 2016
Linux Systems Engineer, Contractor
  • Created an email archiving system using Hadoop-backed storage and Linux services.
  • Managed VM host environments using KVM and virsh.
  • Designed system layout and implementation planning for a Kolab platform upgrade.
  • Built bridged networking configurations to support VM and LAN connectivity requirements.
Easy Online Solutions, Southfield, MI
2012 - 2015
Linux Systems Administrator / Engineer
  • Managed approximately 2,000 mixed bare-metal and virtual Linux servers across client environments.
  • Built a web-based control panel to simplify client operations and service management.
  • Wrote Perl automation to convert Apache virtual host configurations into Nginx configuration.
  • Developed internal task-tracking tooling and backup-management automation for Red Hat systems using BackupPC.
  • Supported client migrations, including configuration review, data transfer, and hosting environment setup.
ITT Technical Institute, Dearborn, MI
2009 - 2012
System Support Technician
  • Managed a fiber-optic WAN upgrade project and coordinated related router, switch, and server upgrades under time-sensitive conditions.
  • Built a Red Hat Linux-based helpdesk system in Perl to improve technical support intake and tracking.
  • Hired, coached, and supervised up to five lab technicians while overseeing daily technical operations.
  • Created utilities to automate lab operations, imaging workflows, and recovery tasks.
  • Designed custom Linux boot media to streamline data recovery and support workflows.