Professional Experience

Quadradyne Technical Solutions

Principal Consultant

  • Provide independent systems engineering and infrastructure consulting focused on Linux, cloud architecture, systems reliability, security, automation, and troubleshooting.
  • Design, deploy, secure, and maintain Linux-based web infrastructure for small-business and professional-services environments.
  • Develop practical infrastructure solutions intended to reduce complexity, improve reliability, and leave clients with systems they can understand and maintain.

HID Global

Senior Enterprise Cloud Engineer

  • Designed and implemented AWS architecture, governance, security, and operational standards supporting enterprise cloud environments.
  • Identified opportunities to reduce unnecessary cloud expenditure, including infrastructure changes producing approximately $35,000 per month in recurring savings.
  • Designed automation and governance solutions to improve consistency, security, visibility, and control across AWS environments.
  • Served as a senior escalation resource for complex infrastructure incidents spanning cloud, Linux, networking, security, and application dependencies.
  • Worked within highly controlled security and regulatory environments, balancing operational requirements with enterprise security and compliance obligations.

Senior Linux Systems Engineer — Team Lead

  • Led Linux engineering and operations supporting enterprise production infrastructure and a geographically distributed technical team.
  • Drove infrastructure consolidation and optimization efforts producing more than $1 million in annual recurring savings.
  • Improved Linux platform consistency through standardization, automation, patch management, configuration management, and lifecycle planning.
  • Led response and recovery efforts during major infrastructure incidents, coordinating technical resources across organizational boundaries to restore critical services.
  • Served as a senior technical authority for Linux architecture, troubleshooting, performance, availability, automation, and infrastructure modernization.
  • Mentored engineers and provided technical direction while remaining hands-on with engineering and operational work.

Kforce (to HID Global)

Senior Linux Consultant

  • Joined HID as a senior consultant responsible for Linux infrastructure engineering and quickly assumed technical leadership responsibilities within the Linux organization.
  • Improved stability, consistency, and management of enterprise Linux systems through standardization and automation.
  • Identified infrastructure inefficiencies and consolidation opportunities that produced substantial recurring operational savings.
  • Provided senior-level troubleshooting and incident response across Linux, storage, networking, virtualization, and application infrastructure.
  • Established the technical and operational foundation that led to conversion from consultant to a permanent senior engineering and leadership role with HID.

NTENT

Senior Linux Engineer

  • Took ownership of a problematic Unitrends backup environment and reworked its configuration and operation to provide reliable backup services for the company’s Linux infrastructure.
  • Developed a low-cost solution to severe network capacity constraints when funding for a conventional infrastructure upgrade was unavailable. Recommended an architecture using new-old-stock enterprise Cisco switching hardware, providing the required capacity while avoiding tens of thousands of dollars in capital expense.
  • Resolved a company-wide network failure after several days of unsuccessful troubleshooting. Used packet analysis and switch-port tracing to isolate a network loop to a conference-room switch that had been inadvertently connected to itself; removing the loop restored network service within seconds.
  • Supported the Linux infrastructure underlying NTENT’s mobile-search technology platform.

mFoundry

Acquired by FIS Global

Senior Linux Systems and Network Administrator

  • Standardized a fragmented Linux environment onto a common operating-system platform, improving consistency, supportability, patching, and automation.
  • Expanded corporate infrastructure to support growth across multiple floors and remote offices.
  • Standardized virtualization infrastructure on a unified VMware platform.
  • Designed and deployed a no-cost, bidirectional audio/video communication system connecting geographically separated offices. Installed in common areas, the system allowed employees at remote locations to interact informally and even share lunch across offices.
  • Designed and deployed corporate telephony using open-source platforms and tools, reducing dependence on proprietary telecommunications solutions.
  • Identified and recovered from a denial-of-service attack and associated security breach that had previously gone undetected.
  • Developed extensive automation around ETL batch processing, improving reliability and eliminating unnecessary manual intervention and staffing requirements.

Sonoma National Bank

Acquired by Sterling Savings Bank

Network Support Officer

  • Standardized the bank’s Linux environment on a common operating-system platform.
  • Developed automated management solutions to apply, validate, and test operating-system patches consistently across Linux infrastructure.
  • Implemented vulnerability-monitoring capabilities to identify and remediate security issues proactively.
  • Managed the bank’s wide-area network, including Cisco-based point-to-point connectivity between locations.
  • Evaluated MPLS as a potential replacement for existing WAN trunks, assessing technical suitability, reliability, and cost.
  • Designed and deployed automated PXE/Kickstart provisioning for Linux servers, improving deployment speed and consistency.
  • Retrofitted server-room infrastructure with earthquake countermeasures to reduce physical risk to critical systems.

Autodesk

IT Manager — Windows Domain Services

  • Managed a globally distributed team of 17 Windows infrastructure professionals responsible for Windows administration, messaging, backup, and related enterprise services.
  • Oversaw infrastructure comprising approximately 1,500 Compaq Windows servers distributed across multiple locations and continents.
  • Held operational responsibility for the organization’s EMC SAN environment.
  • Planned and oversaw migration of the EMC SAN infrastructure from San Rafael to Autodesk’s new Petaluma data center, completing the move with approximately seven hours of service downtime.
  • Provided technical and organizational leadership across globally distributed infrastructure operations while coordinating dependencies between Windows, messaging, storage, backup, network, and application teams.

Senior Sun Systems Administrator

  • Shared responsibility for the management and operation of approximately 1,200 Sun Solaris servers.
  • Investigated a collection of undocumented legacy management scripts that were relied upon daily despite no longer being understood by the administrators responsible for them.
  • Reverse-engineered and documented the legacy automation, then refactored it using improved scripting practices to increase reliability and maintainability.
  • Embedded operational and help documentation directly into replacement tooling so future administrators could understand, troubleshoot, and safely modify critical management automation.

Discreet Logic

Acquired by Autodesk

IT Systems Engineer

  • Helped integrate Discreet’s infrastructure into Autodesk following the acquisition, deploying new Cisco Catalyst switching alongside the existing 3Com network and connecting the new environment to Autodesk’s corporate WAN through Catalyst 5500 infrastructure.
  • Planned and executed a parallel network migration that allowed production systems to transition to the new Cisco environment before the legacy 3Com infrastructure was retired, avoiding disruption during the cutover.
  • Took ownership of a severely misconfigured corporate SMTP environment after the company’s mail infrastructure was globally blacklisted. Rebuilt and secured SMTP services, distribution lists and mailing-list infrastructure according to accepted practices; worked directly with blacklist operators to demonstrate remediation and restored external email service in under 72 hours.
  • Inherited a heterogeneous collection of poorly maintained Sun and SGI servers and identified serious security problems, including overly permissive firewall configuration.
  • Introduced Red Hat Linux on repurposed hardware and migrated suitable Sun and SGI workloads toward a standardized Linux environment.
  • Brought server infrastructure to current patch levels and established consistent operating-system versions and scripted management, replacing an environment built around undocumented one-off configurations.

La Société Radio-Canada

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Senior Administrator — Nouveau Media

  • Built and supported Windows NT server infrastructure for Radio-Canada’s live Internet coverage of the Nagano Winter Olympics.
  • Implemented remote-management capabilities for production server cages housed at UUNET facilities.
  • Designed and configured archival infrastructure for broadcast radio and television media.
  • Supported live-streaming infrastructure during Olympic coverage, helping deliver broadcast content through what was then an emerging Internet media platform.
  • Helped bridge traditional broadcast infrastructure with the rapidly developing web and streaming technologies used by Radio-Canada’s Nouveau Media organization.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — Engineering Headquarters

Sun / Unix System Administrator

  • Assisted in the administration and day-to-day operation of Sun and Unix systems supporting CBC’s engineering organization.
  • Supported heterogeneous Unix environments including SunOS, Solaris, and System V.
  • Administered systems ranging from contemporary Sun platforms to legacy PDP-11/70 infrastructure, developing experience across substantially different generations of enterprise computing.
  • Provided Unix systems support within a technically demanding broadcast-engineering environment.

Spar Aerospace

Network Engineer

  • Stepped into a network-engineering role following recurring infrastructure problems and the departure of Spar’s network architect, independently developing the networking expertise required to redesign the environment.
  • Rearchitected the corporate network from the ground up, documented the proposed design, and presented it to the IT steering committee for approval.
  • Developed the RFQ, project plans, and detailed implementation procedures for the replacement network.
  • Coordinated contractor installation of new switching infrastructure and brought the replacement network online in parallel with the production environment.
  • Connected production Sun and Novell systems simultaneously to the legacy and replacement networks, allowing the final contractor-assisted migration to be completed with zero downtime.

Sun Server Administrator

  • Helped design and deploy the new “Solarium” environment for Spar’s Sun infrastructure, separating engineering systems from the company’s Novell-based business network.
  • Managed day-to-day Sun operations including storage and disk management, performance tuning, system maintenance, and operating-system upgrades.
  • Developed a custom daemon that listened for a network signal over UDP and initiated controlled server shutdown during power failures, providing automated shutdown capability where no suitable mechanism otherwise existed.

Novell NetWare Administrator

  • Managed Spar’s production NetWare 3.11 environment while a separate administration team constructed the next-generation NetWare 4.x infrastructure in parallel.
  • Performed day-to-day account and permission administration, printer deployment, and print-queue management while maintaining availability of the company’s existing business systems.

Customer Support Technician

  • Provided internal technical support including PC diagnostics and repair, software installation, user assistance, and technical coaching.
  • Developed a method of producing mainframe-generated business documents on networked HP LaserJet printers instead of dedicated multipart-form printers. Reverse-engineered LaserJet PCL macro capabilities, recreated production forms electronically, and worked with HP to store the form as cartridge ROM; mainframe control characters invoked the form so variable data could be overlaid and printed automatically. The solution was successfully placed into production testing.
  • Led implementation of a replacement for an aging and unreliable electrostatic engineering plotter. Integrated the new printing platform with Spar’s engineering document system to automatically print, fold, collate, and account for jobs by requesting department.
  • Eliminated approximately $10,000 per month in maintenance expense associated with the legacy electrostatic plotter while providing engineers with a substantially more convenient production-printing workflow.

Micro Computers of Canada

Outside Sales Representative — Eastern Canada

  • Developed business across Eastern Canada, working with computer dealers, government organizations, and selected major commercial customers.
  • Represented the company at trade shows throughout the region and organized customer-appreciation and business-development events.
  • Partnered with NEC Canada on joint promotional and customer events, combining technical product knowledge with territory and relationship development.

House of Semiconductors

Assistant Store Manager / Lead Systems Integrator

  • Helped manage day-to-day retail operations while serving as the store’s lead PC systems integrator.
  • Assembled, configured, tested, and burn-in validated custom PC systems for customers.
  • Combined customer-facing technical support and sales with hands-on system building, troubleshooting, and quality assurance.

Microcom

Systems Integrator

  • Built, configured, and tested PC systems in production batches of up to 24 machines.
  • Developed the hands-on hardware assembly, troubleshooting, and systems-integration foundation that led to progressively broader roles in networking, Unix systems, enterprise infrastructure, engineering, and architecture.