Shaun Benson Email & Phone Number

College Station-Bryan Area

As a Wireless Network Engineer II at Cloud Ingenuity, I play a pivotal role in the Texas A&M project, focusing on designing, implementing, and troubleshooting wireless networks across Texas A&M Campus. This initiative, among the largest in the world with this density, involves deploying roughly 22,000 APs in an area under 10 square miles.Working in tandem with a dedicated team of network engineers, my responsibilities are multifaceted. I conduct detailed site surveys to determine optimal cable pathways and identify existing infrastructure. Utilizing the Ekahau Sidekick, I perform pre-installation scans and use the data to create AP placement maps, collaborating closely with the placement team to navigate installation challenges, facilitate training, and manage supply logistics. Following the installation of APs in each building, I execute post-installation scans to verify the resulting RF environment, culminating in a comprehensive review during our weekly meetings with Texas A&M representatives.Our collaboration with Texas A&M underscores a shared commitment to achieving the extraordinary, leveraging a combination of expertise, teamwork, and innovation.

At Vivant I worked as a VoIP Network Engineer. At this startup I learned to wear many hats in a fast-paced and rapidly evolving environment. While my day to day typically involved PBX and Cradlepoint configuration, I also worked alongside Vivant’s CTO in a Systems Architect capacity. While doing so, I pitched, designed, built, and deployed multiple original solutions (services) from moving the company to a new network monitoring platform (Grafana) to providing web content filtering to clients (Cisco Umbrella) as a newly supported paid service. This allowed me to become a mentor as I was asked to start proctoring team trainings moving forward.

Bryan/College Station, Texas Area

My team and I worked as the primary NOC for many of Viasat’s government contracts. We managed Ethernet, Fiber Optic, Wireless (including meshed), VoIP, and legacy telephony networks for U.S. Naval and Air Force bases across the globe. From Pearl Harbor and Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) to JBER and state parks, we met our client's strict SLAs and professional standards head-on. We worked closely with our partner Phoenix cable to service GTMO via cable and to provide local businesses, the base, and the prison with a reliable uplink. I dispatched on-site technicians (smart hands) to assist me when I couldn’t resolve an issue remotely and worked hand-in-hand with military brass to prepare quarantine buildings in the early days of COVID capable of handling bandwidth surges caused by warships carrying thousands of people. When I wasn’t working with Viasat’s various program managers to meet our SLAs, I was helping to train our floor agents and maximize their potential.

Big Sandy, Texas, United States

While working as a Systems Administrator at Harmony ISD the director and I managed a network of roughly two-thousand end-user devices. Early on I became heavily involved in imaging and deployment (FOG, SCCM). Our first major project was to create a universal base image and deploy it on new units with identical hardware for staff to streamline device troubleshooting and repair in the future. After which, we invested heavily into Google for Education for the students. The benefit for us in the IT department was an easily configurable, secure, and comparatively inexpensive deployment option. The move was so successful that the director convinced the board to move forward with a plan to get a Chromebook into the hands of each student by the end of the next year. Our students, particularly those under the poverty line, saw an increase in average scores as a result of an improved access to technology.

During my brief collaboration with Sapling Learning, I found critical vulnerabilities within the company site’s web traffic via various tools with an emphasis on BurpSuite. I consulted directly with the CEO David Merryweather (now vice-president of Macmillan) while preparing Sapling Learning for its acquisition by McGraw Hill Education. I provided detailed reports on vulnerabilities including how to reproduce and patch them and consulted the on-staff development team as they worked to do so.