# Raf (@raf.fonseca.org)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/raf.fonseca.org
Headline: Experienced People Leader & Cloud Infrastructure Expert
Location: Argentina

## About

As Director of Launch at Vital, I lead teams delivering complex enterprise platform rollouts across major healthcare systems, combining hands-on technical depth with a focus on building high-performing, empathetic teams that align individual growth with business needs.With 20+ years spanning systems engineering, cloud architecture, and engineering leadership, I've built and scaled mission-critical infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and observability systems using tools like Ansible, Ruby, Python, Node, and Go. Since 2010 I've worked across AWS, Azure, and GCP.I care as much about the systems people build as the systems they run on, mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring engineers to grow into leaders themselves.

## Career

- **Director of Launch at Vital.io** (Jan 2025 - Present)
  As Director of Launch at Vital, I lead the team responsible for bringing our platform live at major hospital systems across the US — including Ascension, CommonSpirit, HCA, and RMC — scaling our launch capacity significantly year over year while managing complex integrations with Epic, FHIR, HL7, and MLLP infrastructure.
- **Founder at BitSignal** (Mar 2011 - Present)
  Auckland, NZ
  Boutique consultancy, focusing on DevOps practices around architecture, management and scalability of cloud infrastructure.
- **Engineering Manager at Vital.io** (Jan 2020 - Jan 2025)
  As the first Engineering Manager, I worked with the Director of Engineering to build up the Engineering function over the years. Through coaching, mentoring, and sponsoring of individuals, we grew the Engineering team to 30+ people (from <10), while establishing and nurturing an inclusive, empathetic, and fulfilling culture.
- **Lead Site Reliability Engineer at Vital Software** (Mar 2018 - Jan 2020)
  NZ
  As the lead SRE, I planned and executed the cloud migration from a third-party healthcare-focused Platform-as-a-Service (Aptible) to Vital's own AWS infrastructure. As part of the Engineering team, I oversaw the evolution of the stack from Kubernetes to AWS ECS, while continuing to develop the robust CI/CD function at the company.
- **Team Lead for SRE at 8i** (Jul 2017 - Jan 2018)
  As the lead for the SRE team, my goals were to reduce infrastructure costs, improve service reliability and simplify delivery workflows. Together with the team, we have worked on establishing pipelines on Buildkite, consolidating AWS resources, and documenting best practices for development and deployment relevant to the business. We have also rolled out more robust, auto-scaling infrastructure using a Docker stack (ECS).
- **Senior Systems Engineer (II) at Pushpay** (Dec 2016 - Jul 2017)
  Auckland, NZ
  As part of the SRE team, I was responsible for the integration, maintenance and operation of an acquired Node.js platform built on top of various AWS services. I also assisted in an advisory capacity the SRE team on Pushpay's transition from Rackspace to AWS.
- **Principal Engineer at Vend** (Dec 2015 - Dec 2016)
  Auckland, NZ
  As a Principal Engineer, I continued to work with the team to improve on the tooling and supporting infrastructure used by the product development teams, while also acting as the team lead for two intermediate and senior engineers.
- **Senior Systems Engineer at Vend** (Sep 2014 - Dec 2015)
  Vend is a cloud-based retail management software platform providing point-of-sale, inventory and customer management.
  
  Our mission is to make retailer’s lives better. Launched in 2010, Vend has active users in over 100 countries, offices in 6 countries and we’re growing fast!In fact, we're hiring: www.vendhq.com/careers  As a Senior Systems Engineer, I am responsible for not breaking things too often, typing furiously and saying things like "Oh, that's just like Chef" and "Hmm, interesting."
- **Senior Systems Engineer at ActionStep** (May 2009 - Sep 2014)
  Auckland, NZ
  As member #1 of the Operations team, I have designed and implemented a distributed and scalable infrastructure based on open-source tools including (but not limited to): Ubuntu Linux, Nginx, PostgreSQL and PHP.
  
  I designed and deployed the infrastructure required to run the company's main web application across different virtual platforms using Citrix Xen, VMware ESXi and Amazon Web Services. This also includes the planning and implementation of highly-available storage systems and application load-balancers.
  
  I was responsible for maintaining company-specific Chef cookbooks in Ruby, having deployed and migrated Chef servers starting from Chef
  \10. I have worked extensively with AWS' AutoScaling platform, helping the company reduce infrastructure costs and, at the same time, increasing application response times during peak loads.
  
  I developed various tools to support internal services using Python, Ruby, PHP and shell scripting, and seeded the implementation of continuous integration/delivery/deployment workflows using Jenkins, Capistrano, Fabric and Chef.
- **Systems Administrator at Wizbang Technologies Limited** (Aug 2006 - Apr 2009)
  Auckland, NZ
  As the systems administrator I implemented a number of solutions, including:
  \- a company-wide web-based CRM solution that reduced support turn-around time by half
  \- a professional-grade RPM-based firewall to interconnect branch offices with headquarters using IPSec VPN tunnels
  \- Apache and lighttpd implementations for multiple web applications on shared hardware
  \- company-wide centralized backups
  \- shared FTP server for remote staff
  \- single sign-on implementation for Linux services using Active Directory  I have also worked as a support technician, performing hardware and software maintenance on x86-based point-of-sales systems and working on rotation covering the 24x7 support phone.
- **Tech Support at antena um radiodifusao Ltda.** (Mar 2006 - Aug 2006)
  As a member of the tech support team, I assisted with the management of a 50+ users network using LDAP. Additionally, I planned, deployed and maintained DHCP, DNS and Samba file servers on Sun hardware running FreeBSD.
  
  I was also the go-to person for all maintenance on Mac Pros used in the studios for audio production.
- **Salesperson/Technician at Pontocomp** (Jan 2003 - Jan 2005)
  Full-time
  As part of the sales team, I created artwork and promotional campaigns for products. I also developed the company’s online store.
  
  As a technician, I introduced system cloning into the build process to reduce support team workload by half, and provided server management services to enterprise customers.
- **Lead Web Developer at 8055 Web House** (Jan 2001 - Jan 2002)
  As a developer I was solely responsible for developing a complete e-commerce solution for a broadcast video equipment retailer using ASP.
  
  I also developed the PHP backend for an interactive website for a radio station that provided chat, board, news and events calendars using Flash to end users.
  
  During my spare time, I configured and managed the in-house Oracle database server.

## Skills

### Technical
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Bash
- Microsoft SQL Server
- MySQL
- Nginx
- Ruby
- Shell Scripting
- Web Services
### Community
- Open Source
### Other
- Administration
- AJAX
- Apache
- Citrix
- Cloud Computing
- Database Design
- Databases
- Deployment
- DevOps
- Disaster Recovery
- DNS
- Enterprise Software
- High Availability
- IIS
- Infrastructure
- Integration
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- Kubernetes
- LAMP
- Leadership
- Linux
- Linux server administration
- Linux System Administration
- Network Administration
- PHP
- Platform as a Service (PAAS)
- PostgreSQL
- Server Administration
- Servers
- Software Development
- Storage Area Networks
- System Administration
- System Deployment
- Ubuntu
- Virtualization
- VMware
- VMware ESX
- Web Applications
- Web Development
- Windows

## Credentials

- VMware Certified Professional — VMware

## Education

- **ETEP**
- **Instituto São José** (1999 - 2000)

## Involvement

### Volunteering
- ImpactNPO (Nov 2014 - Present)
  Volunteer

## Links

- linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaelmagu