Matthew Dodd

Infrastructure and platform leader in Toronto. Former army signaller and trained historian, who writes short fiction and builds a drill simulator.

Toronto, Ontario
Medavie
13 short stories

Hand-coloured engraving of a crowded trial in session at the Old Bailey courtroom, London, 1808 — The Old Bailey in session, from The Microcosm of London, 1808.

Systems, service, stories

For over a decade my work has been keeping important records safe and systems running: first in the army, then as a database administrator, now leading infrastructure teams.

2010: Joined the Canadian Army as a communication and information systems specialist.
Zero: Data lost across the critical upgrades and migrations I led at Sun Life.
95%: Faster incident detection after the monitoring I built there.
13: Short stories, free to read on this site.

Operators at consoles and tape drives in an IBM 7090 computer room, early 1960s — An IBM 7090 computer room at NASA, early 1960s.

The stories

Thirteen pieces of short fiction. Each spine is as wide as its story is long; pick one off the shelf.

Illustration of a balloon basket drifting above rows of moored airships, from an edition of The War in the Air, 1908 — Airships at their moorings, from H. G. Wells’s The War in the Air, 1908.

Record

Medavie

Manager, IT Services / Enterprise Infrastructure & Platforms2025–now
Team Lead, Infrastructure and DevOps2022–2025

Sun Life

Senior Infrastructure DBA2021–2022
Infrastructure DBA2019–2021

RPM Technologies

Oracle Database Administrator2019

Government of Canada

Database Modeller, Crown-Indigenous Relations2018–2019
Junior Database Administrator, Indigenous and Northern Affairs2015–2018
PC Installation Technician, Canadian Food Inspection Agency2013

BDMK Consultants

Junior Systems Administrator2014

Canadian Forces

Army Communication and Information Systems Specialist2010–2012

Carleton University

Master of Arts, Digital HumanitiesM.A.
Bachelor’s degree, HistoryB.A.

Read the full resume

Painting of Canadian soldiers resting, reading and playing cards among the tomb niches of an Italian cemetery, 1945 — Putting a Line Through to Headquarters, Bruno Bobak, Canadian war artist, 1945.

The drill simulator with a five-person Colour party on a marked parade square, its setup panel on the left and the movement timeline below — A Colour party of five, ready to march on, in the simulator.

Drill, simulated

The CAF Drill Routine Simulator is for drill-team coaches and judges: build a platoon or Colour party, sequence movements from the CF Manual of Drill and Ceremonial, and play the routine back on a parade square measured in real paces.

Open drillteamroutine.com About the project

I started in 2010 as an army communications specialist, keeping voice and data running for the people who depended on them. The habit stuck.

Since then I have looked after Oracle and PostgreSQL estates for the federal government and for Sun Life. Today I lead enterprise infrastructure and platforms at Medavie: compute, virtualization, Kubernetes, storage and backup, in an environment where reliability is not optional.

My degrees are in history: a B.A., then an M.A. in Digital Humanities at Carleton University, where I wrote The Empire of the Old Bailey Online: Why Zero Matters.

I also write fiction, about soldiers and remembrance, airships over London and a facility that will not fail over. Thirteen of the stories are on the shelf above. And I build drillteamroutine.com, a simulator for Canadian Armed Forces drill routines.

Matthew Dodd

Toronto, Ontario

Easiest way to reach me LinkedIn

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