Ethan Sumner

Manager at Cognizant | DevRel Leader | Founder and Chair at Yorkshire Digital Community Alliance | FinOps Enthusiast

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About Me

Hi!


I'm Ethan Sumner, a multi-industry experienced DevOps engineer, architect, consultant, DevRel leader and manager leading various initiatives with overall experience across banking and finance, the public sector, startups, and digital natives. Currently, I work for Cognizant as a Manager, leading Cloud Financial Risk and Audit Management within UK&I Consulting.


I predominantly specialise in migrations, operations, serverless, FinOps, and sustainable economics across AWS and Azure. This is in addition to broader experience in pre-sales, business development, partnership alliances, GTM and portfolio offering development.


I'm an advocate and champion for promoting communities, charities, and small- to medium-sized businesses across the UK, focusing on Yorkshire.


On a personal note, I'm a proud Yorkshireman, a keen walker and an intermediate paddle boarder.

Community

Outside of my day job, I am passionate about my community-based work. I run a non-profit that supports my community groups, including Young DevOps, Yorkshire Azure User Group and Yorkshire DevOps. I’m also the co-organiser of AWS Sheffield, FinOps UK meetups, and Sustainable Cloud, and I am on the organising committee of DevOpsDays London. This is in addition to my broader roles as chair of Yorkshire Digitial Community Alliance and my work with the GenAI UK community.


In addition, you will find me speaking and attending meetups and conferences across the UK and abroad. These have included the AWS London Summit, London DevOps, and Microsoft Ignite. I speak at schools and colleges and have been an education and policy advisor. I have mentored individuals and have provided strategies on community and early career to organisations.


Throughout my community work, I have developed several skills, including sponsorship management, mergers and acquisitions, marketing, leadership, and public speaking.

DevOpsDays London 2023

London DevOps at Meta

Microsoft Ignite

FinOps UK at Google

DTX Manchester

Microsoft EIC Event

Yorkshire DevOps

Yorkshire DevOps was born from the successful M&A of Leeds DevOps and Sheffield DevOps and the region's demand.


We have over 750+ members and run regular events with an average attendance of 75 across predominately Leeds and Sheffield and occasional online events.


Currently, we work with BJSS, AND Digital, Accenture, Trans Union, Ada Meher and much more. Previous speakers have come from Meta, AWS, Microsoft and Google.

Yorkshire Azure User Group

Yorkshire Azure User Group (YAG) was out of the region's demand for an Azure-based meetup. Since its creation, we have acquired Leeds Azure and Linconshire Azure User Group before BJSS acquired it.


We have over 650+ members and run regular events, with an average attendance of 60, predominantly in Leeds and Sheffield, and occasional online events.



Speaking Opportunities

Do you want me to speak at your conference/event/school?


Sure, I'm more than happy to. I don't charge to speak at events. However, I politely ask that a ticket be provided, and if international, travel costs are reimbursed or partly funded (I only ask these requirements for paid-for events).

I can speak on:


Cloud migrations

Education

SME/SMB

Personal career

FinOps/Sustainability.

Azure/AWS


Please email ethan@opssumner.dev with information about the event (Including Name, Date, Location, Topic and length of talk required).

Want to hire me?

I'm always open to hearing about new opportunities within DevOps, SRE, FinOps, DevRel, cloud architecture, pre-sales, or business development—Ethier: IC or manager.

I'm UK-based (In Yorkshire) but work in London; I'm open to roles within London, South/West Yorkshire or Remote.


Things I look for in a company are training programs, company mission, progression and openness to community work. Rigid requirements are no gambling companies and have to be a Mac laptop (yes, I had one at Microsoft)


To get in contact, email ethan@opssumner.dev or DM me on Linkedin. Please include company name, title, salary (if applicable), location, office/remote split and amount of travel (if applicable)

Ethan Sumner 2024 | All opinions are my own