Brandon Brinkley Email and Phone Number

As Master Engineer, I am responsible for providing tooling, procedures, and other capabilities for use by software, data, and cloud engineers in a secure environment and in compliance with FFIEC and corporate standards. This is accomplished in large part through custom tooling (such as Azure Pipeline templates, a suite of Terraform libraries, Ansible playbooks, and GitHub Actions workflows). I also maintain strong relationships with IT Risk, Audit, and Security teams and address risks and issues as they arise with regard to internal controls and the delivery of solutions within the Technology division.

In this role, I served as team Lead for 3 Cloud Engineers and 1 DevSecOps Analyst, plus contract staff as required. During this time, I was able to resolve several high-profile issues, such as establishing a solid, reliable and automated audit trail from CI/CD pipelines to Change Management records, and implementing a Change Management / Release Management reconciliation process to address control gap. I was also a regular contributor to SDLC Standard and other internal policies and procedures, a voting member of Agile Advisory Panel, and the Business Continuity Planning Coordinator for the Platform Engineering team.

As the lead for five other engineers in a cross-functional team, I restructured the team's backlog to align with the DevOps framework, reinstated the Release Management function, and added new tools (most notably Liquibase and GitHub Enterprise) to our toolset.

As an FTE, my primary duty was to enable collaboration between development, security, operations, and cloud teams. I became an Agile advocate, promoting Scrum best practices, and the host of Tech Vision Connect, an internal monthly webinar.

In this contract-to-hire role, I was hired to address specific DevOps needs, most notably to create CI/CD pipelines for delivery of custom applications to multiple Cloud tenants and integrate Azure DevOps with the CMDB system through a custom REST API. I also conducted in-depth tool evaluations for SAST and SCA offerings and championed TDD test automation for APIs.

While seeking new opportunities, I rigorously pursued Salesforce Trailhead training, led an online Python Programming course for middle school students, studied geospatial data visualization, established a remote education center using Linux and other OpenSource tools, and explored non-technical applications for Azure DevOps.

As a capstone to my 14-year tenure at FHLB Dallas, my role as IT Controls Engineer can be summarized as an opportunity to transform the bank in three distinct ways: the complete digitization of IT workflows, the adoption of Agile Software Development, and the establishment of a DevOps culture. This included a full migration to Microsoft Azure DevOpsand the conversion of the Change Management function into a fully-automated self-service platform.

With improved processes in place, my efforts in this role shifted to digitization and automation of IT processes, as well as working with other teams, such as Internal Audit (SOX compliance) and Business Continuity Planning.

In this role, my focus was set squarely on change process modernization and improvement. I overhauled the department's change strategy, authored new CM policies and procedures, engineered the new "QA Validation Cycle" change process, replaced the existing source control and work management systems with a more holistic solution, MKS Integrity, and created a custom software package management system.

Designed and implemented a content delivery system that enabled 7000+ agents in 12 call centers worldwide to provide superior technical support to over 100k customers for a major Internet service provider. Also assisted in establishing a metrics-driven PMO for the internal project team.

Initially hired as an assistant CM Synergy administrator, I assumed responsibility for various build/release management activities, chaired regular change committee (CCB) meetings, observed large software deployments to ensure compliance, and developed new techniques for detecting anomalous development practices that could threaten software product integrity.

Building on my expertise with CM Synergy, I enabled and improved automated build and release capabilities as an independent consultant. For one telecommunications client, I optimized distribution of their bundled software, not only reducing the cost of delivery and improving customer experience, but also adding controls to protect their revenue stream and reduce the risk of fraud.

Pursuing a new path in Configuration Management, I implemented and administered CM Synergy, a new version control and release management system, for one of the new mobile carrier's regional billing offices, and assisted development teams in the compilation and packaging of their software products.

As a junior IT Auditor, I planned and conducted operational and security audits, assisted financial auditors with data extraction and transformation, and performed administrative duties for audit systems.