Donald Morton

Donald Morton

Senior Platform Engineer at MarketAxess

I’m a platform engineer focused on observability, release automation, and developer tooling. I like stabilizing systems and wielding the mighty Bash shell against my foes. In my spare time, I enjoy cycling and tinkering on my homelab.

Donald Morton

Senior Platform Engineer at MarketAxess

I have worked in IT for over 20 years. At Walmart, I maintained systems with thousands of users under high load with little downtime. I’ve been in war rooms under high stress and solved many mind-melting problems. Situations like that will force you to learn teamwork. Never forget that many minds working together will always be more powerful than a single individual.

Problem Solving
Team Work
Communication

Skills

Linux
Linux

Linux is probably my strongest skill. In college, I ran Slackware on my home PC, just so I could experience the joy of having to compile every single program I wanted to use from scratch. At this point, I know things to check during an emergency that most people have probably never even heard of.

Python
Python

I really enjoy coding in Python, especially for build and deployment tooling. At MarketAxess, I wrote a deployment management system in Python. This system restored our confidence in our ability to deliver.

Docker
Docker

At Walmart, I used Docker to modernize an ancient build system. I migrated a set of handcrafted build servers into a containerized, repeatable build system. Later, at Graylog, I maintained the official Graylog docker image. I even added ARM support for all the home lab enthusiasts.

Kubernetes
Kubernetes

At MarketAxess, I designed and deployed a production-ready observability cluster (Mimir, Loki, and Tempo) using Kubernetes. With the volume of data coming through our systems, the autoscaling capabilites have been particularly useful.

Ansible
Ansible

I rolled out Jenkins to Walmart’s IT division using Ansible. I maintained Graylog’s official Ansible playbook, and I also use Ansible at my current employer.

C
C

Walmart has hundreds of C programs across a variety of operating systems. I worked on the build team and spent many years doing nothing but solving developer’s bizarre and obscure C compiler and linker issues.

Jenkins
Jenkins

At Walmart, I architected and deployed an enterprise-grade Jenkins cluster. I migrated 100,000 jobs, moving developers from an inflexible black box build system to an incredibly flexible tool that does whatever they need it to do.

Terraform
Terraform

Terraform has been an indispensable tool for managing the observability and build systems at MarketAxess. Treating our infrastructure as code made it reproducible and reviewable.

Helm
Helm

At MarketAxess, I use Helm to package and deploy our observability stack (Mimir, Loki, and Tempo) onto Kubernetes. Templated, versioned charts keep our deployments consistent across environments and make upgrades and rollbacks easy.

Experiences

1
MarketAxess

Mar 2022 - Present

Fayetteville, Arkansas

MarketAxess operates a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, connecting institutional investors and broker-dealers.

Senior Platform Engineer

Mar 2026 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • Support developer platforms (Grafana, Mimir, Loki, Tempo, Bitbucket, Jenkins).
Senior Release Engineer

Mar 2022 - Mar 2026

Responsibilities:
  • Manage trading system builds and releases using Jenkins and Python.
  • Wrote Python code for an in-house deployment tool (Skyhook).
  • Set up a versioned pipeline system in Jenkins so that pipeline updates would not affect minor releases.
  • Improved application build times by 64% and deployment times by 62%.
  • Deployed and maintained a Grafana, Loki, Mimir, and Tempo stack on Kubernetes.
Graylog

Mar 2020 - Mar 2022

Bentonville, Arkansas

Graylog provides centralized log management and SIEM (security information and event management) software for collecting, searching, and analyzing log data.

Build and Release Engineer

Mar 2020 - Mar 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Migrated the Jenkins CI environment to an infrastructure-as-code implementation using Terraform, Ansible, Docker, and AWS.
  • Rewrote and simplified CI jobs in Groovy using Jenkins Shared Libraries, eliminating code duplication; automated job creation with multibranch pipelines to reduce manual setup and increase stability.
  • Created RPM and Debian packages for Graylog Sidecar, Graylog Enterprise, and Graylog Forwarder.
  • Managed build and release of Graylog across multiple formats, including OS packages, Docker images, and OVA images.
  • Automated a heavily manual release process, decreasing release time from 4 hours to 1 hour.
2
3
Walmart

Nov 2004 - Mar 2020

Bentonville, Arkansas

Walmart is a multinational retail corporation operating a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores.

Principal Software Engineer — Infosec Decision Automation

Jun 2019 - Mar 2020

Responsibilities:
  • Supported the vulnerability management system (Brinqa).
  • Set up monitoring and alerting using Prometheus and Grafana, deployed via Docker containers into Walmart’s OneOps cloud.
Senior Systems Engineer — Sam's Club Tech Infrastructure

Apr 2018 - Jun 2019

Responsibilities:
  • Supported Microsoft Azure Cloud for Sam’s Club Tech.
  • Developed ARM templates for a self-service deployment site, enabling standardized configurations across all Azure resources.
  • Wrote alerting infrastructure in Python to create tickets and notifications from Azure, giving the cloud team a centralized view of all events.
  • Created Azure design patterns to standardize best practices.
Systems Analyst — Software Delivery and Enablement

Nov 2012 - Apr 2018

Responsibilities:
  • Supported Walmart build systems running 100,000 jobs (TeamForge, AnthillPro, Jenkins, Looper CI).
  • Set up Red Hat Linux 6 and SUSE 12 compile servers in the Walmart build environment.
  • Supported 5,000 developers by troubleshooting builds for C, 4GL, Unix COBOL, Java, and .NET.
  • Stood up CloudBees Jenkins and led the migration of all Walmart builds, greatly increasing CI/CD pipeline flexibility.
  • Wrote a support portal in Java and Tomcat that automated support-ticket creation and reduced helpdesk calls.
  • Set up monitoring with Nagios, significantly improving application stability and reducing support tickets.
  • Automated setup of Jenkins nodes with Puppet, standardizing build-tool versions and improving build stability.
  • Set up dynamic node creation in Jenkins via OpenStack, allowing Jenkins to handle massive build spikes.
  • Stood up Automic for automated application deployment.
  • Automated setup of Looper CI instances with Ansible for deployment in Walmart’s OneOps cloud.
  • Wrote a migration service in Python to move legacy C jobs from AnthillPro into Looper CI, enabling them to build inside Docker containers.
Programmer Analyst — DSS Development

Aug 2010 - Nov 2012

Responsibilities:
  • Brought stability to an Active Directory sync application written in Java, greatly reducing support tickets and after-hours pages.
  • Supported and managed an Oracle BI application; assisted in setting up new clusters on SUSE Linux.
  • Wrote a C application allowing users to update product characteristics from a spreadsheet.
  • Supported the JDA third-party sales-forecasting tool — added new backend datafeeds, performed load testing, and updated configurations.
  • Wrote Bash scripts to pull multiple datafeeds from Teradata for vendors, handling very large datasets (all store sales and all Walmart items).
  • Participated in migrating a large C reporting application from HP-UX to Linux.
Programmer Analyst — Remedy Team

Nov 2004 - Aug 2010

Responsibilities:
  • Maintained and administered over 800 in-house BMC Remedy applications, including ITSM apps such as Incident, Change, and Problem Management.
  • Completed the Remedy 7.1 upgrade and database migration.
  • Supported applications used by all Walmart call centers (Field Support, NOC, Control Room, 1-800-WALMART, Logistics, DCs, Walmart.com, Emergency Operations Center, and Sam’s Club Call Center).
  • Worked with Walmart call centers to improve the Remedy user interface layout.
  • Rolled out the 6.3 and 7.1 Remedy clients to Walmart Home Office users.
  • Coded Change Management integration into the POWER build system for SOX compliance.