Ken Darnell Email & Phone Number

Sugar Land, Tx, Us

Houston, Texas, Us

Senior Vice President of Information Technology

Houston, Tx, Us

Reported to the CIO, developed and led the digital transformation roadmap, and maintained all operational systems at 99.999% uptime. Worked closely with executive leaders to ensure company goals and objectives, while transforming legacy infrastructure and systems and upgrading to the latest cloud-based solutions. Represent CSAT IT to external customers and vendors in quarterly business reviews, during RFP discussions and negotiations. Regularly called on by the company C-Suite to review new business ventures and potential acquisitions for technical capabilities and alignment with CSAT standards.• Responsible for categorization and corporate reporting of all Capex and Opex hours worked by the IT team monthly to ensure proper alignment with corporate financial debt covenants. • Built a service desk organization, where none existed, to improve overall IT support for the company. Implemented a SaaS ticketing system called (Manage Engine) enforcing proper Service Level Agreements (SLAs) across the IT organization. Set the tiering structure and severity levels associated with all company IT systems, providing a framework for response times and associated performance metrics, which are reviewed weekly.• Improved Dell, Apple, and Lenovo customer shopfloor systems reliability metric from 95% to 99.999% uptime by implementing improved system maintenance, monitoring, and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) standards and processes. • Orchestrated the transition of 95% of all hardware infrastructure to the cloud (Azure) in support of digital transformation. • Developed a plan for Security, Infrastructure, and Application Development teams to collaborate ensuring all systems are properly patched to improve the overall security state of the corporate infrastructure. • Migrated CSAT from the Enterprise Service Bus WebMethods to Boomi and facilitated moving away from EDI to REST and XML B2B messaging protocols with all customers.

Houston, Tx, Us

Hands-on technology leader responsible for leading the Dell, Lenovo, and Apple, new cloud-based infrastructure and application development teams. Responsible for transforming CSAT's architectural approach to application development by onboarding new talent, bringing fresh ideas, and a new technology stack. Served as Interim “Head of IT” during a ransomware cyber-attack.• Successfully onboarded Lenovo as a new customer by implementing a new cloud-based B2B integrated shopfloor workflow system to manage the repair of 2,000 Lenovo and ThinkPad laptops per day, increasing CSAT operations by 30%. • Interim CIO and incident commander for two months, in response to a corporate-wide cyber security ransomware event. Attended six hours of meetings daily with CSAT CEO, Dell, Apple, and Lenovo executive leadership during recovery activities to restore CSAT operational processes.• Transformed the IT organization by adding industry-standard teams and positions such as DevOps, DBA, and Architects. Introduced “application ownership” across the development teams and onboarded technical lead developers for each CSAT customer. • Fortified the application development team and systems by implementing the use of Thycotic Privileged Access, requiring Azure Secrets for system credentials, and mandating all databases created are encrypted using 256 AES.

Houston, Tx, Us

Program Manager for an initiative to integrate 10 European companies into Sysco Foods Inc. Engaged in the rollout of Cybersecurity tools, HR HCM Workday integration, and Email migration into the Sysco O365 tenancy. Maintained a weekly cadence of status meetings with the Sysco Foods International CIO, Vice President IT Infrastructure, and CISO regarding the program.• Developed and maintained project plans associated with each Sysco Europe company CIO and hosted weekly integration calls with Sysco Europe companies to manage ongoing integration efforts. • Reported to corporate CISO, and led initial efforts to audit and scan acquired companies for ongoing cyber events in addition to scanning for existing vulnerabilities before their integration into Sysco infrastructure. • Represented Sysco Europe in discussions with Microsoft US to develop SOWs related to integration activities. • Successfully migrated four Sysco Europe companies representing 8,000 users, into the Sysco Microsoft Office 365 tenancy. • Led a team to develop an enterprise ITSM process for integrating the different Sysco Europe Service Desk operations into the Sysco Enterprise Service Desk.

Chicago, Il, Us

Led the development and delivery of IT infrastructure and application development projects associated with crew-related systems. Built and managed a lean enterprise software development organization including infrastructure and software engineers, architects, business analysts, product owners, and project managers, accounting for a budget of $8M per year.• Program leader of a $98,000,000 IT initiative to deploy 23,000 iPhone devices to all flight attendants on time and under budget. Rollout included new PCI-compliant Point of Sale and eFAOM applications, along with the supporting Wi-Fi infrastructure. • Identified a vendor to manufacture and deliver tamper-resistant, PCI-compliant sled and case, providing a viable solution for iPhone 6 Plus POS application delivery. • Led the greenfield creation and deployment of the UA Pilot Mobile application, providing 13,000 pilots with an operational mobile iPad solution to retrieve flight plans, weather maps, schedules, and visibility to other crew members. Brainstormed the initial idea with stakeholders, and hosted facilitated workshop sessions with a cross-functional team from technology, line pilots, union members, and flight operations. • Saved the airline $250,000 annually, and improved staff quality of life by outsourcing 24/7 core support responsibilities, leaving onshore resources to focus on new development. • Improved stakeholder relationships and project efficiency by aligning all projects with the UA Project Management Office (PMO) recommended Project Management Lifecycle (PMLC). Required project charters, and implemented a tollgate approval process for all ongoing and new projects.

Chicago, Il, Us

Responsible for technical management, development, and socialization of Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework, to support customer-facing website (United.com), and customer service/gate agent applications. Coordinated the efforts of multiple development teams.• Spearheaded the development-of-services framework, standardizing commercial development interfaces, and encapsulating old paradigms and developer complexities encountered when interfacing with the mainframe Passenger Service System. • Eliminated long-held corporate object model designs by hosting cross-functional IT teams to redesign all commercial business objects in preparation for interface with development-of-services-framework. • Performed business analysis, architected and developed a shopping cart service designed to handle real-time reservation booking and ticketing.

Chicago, Il, Us

Responsible for the technical management, architecture, and development of an enterprise-level messaging system that handled customer trip alerts, and auto check-in.• Envisioned and managed a team that developed an enterprise-level messaging system to handle airline customer trip alert information and auto check-in processes. • Designed and programmed utilizing C#.Net, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server, an off-host multi-threaded eTicket receipt generation system, that currently sits at the tail end of all commercial booking processes. • Improved the relationship between technology and users (marketing department) by improving communication and managing expectations. This effort involved creating and maintaining project work breakdown structures, and project plans for ongoing projects.

Milpitas, Ca, Us

Responsible for project management, business analysis, and technical architecture duties associated with the development of a photo viewer preloaded on the SanDisk Write Once, Read Many (WORM) card.• Led four offshore software engineers in the design, development, and delivery of a photo viewing and file management tool preinstalled on the SanDisk write once, read many (WORM) card.• Introduced JIRA to SanDisk for use in integrating and managing IT development projects with offshore teams.

Chicago, Il, Us

Responsible for the architecture and development of software solutions delivered to Continental Airlines Flight Operations

Us

Programmed new features and enhancements for the IMPACT Enterprise Risk Management suite of products.

Irving, Texas, Us

Responsible for the design and development of a gas volume and position management system that world upload daily information to the Commodities Trading and Risk Management system Endur/OpenLink.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Accounting

Architectural Engineering