About

Gary O'Connor is a Technical Writer for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at Google. He is responsible for documenting internal Google infrastructure, team processes and policies, and operational information related to running Google products and services reliably at scale. Gary has over 15 years of relevant experience in the tech industry. As an SRE technical writer, Gary covers core internal systems, major products, and internal support tools. SREs are both software engineers and systems administrators, responsible for Google's production services. They write software and interact with applications, service infrastructure, and platforms to ensure reliable and available services that scale to Google production size. Gary participates in software design, capacity planning, performance analysis, and incident response focused on automation and software engineering to prevent problem recurrence. Prior to his current role, Gary was responsible for finding fraud, preventing financial loss on Google AdWords, and building scalable process solutions through automation. He was responsible for leveraging fraud detection technology to have a direct, measurable impact on the growing financial success of Google AdWords. Gary used both analytical and technical skills to innovate and improve processes and tools to effectively mitigate Google's exposure to fraudulent and abusive activities. Before joining Google, Gary worked as a Software Engineer at Nautical Enterprise (NECL), a strategic consultancy that conducts research for large-scale European projects in the area of maritime transport and logistics. He was responsible for the creation of their new Decision Support System, which involved requirements analysis, specification, design, and implementation of the first and only comprehensive decision support system for maritime transport and logistics in Europe. Gary also worked on European research projects, compiled monthly reports summarizing resource utilization and assessment of performance relative to obligations, and maintained a WordPress website. He documented all IT processes to ensure that non-technical personnel could easily perform tasks. Technologies employed include Java, PostgreSQL, Hibernate, XML, HTML, GWT, SmartGWT, and AppEngine. Gary holds a Master of Engineering in Electronic Engineering from Cork Institute of Technology and a BSc in Software Development & Computer Networking from Munster Technological University. His tech stack includes SRE, infra, Research Scientist, Software Engineer, and Java.