vCTO/vCISO Advisory ConsultingDelivering advisory review, risk assessment, and roadmap for IT infrastructure, technology, and cyber security, enabling secure and resilient scaling for multi-billion dollar hedge funds.Develop existing staff, policies, procedures improving overall operational and cyber risk profilesDrive firm’s vision, strategy, planning and implementation of both IT infrastructure and cybersecurity platforms.

Established overall design and execution of the firm’s public cloud transformation strategy. New platform delivers cost advantages, usage allocation, scalability, efficiency, and reduction in technical debt and legacy infrastructure.Developed and lead team of 80 technologists responsible for evolution of global infrastructure needs across US, EU, and Asia.Mobilized entire workforce, within 1 week, to a full remote environment.Established Business Continuity Program to improve posture of firm’s operational risk resiliency. Developed and executed regularly the firm’s disaster recovery program.Worked closely with development teams and systematic portfolio managers to identify needs, architect solutions, and execute through modern CI/CD pipelining and DevOps methodologies.Defined and implemented firmwide Information Security strategy. Established Cyber Security committee and information security team. Migrated all production trading systems from IL to newly-built NJ datacenter over a weekend, reducing latency, refreshing all aged hardware, and expanding firm’s connectivity into east-coast financial ecosystem.Began implementation of cloud FinOps practice to provide cost transparency to consumers and report overall firmwide allocations and identify spend optimizations.Developed and deployed hybrid VDI strategy globally. Solution offers deployment into both Azure and on-premise infrastructure for heavier GPU-backed workloads.Reorganized and manage infrastructure budget. Cost transparency allows firm to accurately chargeback appropriate funds providing long term roadmap for technology growth.Built and maintained strong partnerships with Legal, Compliance, and HR departments to ensure firm compliance with US, EU, and AsiaPac regulatory and legal requirements. Specifically designed and implemented solutions for GDPR, CCPA, SEC/Finra, SFC, MAS, and FCA.

Organized and executed new office locations, relocations, datacenter expansions, and low latency collocation. Consistently and successfully deployed infrastructure ahead of or within scheduled time frame.Architected a scalable, cloud-based, Big Data platform delivering alternative data sets rendering a competitive advantage for investment teams.Identified need for scalable and robust enterprise messaging to support firm’s increased trading volume. Executed replacement of antiquated system within two months. Trading applications can now handle 20X the message rate of market data, resulting in better informed trade decisions.Collaborated with compliance, legal, investor relations, and vendor to implement surveillance and behavioral profiling platform leveraging AI and ML. Implementation allows greater transparency in trading tactics to safeguard against regulatory breaches.Generated cost savings through vendor contract renegotiations, technical debt retirement, new technologies and deprecation of out-dated policies and procedures.

• Co-led firm wide $15M private cloud initiative leveraging Cisco converged technology. Expedited the migration of physical servers to virtual environment reducing data center footprint to one tenth of the original size. End result was projected to be a 95% virtual environment delivered within a 7 month time frame.• Oversaw technology budget and chargeback system for proper cost allocation to internal businesses for consumed resources. • Revised model to properly reflect changes in technology spending and provide mark-to-market cost analysis. • Worked with AP team, updated process to properly allocate, depreciate, and expense assets according to firm accounting rules.• Provided Enterprise End User services. Designed/implemented the Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI) to allow for rapid enhancements to the trading platforms and reduce maintenance costs; based on Nutanix, HP thin clients and Citrix Netscaler technologies. Other services include Office suite, telephone/VOIP, AV conference room’s interactivity, and remote meeting/broadcast capabilities. • Developed and implemented data protection strategy including policies and procedures for firm. Led decision on solutions for virtual machine, filesystem, and MS Exchange data protection as well as a WORM platform. Data protection met or exceeded SEC 17a-4 and 31a-2 ruling requirements.• Deployed 9 colocations across the US and Europe delivering low latency infrastructure strategy within a 3 ½ month timeframe providing expedited time to market.• Re-architected E-mail messaging platform allowing for improved end user experience and usability. Solution met and exceeded the strict legal, compliance, and corporate records department requirements of the Financial/Security industry.• Established and strengthened vendor relationships and strategic partnerships. Negotiated proposed contracts and evaluated existing deals.

• Planned and deployed High Frequency Trading technology solution in 50 global colocations tooptimize low latency trade execution. Solution enabled High Frequency Trading businesses tooptimize trade pricing and execution resulting in reduced costs and higher trade volume.• Responsible for inception of Cyber Security unit. Implemented initial activity, security monitoring, and detection capabilities. • Led transition of back-office clearing and settling infrastructure from Lehman to Northern Trust within four months.• Independently researched and saved Citadel millions of dollars in outside legal and forensic fees by identifying and implementing a key-word search system using EMC’s Kazeon product. • Initiated a full audit of Citadel Execution Services’ connectivity architecture to all exchanges and counterparties. Based on audit results provided gap analysis and devised multiple solutions based on missing and non-resilient connectivity.• Successfully deployed Regus office space with full end user capabilities in highly condensed 2 week timeframe, meeting new business startup needs.

• Responsible for 24x7, high-performance storage technology operations and organization enabling the firm’s High Frequency Trading and asset management businesses. Operations support ~12PB of data.• Led process of multi-million dollar refresh of entire Prod and DR storage infrastructure. Replaced aged hardware and expensive maintenance contracts. Reductions in power costs and datacenter footprint requirements with a cost savings of approximately $100K per year.• Restructured backup policies by replacing physical tape infrastructure with EMC Data Domain and cloud storage archiving alternatives. Implementation has reduced firm exposure/risk by consolidating physical tape footprint with a cost savings of approximately $300K per year.• Architected and drove implementation of a High Performance Computing (HPC) environment using existing HP blade series servers, Isilon storage and Cisco Nexus 7K series switches. • Planned and directed an annual budget of $10-$20M for Storage Infrastructure.

Provided tier 3 support for approximately 1,400 end users for both Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) storage using EMC’s Celerra platform with DMX/VMAX and Clariion backend storage systems.

• Provided tier 3 support for HFT trading desks (Retail Execution Services, Options, HF Equities & HF Non-Equities) for servers collocated in major US, Europe and Asia exchanges.• Provided tier 1 and 2 support for approximately 1000 end users working within a mixed Windows and Linux environment.

Managed operating system and performance of various systems/applications. Responsible for migration of applications and tools to multiple systems.