- Designed, implemented, and maintained Viptela / Cisco SD-WAN. Wrote QoS and route selection policy. Trained engineering and support teams on deployment and troubleshooting of SD-WAN.- Designed, implemented and maintained Cisco Nexus data center network, including Nexus 9300, 7000, 6000, and 5600 with FEXs.- Oversaw design and deployment of Cisco wireless network by vendors. Assisted in deployments and troubleshoot issues post deployment.- Installed and maintained Cisco Identity Service Engine for Radius and Tacacs.- Wrote documentation for each deployment, describing the purpose and use of the tech installed, how to deploy more of it if needed, and how to troubleshoot issues.

Environment: MPLS, Frame relay, ATM, Cisco routers (1700 to 12000 routers), WAN switches (IGX / BPX / MGX), Firewalls (ASA 5505/5510/5520), Juniper routers, NetGate VPN appliances, BSDI UNIX servers- Assigned to AT&T as a Network Engineer.- Aggressively drove suppliers to resolve network outages and lead detailed troubleshooting on intermittent issues to ensure they are permanently repaired.- Mentored junior Engineers in troubleshooting methodologies, technical training, and vendor management strategies.- Produced training presentations on data circuit technologies and troubleshooting techniques.

Environment: MPLS, Frame relay, internet VPN tunnels, Cisco routers and switches (routers 2800 to 7513, LAN switches 2900 to 6500, PIX firewalls 515 and 525)- Assigned to American Express as a technical project manager.- Lead merchant datacenter telecommunication projects such as datacenter moves, technology uplifts, consolidations, and disaster recovery site setups.- Manage multiple vendors working on everything from site engineering to circuit provisioning and installation, equipment racking, data circuit demarc extensions, access for traffic through firewalls, server and application provisioning, and production readiness testing. Merchants include Office Depot, PayPal, and Walgreens in the US, Transaction Network Services in Australia, and the Japan Credit Bureau in Japan.- Handle datacenter access requirements for dispatched vendor technicians as well as collocation and vendor cage wiring and circuit extension needs.- Establish strong working relationships with clients and lead internal cross functional technical teams to achieve project goals on time.- Manage project deliverables around Amex and/or merchant change freeze constraints and, when appropriate, obtain management approval and coordination for critical changes during freezes.- Completed over two dozen projects to migrate merchants from legacy Amex mission critical systems to new, secure platforms (for both credit card authorizations and settlement file transfers). This allowed Amex to decommission several legacy systems, saving over a million dollars in support and maintenance costs.- Coordinate and lead off-hours installations into Amex's datacenters in Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Greensboro as well as in merchant datacenters across the US.

Environment: Midrange Cisco routers and switches (2600 and 3600 routers, 2900 and 3500 switches), Juniper M Series routers, Foundry load balancers, Windows server 2003, FreeBSD servers- Managed the tier 2 technical team responsible for the maintenance of multiple worldwide datacenters, including the network within and between the sites (Cisco routers and switches and Foundry load balancers) as well as the FreeBSD and Windows servers that served traffic to users.- Formed and led a project team to target long standing infrastructure issues (faulty network ports and modules, out of date and non-standard configurations, failed hard drives within RAID arrays, non-functioning application instances). Reduced total issues from 1100+ to under 800 and restored production capacity to eight datacenters. This reduced customer outages by over 25%.- Approved hardware replacement shipments, coordinated datacenter dispatches, arranged for collocation access for technicians, and managed maintenance windows.- Rewrote outage handling procedures for client-reported tickets, reducing the average outage duration from over 8 hrs to 3.5 hrs. Also instituted additional automated monitoring and ticketing using internal SNMP probes and external tools such as Concord, Keynote, and Gomez.- Acted as a 24x7 escalation contact for clients during outages, providing them enhanced focus and management attention in order to improve their overall satisfaction.- Mentored and coached the engineers, providing help on technical troubleshooting and client or vendor conflicts as well as technical training and career planning.- Conducted regular reviews of engineers, including: mid-year and year end written reviews as well as monthly operations results. Reviewed areas identified for improvement with each engineer during all reviews and provided coaching and feedback on actual progress vs. expected progress.

- Managed customer datacenter projects from order placement to completion. Projects ranged from single phone trunk orders to multi-site datacenter moves and technology uplifts (replacing legacy frame relay with a carrier-managed MPLS solution).- Coordinated installations involving multiple company and vendor teams for both circuit and network hardware setups. Supported both ATT and customer change controls, lead off-hour installs and migrations. Arranged for customer and collocation site access for technicians.- Managed support improvement projects for customers with multiple or chronic outages. Restored network uptime to contractual levels and rebuilt customer relationships with maintenance center leaders to ensure the projects' results were long lasting.- Also assisted in outages as they happened, keeping internal work centers focused on finding and fixing the cause. Worked hand in hand with customer and carrier technicians to troubleshoot and isolate. Escalated within carrier work centers when outages were not resolved quickly.- Managed billing dispute projects for customers with multiple, multi-month inaccuracies that ranged from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Corrected inventory of billable items, item price points, and missing discounts.- Tracked ATT’s overall performance in delivering goods and services to assigned customers that billed $1 million per year or more. Assigned accounts included Checker Auto Parts, Diamond Resorts, Ryland Homes, and Shamrock Foods.- Maintained service action plans to track and resolve issues as they arose.- Provided periodic stewardship reviews for clients, covering their activity (orders placed and completed, outages, and billing performance) and ATT’s performance measured against contractual targets.

Environment: Full range of Cisco routers and switches (1700 to 12000 routers, LAN switches 1900 to 6500, WAN switches IGX / BPX / MGX, PIX firewalls 515 and 525, and wireless access point model 1100), Juniper M Series routers, Windows server 2000 & 2003, BSDI UNIX servers- Managed a tier 2 technical team responsible for the network maintenance of multiple customer networks and datacenters around the world. Clients included American Express, Honeywell, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.- Championed customer care turnaround project for the work center's largest global client. Addressed customer's concerns regarding perceived support levels, our willingness to engage, and overall effectiveness. Instituted process changes, engineer retraining, and data gathering to ensure the effort was successful and long lasting.- Designed and led ticket quality project, driving down error rate from 35% to 2% for the entire Operations Center. Led the project team for implementing the same and similar initiatives in several Operations Centers in Europe and Asia.- Managed outage progression and resolution, reducing the average outage duration from 3.5 hrs to 1.8 hrs.- Acted as a 24x7 escalation contact for clients during outages, providing them enhanced focus and management attention to reduce outage durations and improve overall client satisfaction.- Mentored and coached the engineers, providing help on technical troubleshooting and client or vendor conflicts as well as technical training and career planning.- Performed analysis on trouble tickets to identify areas of improvement and tracked the progress of engineers on those areas previously identified as needing improvement.- Conducted regular reviews of engineers, including: mid-year and year end written reviews as well as monthly operations results. Reviewed areas identified for improvement with each engineer during all reviews and provided coaching and feedback on actual progress vs. expected progress.

Environment: Full range of Cisco routers and switches (1700 to 12000 routers, LAN switches 1900 to 6500, WAN switches IGX / BPX / MGX, PIX firewalls 515 and 525, and wireless access point model 1100), Juniper M Series routers, Windows server 2000 & 2003, BSDI UNIX servers- Resolved outages on clients’ Cisco data networks (clients included American Express, Honeywell, IBM, and Sun Microsystems).- Directed repair efforts of circuit providers and on-site technicians. - Documented efforts in Remedy ticket system, providing details and tracking of outage progression for RFO (Reason For Outage) tracking.

Environment: Full range of Cisco routers and switches (1700 to 12000 routers, LAN switches 1900 to 6500, WAN switches IGX / BPX / MGX, PIX firewalls 515 and 525, and wireless access point model 1100)- Contracted to American Express as a Senior Network Engineer.- Designed, implemented, and documented network enhancements to meet business needs.- Responded to and resolved network outages.- Created and maintained diagrams and documentation of network configurations.- Coordinated with the network engineering team on all changes and acted as a peer reviewer of projects.