About Me
I'm Marks Polakovs.
I'm a DevOps, software dev, broadcast, and theatre tech person based out of Cambridge (UK).
Work
I currently work as a DevOps Engineer at Darktrace.
Before that I was a part-time Digital Support Technician at the University of York Students' Union, where in addition to first- and second-line user support I gave training sessions, developed internal systems, and contributed to a full redesign and rebuild of our website (it's public!).
Before that I did a Year in Industry at Couchbase in Manchester, rotating through first- and second-line technical support and Go back-end development roles. (Some of my contributions there are public!)
Not Work
I went to the University of York, where I probably spent more time in the student radio and television scene than I did doing my degree (don't tell my lecturers). This gave me a lot of my initial software development, systems admin, and DevOps experience.
I built and maintained systems there to handle internal processes, such as member management and show scheduling, broadcasting from home, production scheduling, and media management for live broadcast.
I won a Love York Award (the Students' Union's awards for contributions to the student community) in 2021 for Outstanding Contribution to Student Media, and again in 2024 as Student Staff Member of the Year. Some of the tech I built has also won national awards: WebStudio won the Student Radio Awards' Best Technical Achievement award in 2020, and Badger won the National Student Television Association's Technical Innovation award in 2024.
I still do the odd bit of broadcast and/or theatre tech nonsense with my friends.
Technologies I Know
Programming languages:
- Most confident in Python, TypeScript, and Go
- Proficient in Java, PHP, Bash
- On-and-off learning Rust
- Know just enough C to be dangerous
Other tools:
- Proficient with Docker
- Proficient with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI
- Experiened with HashiCorp Nomad/Consul/Vault
- Learning Kubernetes (including through this website)
Elsewhere on the internet
Getting in touch
Email marks [at] this domain. If you mention the capital of Slovenia somewhere in the email, it'll make my filters less likely to think you're a bot.