Geoff Nichols

Geoff Nichols has a diverse work experience spanning multiple industries. Geoff currently holds the position of Senior Security Engineer at CircleCI, a role they started in 2023. Before this, they worked as an Engineering Manager at CircleCI from 2022 to 2023.

Prior to joining CircleCI, Geoff had a long tenure at Puppet, where they held various management roles. Geoff served as a Principal Software Engineer from 2021 to 2022 and was responsible for managing three development teams working on Puppet Forge, Bolt, and other projects. From 2019 to 2021, Geoff was the Engineering Manager for Puppet Forge and Ecosystem, overseeing a team of up to 14 engineers. Geoff also led the transformation of Puppet's Agent Team to a development team writing non-trivial features in Clojure for Puppet Enterprise Orchestration.

Geoff's career at Puppet started in 2016 when they joined as an Engineering Manager for the Puppet Agent Team. In this role, they built and evolved the team responsible for building, testing, and shipping releases of the packaged open-source Puppet agent. Geoff played a crucial role in improving efficiency and value stream, reducing manual steps, and leading a business transformation project.

Before Puppet, Geoff worked at Caterpillar Financial as a Server and Storage Team Lead from 2012 to 2014. Geoff also held the position of Unix System Administrator from 2005 to 2012 and Technical Support Engineer from 2002 to 2004.

Geoff's earlier experiences include a role as a Technical Consultant at Puppet, where they set up the company's original IBM AIX/PowerVM infrastructure. Geoff also worked at Covad Communications as a Technical Support Engineer, providing connectivity and support to business customers. Geoff's career started at BellSouth International, Inc. as a Technical Support Engineer and at The Learning Company as a Software QA Tester.

Overall, Geoff's work experience showcases their expertise in engineering management, software development, technical support, and quality assurance.

Geoff Nichols obtained their Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in History from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1999. In addition to their formal education, they have also obtained certifications in Programming Foundations: Secure Coding from LinkedIn in August 2020, and Puppet Professional 2015 Certification from Puppet Labs, Inc. in April 2015.