In my role as the Director of DevSecOps at Plooto, I provide leadership for Cloud Services, Cybersecurity, DevOps, and IT.

In my role as Principal DevOps Architect at Calloquy, I collaborated with the CTO to develop strategic roadmaps for Application Security, Cloud Services, DevOps, and Observability for Calloquy's WebRTC-enabled SaaS platform for secure remote legal proceedings.I implemented a dynamic and cost-effective multi-account infrastructure composed of approximately thirty AWS services, using Terraform, GitHub Actions, Helm, Kustomize, and ArgoCD.I implemented trunk-based pipelines for building, testing, and deploying applications with GitHub Actions and GitOps using ArgoCD.I led training sessions for the development, quality assurance, and product teams on trunk-based development, Kubernetes, and ArgoCD.I followed "The Twelve-Factor App" principles as I refactored the application code and deployments that were tightly coupled to the environments. This involved modifying front-end and back-end components written in Go, PHP, Laravel, Node.js, and React.js. I saved the modifications as Git patches, applied them, and deployed them to parallel infrastructure to avoid disrupting development in the existing environment.I implemented observability using Datadog, incorporating various components such as APM traces, RUM, Kubernetes agents, Lambda forwarders, Kinesis streams, SAAS integrations, alerts, monitors, and cost management.I contributed to the initial revisions of cybersecurity, disaster recovery, incident response, and other corporate policies, and provided input for externally generated audit reports.I implemented SOC 2, ISO 27001, CIS, and cybersecurity and compliance best practices into all architectural designs. I collaborated with the CISO to refine approximately thirty out of ninety company controls for SOC 2 compliance and participated in the successful certification of SOC 2 Type 2 within five months of my arrival.To facilitate agile development, I developed Jira dashboards, Kanban and Scrum boards, queries, workflows, and reports.

As a Staff DevOps Engineer at RECUR, I was a member of the DevOps team.I automated the process of building, testing, and deploying serverless AWS and Docker-based applications. This included refactoring the existing Git-flow pipelines to adopt a trunk-based model, resulting in increased developer productivity. Additionally, I provided training sessions for developers on trunk-based development.Using GitHub Actions, Terraform, AWS CLI, and the AWS Console, I deployed and managed various AWS services, including API Gateway, CloudFront, Cognito, DynamoDB, EC2, ECS, ECR, EventBridge, Fargate, Lambda, Pinpoint, RDS, Step Functions, SQS, S3, TOTP, WAF, and more. To enhance pipeline reusability, I utilized GitHub Actions' templating mechanisms. I integrated CI/CD pipelines with automatic documentation generators, GitHub Actions, Jira, AWS, Slack, and other cloud services.To maintain cybersecurity, I implemented and monitored best practices using AWS Shield, GuardDuty, and other tools. Additionally, I responded to cybersecurity threats, including SMS pumping, and used Datadog to implement and monitor application and infrastructure logs and alerts.Lastly, I supported complex NGINX web server routing configurations, as well as high-traffic volume NFT drops, events, and product launches.

As the Director of Platform Engineering at FINRA, I was responsible for leading a cross-functional engineering organization consisting of up to twenty-five individuals and managers. They were distributed across up to four teams.I took part in cyber incident response planning, tabletop exercises, security posture reviews, audit preparation, and reviewing and approving cybersecurity policies for the organization.I developed strategic roadmaps for a variety of enterprise SaaS and hosted applications, as well as on-premises and cloud infrastructure. This portfolio supported thousands of users and provided services across a range of domains, such as Binary and Code Repository Management, Business Intelligence, CI/CD, Cloud Service Management, Collaboration, Data Science, Managed File Transfer, Product Management, Project Management, and Program Management.In addition, I negotiated vendor contracts and renewals, performed budgeting and forecasting for hardware, software, and payroll amounting to approximately five million dollars. I also managed vendor product lifecycles, upgrades, and planned for end-of-life products.I provided architectural designs and guidance, and actively participated in code reviews while contributing to the code base.I led a team of full-stack developers in implementing custom web applications that integrated multiple services, improving the productivity of the technology organization.Furthermore, I led the implementation of multi-regional failover for multiple critical applications serving FINRA CAT using AWS. I also collaborated with an external data processor to establish B2B connectivity between ticketing systems, enabling secure and efficient information exchange and increasing staff productivity in both organizations.Lastly, I had the opportunity to present a portion of "How FINRA Securely Develops and Deploys Applications on AWS" at the AWS Public Sector Summit 2018.

As the Associate Director of Cloud Engineering at FINRA, I spearheaded the strategic roadmap for the cloud engineering practice, guiding a team of five Cloud Engineers to ensure the availability of compliant and efficient EC2 AMIs, Docker images, and other central tools for the technology organization.Driven by the need for efficiency, I led the development of AWS Step Functions workflows, integrating AWS API calls through Lambda and CloudFormation stacks to streamline the provisioning of new AWS accounts. This resulted in a 90% reduction in account setup time for application use and caught AWS's attention while they were working on Control Tower.With a focus on innovation, I took a leading role in the research and development of ChatOps, leveraging Slack, AWS Lex, and AWS Lambda to create bots addressing various use cases and integrating internal APIs and cloud services.I championed the adoption of AWS ECS and AWS EKS, facilitating the migration from EC2 to containerized workloads.Regularly interfacing with AWS TAMs, I explored and provided feedback on many new AWS services and features during their development.

As a Lead System Engineer at FINRA, I was a member of the Cloud Engineering team.I implemented S3-hosted masterless Puppet and a Python-based bootstrap for VM configuration management, achieving a 99.99% success rate in EC2 deployments and saving $400,000 annually. Additionally, I centrally automated security, compliance, hardening, and observability for over 100 applications by creating and distributing FINRA-certified custom AMIs for Linux and Windows on a monthly basis.I also participated in FINRA's support of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) cloud migration, working onsite with CME developers to transition their on-premises stacks to AWS using IaC and CI/CD deployment patterns provided by FINRA.

As a Linux Engineer at TEKsystems, I was part of the UNIX team.I developed a Python Django web application for managing internal Sudo permissions and automated Linux administration tasks using Python, Bash, Puppet, Ansible, Rundeck, and Jenkins. In addition, I conducted zero-day impact analysis, performed regular patching, resolved cybersecurity compliance issues, and provided production administration and support for a fleet of several hundred physical RedHat Linux servers. I also participated in disaster recovery planning and drills and assisted in migrating applications from on-premises to AWS.

In this role, I continued working on automation for the Marriott account.

During my time at Marriott, I had the opportunity to work with two teams.First, I was part of the Unix team. We managed over 3000 Linux and Unix servers in Marriott's data centers and franchisee locations. I helped implement a PCI-compliant infrastructure and establish a remote disaster recovery site.Next, I joined the Automation team. I managed configurations and SQL databases for enterprise applications, oversaw the alarming infrastructure, and created customized dashboards using REST APIs and JavaScript. I successfully implemented automation platforms from vendors like HP and BMC. This enabled the automation of multiple large-scale collaborative system-change processes. As a result, individual operations staff were able to execute these processes as workflows in significantly less time and with improved consistency.Consistent with my approach at previous companies, I utilized open-source tools such as Python and Bash to automate a significant portion of my work.During this time, I chose Python as my preferred programming language.

During my time at Spirent, I had the opportunity to serve in multiple roles.As a System Support Specialist, I provided remote support to telecom network operators, assisting them with Spirent's testing solutions. I also supported customer development teams in building platform integrations using Spirent's C++ SDK.As a Computer and Network Specialist, I focused on capacity planning, testing, and integration of the Spirent solution on Unix servers installed in customer data centers.As a Senior Software Analyst, my responsibilities included managing the internal development and test infrastructure, overseeing the data center environment, and maintaining over 100 Linux, Unix, and Windows servers. This also involved managing server, network, and power capacity, as well as handling backup infrastructure and disaster recovery planning. I supported the company's developers, configuration managers, and their associated tooling.Throughout this period, I automated as many tasks as possible using open-source tools such as Python, Perl, Bash, and Cfengine.