Mark Smoktunowicz

Nottingham, United Kingdom·

Following a return to the job market, I am looking to transition into a challenging and rewarding new career in Cloud Computing as I have always been passionate and had a high interest in technology but yet never ever considered it as a career. I have recently obtained the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification and am working towards the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate. I am a reliable, hard working, highly skilled and dependable person with an eye for detail who always seeks to achieve a very high standard in whatever work I undertake. I am also a motivated Cloud and Linux enthusiast who is always curious to learn, take initiatives and seek out new challenges.

Experience

Career break

Acting as a carer

2020 - Present

Owner/Account Director

Exclusive Premium Italia S.r.l., Italy

I ran my own company where I was responsible for the development and management of foreign clients on behalf of various Italian and Slovenian based motorcycle accessory manufacturers.

Sales and marketing skills & experience

Originated and executed sales transactions with numerous retailers and clients located in Europe, Russia, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and South America.
Coordinated the processing of client orders with manufacturers and courier services to ensure that strict delivery times required by customers were met.
Negotiated pricing with customers and manufacturers including bulk discounts.
Represented suppliers at industry trade fairs and events to promote and market products.
Presented marketing pitches with suppliers to prospective new customers.
Wrote and sent email marketing, periodic product newsletters and updates to customers.
Grew the supplier and customer base by sourcing new supplier and customer leads worldwide.
Carried out the upselling of products and services directly to customers.

Supplier and client relationship skills & experience

Built supplier/customer relationships by introducing suppliers to new industry contacts both by direct introductions and via industry websites.
Delivered after sales product support to customers to assist with product and specification queries.
Liaised with a Taiwanese reseller company in relation to export sales strategy, prior to becoming director and owner of the company.
Attended supplier meetings to discuss sales strategy and new product ranges in different territories.

IT and website skills & experience

Designed and deployed own company website with WordPress to develop online sales and marketing.
Assisted suppliers with various IT and website queries.

Director/company secretarial skills & experience

Managed and maintained company accounts in order to comply with Italian accounting requirements.
Produced budget and cash flow forecasts and managed monthly/periodic balance sheet information.
Developed company strategy, including identifying and developing target markets.
Responsible for invoicing customers and managing cash collections.
Dealt with payment queries arising on sales transactions including VAT and shipping costs.
Responsible for chasing debtors for late payment.

Translation skills & experience

Translated manufacturer catalogues, price lists and instruction manuals from Italian into English.
Translated supplier and customer correspondence to assist with sales orders and product queries.

July 2007 - December 2019

Export Sales Representative

World Business S.r.l., Italy

I was responsible for developing the export sales for an Italian clothing and fashion accessories wholesaler.

November 2004 - June 2007

Export Sales Representative

Exclusive Premium Italia S.r.l., Italy

My role and responsibilities were similar to those at World Business S.r.l.

July 2003 - October 2004

Further work history between 1997-2003 available on request/viewable on LinkedIn.

Education & Training

AWS re/Start program

Primed Talent Ltd. (host organisation)

August - October 2022

Cloud Computing Skills Bootcamp

Purple Beard Ltd.

March 2022

Responsive Web Design certification

freeCodeCamp.org

December 2021

Diploma & Advanced Diploma in Digital Marketing

Shaw Academy, Pvt. Ltd

June 2018

Online Marketing Fundamentals

Google - The Digital Garage

July 2016

Post Graduate Diploma Arts Administration

Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge

1995 - 1996

B.A. Hons Music degree

Colchester Institute, Colchester

1992 - 1995

Core Competencies

Architecting and deploying secure and robust applications using AWS.
Ability to provide implementation guidance and best practices to the organisation throughout the life cycle of a project.
Hands-on skills using compute, networking, storage, and AWS database services (MySQL).
Defining and identifying technical requirements for AWS-based applications.
Defining and identifying which AWS services meet a given technical requirement.
Knowledge of recommended best practices for building secure and reliable applications on the AWS platform.
Knowledge of network technologies as they relate to AWS.
Knowledge of security features and tools that AWS provides.
Linux and basic MySQL skills.

Technical Skills

AWS:
- Identity and access management
- EC2 Linux Server setup
- S3 Storage Services
- Databases
- DNS using Route 53
- VPCs
- RDS
- Elastic Load Balancing
- EC2 Autoscaling
- CloudFront
- CloudWatch
- CloudTrail

Linux:
- User account creation
- Working with files
- File permissions
- Search
- Archiving and compressing files
- Software installation
- Networking
- System information
- Configuring services
- Apache-PHP-MySQL setup
- Server configuration

MySQL:
- Database installation
- Creating and updating tables
- Writing basic queries

Python:
- Basic understanding of concepts

Certifications

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

28 October 2022

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

In progress

Coursera AWS
Cloud Technology Consultant

January 2024

Hands-on Projects

Deployed and hosted a highly available WordPress website using Amazon EC2, an application load balancer, an auto-scaling group, RDS, Route 53, Certificate Manager and VPC.
Used AWS Budgets to set custom budgets for tracking costs and usage of resources in an AWS account. Set up alerts by email to warn when actual or forecasted cost and usage had exceeded budgeted threshold.
Used AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage access to AWS services and resources securely, as well as setting up Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to follow best security account practices.
Used Amazon’s unlimited Simple Storage Service (S3) to host a static Bootstrap HTML/CSS/JavaScript website (this actual site you are looking at) which combined the use of a severless contact form using AWS Lambda and the AWS API Gateway. Also used this service to store developer codes before deploying onto EC2 virtual servers for dynamic web apps.
Used Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) service to launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that I designed. This included the use of public and private subnets where the priavte subnet was used to hold a databases to protect it from the internet and used the public subnet for web servers. Also added Elastic Load Balancing to automatically distribute incoming application traffic across multiple EC2s.
Hosted several web applications (e.g. a PHP-MySQL demo app) on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service to provide secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Also used Amazon’s EC2 Auto Scaling to help maintain application availability and to automatically add or remove EC2 instances according to conditions as defined.
Used CloudFront, the AWS content delivery network (CDN) service to securely deliver a demo application to “customers” globally, thereby enabling low latency and high transfer speeds for the application.
Used Amazon’s highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service "Route 53" to route end users to my demo application using my own custom domain.
Created an SSL certificate using AWS Certificate Manager, a service that allows easy provisioning, managing, and deploying of public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services and internal connected resources. I used this to secure the network communications to my application and to establish the identity of my websites over the Internet i.e. enable HTTPS.
Used AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodePipeline and GIT version control to create a CI/CD pipeline between a local machine and S3 to allow the automation of changes to my personal resume website.