Paul Balek Email & Phone Number

Altoona, Pa, Us

As the Lead Site Reliability Engineer, I am responsible for building an SRE team and culture that aligns with corporate goals by continually improving system reliability, resilience, and efficiency.Sheetz’s IT landscape is comprised of tens of thousands of endpoints consisting of traditional IT assets (virtualized or containerized applications running on virtual machines or k8s clusters, running on premises, in the public cloud, or in a private cloud), embedded solutions (fuel pumps, self-checkout devices, car washes, point of sales devices, etc.), running Windows and Linux, supporting multiple unique lines of business.To date, I have:• Enabled executive leadership to see the impact of outages on revenue and customer experience• Enabled executive leadership to make informed new capability-vs-improved reliability trade-off decisions by establishing, measuring, and reporting Service Level Objectives and error budgets• Enabled microservice owners to identify and act on episodic and systemic issues that impact reliability and availability by initiating and overseeing the creation of customized actionable observability dashboards• Improved the organization’s ability to identify and remove incident root causes by implementing six-sigma 5-why activities and project management behaviors• Reduced false alarm alerts by leading the effort to evolve from symptom-based to problem-based alerting• Began laying the ground work for incorporating an AI Ops Platform into business processes by initiating and leading the effort to define logging policies and standards, and by establishing an AI Ops working group comprised of cross-functional stakeholders.• I have defined the Vision, Mission, Strategy, Alignment, and Staffing Model of a future SRE organization, and I continue to work collaboratively across the organization to build consensus and seek approval.

Mclean, Va, Us

I led a 24/7/365 globally dispersed team of site reliability engineers, system administrators and information system security officers and ensured systems met availability goals, and that cyber vulnerabilities were identified and addressed.• Oversaw Nessus scans and appropriately mitigated results• Improved system resilience by collaborating with Development to address errors, warnings, and exceptions., Ensured NIST 800-53 was appropriately applied • Ensured system performance issues are addressed & mitigated quickly• Implemented best practices such as post-mortems & data-based capacity planning• Worked collaboratively with DevOps to increase implementation frequency from quarterly to monthly• Managed the portfolio of supported applications, reducing issues by a factor of 10 and decreasing incidents by 75%

Mclean, Va, Us

As a Strategic Advisor to Department of Defense CISOs, I led teams that worked collaboratively across geographic and organizational boundaries and implemented policies, processes, and technical solutions to improve enterprise security. • Partnered with executive leadership to develop strategies to optimize their cyber security budget• Developed and implemented processes and technical solutions that quantifiably improved enterprise’s security posture•Managed defensive cyber projects to on-time, on-budget completion.

Houston, Texas, Us

As Senior Manager responsible for global task improvement, I led a global team of seven six-sigma blackbelts on 5 continents to deliver revenue, profit, cash flow, and customer satisfaction improvements.• Managed a global portfolio of operational excellence improvement projects • Trained team members to achieve industry leading results to global corporate clients• Led a global team of seven six-sigma blackbelts on 5 continents through all DMAIC and DMADV phases

Mclean, Va, Us

Program Manager and lead technical architect of the design, development, and installation of custom cybersecurity solutions to protect sensitive corporate data for global corporate clients.• Led the design, construction, and implementation of custom cybersecurity applications• Employed PKI & TLS technology to authorize users and secure data in transit• Ensured incorporation of new technology and continually addressed evolving user needs• Provided deep content inspection to preclude good data from leaving and bad data from coming in via internet connections

Falls Church, Va, Us

I contributed to the client’s success by applying program risk management expertise to control critical program risks.

Worldwide, Oo

I applied project management, enterprise architecture, and technical skills and lead teams that delivered software applications that improved Client capabilities.

Arlington, Va, Us

I led 35 hardware, software, and systems engineers through all phases of the system development life-cycle and delivered real-time, embedded signal processing capabilities on time and on budget.

Basking Ridge, Nj, Us

Duties: Develop and maintain Verizon’s electronic ordering and billing applications by directing a team of 42 comprised of business analysts, software developers, testers, and PMs. Selected Accomplishments: • Designed and implemented an agile System Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) methodology that included project/release governance, CMM Level 3 KPAs, configuration management practices, automated testing capabilities, requirements management, and change management• Led monthly releases addressing data migrations, technology improvements, and evolving user needs

Accomplishments: Implemented CMM Level 2 and 3 key process areas, and managed the development of requirements and functional testing of numerous software releases.

Basking Ridge, Nj, Us

Accomplishments: Sold and managed fixed price performance improvement projects that guaranteed a minimum 2:1 return on investment.

Arlington, Virginia, Us

Aviator and paratrooper in the elite 82d Airborne division. Responsible for the successful accomplishment of the command’s mission at any time and place. Missions were successfully executed at FT Bragg, NC, The Republic of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Bs, Engineering Management

Ms, Information Security

Executive Education Certification, Change Management