Red Hat, Inc. hosts a full complement of certification programs for individuals and technologies. Thousands of people are certified every year, but only one of them is awarded the title of Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year. This year’s recipient is Felipe Ceballos, technical lead at SEAQ Servicios CIA LTDA. In addition to this technical certification, Ceballos sports a red fedora with considerable skill.

Ceballos and Randy Russell, director of certifications at Red Hat, joined Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from SiliconANGLE Media team, for an interview at Red Hat Summit 2016 in San Francisco. Ceballos works primarily with open-source software in his native Columbia. He described his job as helping “to solve more complex problems” and “giving customers more value” through Red Hat.

From three days to two hours

More specifically, Ceballos recently worked on a project with the main focus of improving performance constraints. He developed a platform solution to increase volume, scale and performance. Using six clusters, Ceballos was able to take a process from a three-day run time to two hours. Ceballos described the experience as “amazing,” stating the project took “hard work and dedication.”

Russell remarked that the Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year award is an opportunity to showcase not only the winner, but also the program itself. Red Hat’s certification program is currently in over 200 countries. The tests for certification are available online, year-round and worldwide.

Ceballos emphasized that “certifications are important because they help to acquire technology knowledge” and help keep customers happy with solutions. To that end, Ceballos will be taking the hardest Red Hat certification soon.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE