I have been able to work on many different efforts across several technology domains so far, and enjoy the constant challenge. This role has challenged me to think more strategically and long-term about our products and services, and how we can more effectively enable our customers and associates and improve our products through thoughtful product design and delivery. Further, this role has me more directly engaged in driving collective success through individual development, and I invest a significant portion of my time in helping those I work with (directly or indirectly) improve their technical and professional skill sets, hosting training sessions and write technical documentation attended or viewed by hundreds of associates, and I continually seek ways to build up those around me.Taking more ownership over product vision and development puts me in the position to identify and fill gaps in our product coverage. One example has been in our roaming client space - I have managed our product approach to the risk gap presented by roaming clients from owning the strategy to working with our product owner groups for solution and product alignment. This has evolved into being a core technical leader in our evolution towards Zero Trust Network Architecture, driving product and strategy decisions by leaning on the expertise I’ve built working in the network and internet security engineering spaces. I’ve also had the unique opportunity to lead our M&A security service integrations and migrations - setting strategy for onboarding acquired entities into our umbrella and facilitating the execution. Beyond the strategic product development responsibilities, I have the opportunity to work across business technology groups to guide secure implementations of process and product. Through both incidental and consultation engagements, I am able to work with my customers (Walmart associates) to influence product design and configuration to push for a more secure deployment.

Continuing my work as a member of the Network Security Infrastructure team, and transitioning over to the Internet Security Infrastructure team, I have worked closely with my peers to advance our approach to tech management and problem solving with a focus on service to our customer. During the end of my tenure in Network Security, I completed the migration over to a modernized approach to WIPS, which saved a significant sum while tailoring our threat visibility and defense more closely to the needs of the organization. Additionally, I built from scratch an entirely novel technique and solution for auditing PCI scope firewall rules. After being drafted to assist in an aged process which required more than 1000 hours to execute, I set to developing an automated and customer-focused platform which reduced the per-audit effort to less than 100 hours, able to be conducted by just one supporting engineer - a savings of 90% (thousands of hours per year for the bi-annual audit process), an improvement in customer experience, an improvement in metrics and tracking and visibility, and a tremendous growth experience for me. Upon transitioning to the new team, I spent several weeks training Network Security engineers the tool and platform.After transitioning over to the Internet Security team, I wasted no time jumping into the ticket queue and learning the technology as quickly as I could.

Working as a member of the Network Security Infrastructure team I developed professionally in my role as both a network administrator and a security practitioner. My responsibilities ranged from deploying, monitoring, and optimizing performance of network security equipment (such as network firewalls and intrusion prevention solutions) to servicing customer requests. Network connectivity troubleshooting; wireless security solutions deployment; device configurations, upgrades, and replacements; and PCI compliance management were all on the table. Throughout my time as a Network Engineer, I challenged the norm and always tried to find ways to optimize the way my team worked. Work I performed in this role varied but focused primarily on learning the technology in the Network Security area. One of the more significant contributions was running Proof of Concept assessments against vendor solutions to identify if Walmart's approach to WIPS was sufficing the need to protect against wireless intrusion and attack. Another more significant contribution was standardizing and documenting repetitive processes to find optimizations along the way. For example, prior to my work in standardizing the process, firewall RMA's at distribution centers were performed ad-hoc due to the burden of identifying the need and executing the replacement. As the process was neither straightforward nor documented (at all), it was typically placed on the back burner. Identifying the need and implementing a solution to standardize the process led to a rapid elimination of tech debt and operational risk by restoring HA to dozens of distribution centers which were all needing firewall replacements due to failed hardware - further, the documentation of the process allowed any associate to easily understand, scope, plan, and execute the work.

During my Rotational Analyst position at Walmart, my job mostly consisted of networking, learning, shadowing, and training. I had a unique opportunity to work at one of the biggest companies in the world, jumping from team to team and getting hands-on experience with various technologies in many different areas including information management, application development, infrastructure design and management, networking, security, and innovations.