From History Major to Edge Innovator
When Ben started university, he hoped to be a history professor, but more than 15 years later, his career has taken a few pivots. After graduation, Ben joined the U.S. Marine Corps, which led to the start of a career as an IT professional.
“I didn’t choose an IT career; the Marine Corp chose that for me,” said Ben. “I was not familiar with any of this, but a year and a half after joining the Marines, I was half systems administrator and half network administrator.”
The next ten years of active duty took him around the world working with full spectrum communications. Much of that work involved mobile satcom terminals, which led him to work involving networking on the move, such as mobile broadband kits. The work, often in remote, austere conditions where even if you had a reliable transport mechanism, such as satcom, you might be on the edge of that footprint, or dealing with getting jammed – by weather or something else – was essential to successful missions.
“For the units I was involved in we weren’t looking just to pull services, but to provide services,” said Ben. “I could be managing a local network with one or more land connections along with the full spectrum of enterprise services for maybe 100 people or maybe 500. I’ve been in the middle of the Red Sea on a hovercraft moving at 60 knots enabling VOIP calls.”
From Marine to Civilian
In 2020, Ben left the Marines and became a civilian contractor with the U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Communications Unit. There he started working on the Edge Compute team. Part of what interested Ben was the JCU has a reputation for bleeding-edge innovation within the military. The teams are very operationally driven and focused on real-world problems.
“We’re not trying to develop something that is going to sell. We are working to develop features and build workflows that save time,” said Ben. “Time is our primary focus because, in the military, time ultimately equals lives.”
A couple of years ago Ben and some of his colleagues started attending KubeCon North America conferences to learn and also talk with some of the open source companies whose products they used. Getting direct input from the people building the solutions he was using, as well as making professional connections, encouraged Ben to push the envelope of IT innovation.
It was at the JCU that Ben took his first deep dive into open source and working with containers using Kubernetes which eventually led him to cloud native work. A couple members of his team were working to earn their Certified Kubernetes Administrator certifications.
“It became a friendly competition among the team members to see who could earn their CKA certifications,” said Ben. “For me, it also was validation of what I had learned working with on-premises containers. Plus I picked up some good tips on how to do things better and faster as part of my prep studies for the exam.”
Ben earned his CKA in February 2022 and his CKAD in November of the same year. “I enjoyed the process of preparing and taking the exam,” said Ben. “It is very practical and hands-on.”
Studying was important preparation as was using the Killer.sh simulators. “The simulators are spot on for the environment you are going to have in the actual exam. I would also say they are harder than the real exam,” said Ben. “So if you are bombing the simulator, don’t panic. Learn everything you can about what you are going to face.”
He’s also noticed that IT team members with certifications are often recruited off the team – and the team recruits professionals with certifications as well – in part because hiring team members with solid certifications is a hedge against a bad hire.
“We’re all very cognizant of how much time and resources go into a bad hiring decision, so while it’s not the only thing I look for, it certainly is something that makes me feel much more comfortable about a hiring decision.”
As a hiring manager, Ben sees Linux Foundation certifications as a solid evaluation tool. “When someone has a Linux certification I know exactly what that person should be able to bring to the table,” said Ben. “The CKA and CKAD exams are high quality because they are difficult to fake. Even if you are smart, you can’t just wing it. It is an excellent litmus test.”
What’s Next
Ben is continuing in his civilian role at the JCU at the moment, but he has also recently launched his own company, KR8TOS, a Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, software engineering and edge compute IT services and consulting firm. Currently, he and a small team are focused on using open source technologies to build on-premises cloud infrastructure that meets very high security standards and is also extremely cost competitive compared to current products.
“This is an idea several of us have been working on for a while. In fact, when I finally heard the term platform engineer, I realized this is what I’ve been doing for the last three years,” said Ben. The team all have special operations backgrounds and it’s that perspective and principles that guide their work.
Benjamin Cramer, CKA, CKAD
Technical Director, Joint Communications Unit,
U.S. Department of Defense &
Founder, KR8TOS
