Chris Wahl Email & Phone Number

Cedar Park, Tx, Us

Austin, Tx, Us

An independent source for industry validated subject matter expertise focused on continuous delivery, platform engineering, cloud-native architecture, infrastructure as code, continuous integration, APIs, and containers.☑ Trusted voice in tech with over 700 in-depth articles published covering a myriad of topics.☑ Educational, friendly, and inclusive blog posts and videos consumed by an engaged, global audience of technical professionals.☑ Industry validated expertise across dozens of technology vendors, including AWS, Google, Microsoft, HashiCorp, ArgoCD, and most all CNCF projects.☑ Experienced public speaking record with hundreds of keynotes, presentations, lectures, workshops, and learning labs delivered with immaculate scores and positive feedback.☑ Published author and proud open-source contributor.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Driving the transformation of complex platforms by enabling teams to adopt cutting-edge technologies and practices. I specialize in bridging strategy and execution and aligning platforms with business goals.➖ Accelerating Delivery: My focus on velocity ensures projects move quickly without sacrificing quality. I streamline workflows, enabling rapid iteration and high-quality outcomes. By building automated CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code frameworks, I drastically reduce release times—such as cutting a state government’s release cycle from weeks to under 30 minutes. Speed, automation, and efficiency are my strengths.➖ Creating Scalable, Secure Platforms: I architect secure, high-performance cloud platforms built for scalability and compliance. Specializing in AWS environments, I designed a biopharma IoT solution using AWS Outposts, extending their cloud footprint and connecting air-gapped on-prem IoT networks to ensure security, compliance, and scalability at the edge.➖ Building High-Performing Teams: I coach both Slalom and client teams, teaching them to design platforms, use Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), set up communication rhythms, and write workable stories. Through mentorship, I’ve developed architects who have successfully led major projects and achieved promotions.➖ Strategic Thought Leadership: Organizations trust me to optimize their platform engineering, continuous delivery, and agile practices. I provide insights that enhance platform scalability, team efficiency, and automation adoption, helping businesses accelerate their technology roadmaps.➖ Driving Business Outcomes: I enable small teams to manage large-scale platforms by scaling automation from zero to thousands of pipelines. This improves speed, reduces overhead, and ensures consistent performance. I engage executives in steering committees to align technical initiatives with business goals, secure buy-in, and address risks across the organization.

Seattle, Wa, Us

I lead the delivery of complex cloud and DevOps engagements, focusing on architecting solutions for software development and cloud infrastructure. I drive high-quality outcomes and ensure seamless execution for clients.➖ Accelerating Delivery: I ensure that projects are delivered quickly and efficiently by building fully automated CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code frameworks. This reduces release times and improves the reliability of client platforms. My focus on velocity and automation helps teams deliver more quickly with consistent quality.➖ Creating Scalable, Secure Platforms: I design scalable, highly available cloud architectures tailored to client needs. By developing cloud-native solutions, including microservices and APIs, I ensure seamless integration of systems while maintaining security and compliance. I implement infrastructure automation tools to streamline operations and reduce manual efforts.➖ Building High-Performing Teams: I lead Cloud & DevOps teams, providing technical leadership and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Through hands-on mentorship, I guide engineers in adopting best practices for platform design, agile methodologies, and automation, helping them grow professionally and deliver impactful results.➖ Driving Business Outcomes: I transform client platforms by scaling automation, enabling small teams to manage and iterate on large-scale infrastructures. This improves delivery speed, reduces operational overhead, and ensures consistent platform performance. I engage with key stakeholders to raise visibility, secure buy-in, and mitigate risks, aligning technical solutions with business goals.

Palo Alto, California, Us

Chief Technologist / Senior Director with concrete track record in delivering holistic multi-cloud designs supported by end-to-end automation with continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.☑ People Leader for a department consisting of Technical Marketing, Solutions Architecture, and Developer Relations.☑ Lead architect on numerous corporate initiatives, including scalable hybrid cloud deployments consumed by internal employees and external customers across the globe.☑ Successfully migrated hand-crafted cloud resources in Azure, AWS, and GCP over to Terraform for numerous infrastructure as code (IaC) projects.☑ Hands-on experience designing and operating popular CI platforms such as GitLab CI, Circle CI, and GitHub Actions to trigger builds and deployments based on customized workflows.☑ Designed the company's first Software Development Kit (SDK) to translate RESTful APIs into Microsoft PowerShell functions as an open source project on GitHub for thousands of customers.☑ Delivered hundreds of technical presentations, workshops, and customer deep dive sessions to educate on topics such as automation at scale, enterprise networking, GraphQL, and containers.

Draper, Ut, Us

Design and construct video training courses for IT professionals using real world, hands-on experience with various enterprise technologies.☑ Taught mainstream topics such as private cloud, networking, converged infrastructure, storage, virtualization, and complex design.☑ Delivered a highly popular course covering the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Data Center certification.☑ Instructed students using real world examples, live demos, and realistic lab scenarios.☑ Produced a design course describing the architectural considerations (requirements, constraints, risks, and assumptions) for upgrading an enterprise vSphere environment.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Engaged in consulting workshops ranging from C-suite executives to IT professionals to provide strategy, planning, road map, and enterprise design with a prescriptive and solutions oriented focus. Primary focus on next generation infrastructure, hybrid cloud architecture, and the people, processes, and tools required to build a robust DevOps-centric culture. Often found rambling on about containers, open source projects, and the virtues of YAML versus JSON.☑ Delivered high-impact consulting workshops to a variety of large enterprise verticals.☑ Provided cross-functional technical expertise to sales and engineering teams to improve overall service delivery portfolio.☑ Designed new solutions and services, including automated infrastructure and application health checks, to drive additional revenue into the business.

Nashville, Tennessee, Us

The Chicago VMware User Group (VMUG) is designed to support VMware users in the Greater Chicago area. The goal of each meeting is to provide a forum in which members can share experiences, best practices, and expertise among both end users and industry experts. The VMUG team also provide a channel for the user community to deliver feedback directly to VMware.☑ Facilitated quarterly meetings through identifying relevant technical sponsors, securing meeting locations, and working with the members to deliver an experience that provides impact and value.☑ Earned recognition for quality user conference meetings, high attendance, and exceptional positive feedback from members.☑ Received the President's Award from the VMUG for outstanding service and dedication to the community.

Schaumburg, Il, Us

Tasked with providing deep VMware expertise to a corporation looking to virtualize thousands of servers into a private cloud.☑ Liaison between a small operations group and a 500+ person development team.☑ Developed workflows and coded projects to automate service delivery, configuration, and retirement in PowerShell, vCenter Orchestrator, and Python.☑ Designed a private cloud for internal staff and off-shore developers to deliver services and iterate through code that adhered to corporate ITIL standards.

Transformed a small team using agile methodology while providing operational knowledge on enterprise systems administration and automation.☑ Destroyed silos between operations and a 25 person development team to build an integrated IT vision.☑ Designed, maintained, and iterated a regulatory compliance call recording system with requirements to record and store 100% of client calls.☑ Introduced virtualization to a startup with explosive growth, focused on relationships with OEMs to massively scale personnel in year one.☑ Prioritized team education and cross-training to eliminate single points of skill.☑ Fostered a five tier development model for the software team with deep hooks into the daily tasks of operations to monitor builds, services, and 3rd party feeds.☑ Integrated bug track, feature, helpdesk, and subversion tools into daily processes.

Floated among several GM clients in the greater Midwest area to provide design and deployment services for back-end systems.☑ Successfully proposed the use of VMware ESX 3.x virtualization for ROBO sites to reduce server footprint by 6:1 and costs by over 250%.☑ Refactored all Microsoft Active Directory services using Windows Server 2003, the use of Group Policy, and a number of JavaScript automation tasks.☑ Wrote custom print workflows to switch customer carbon deliverables over to laser printed documents with a metadata-rich digital storage repository on the back-end.☑ Designed and implemented an Exchange 2003 cluster and registered all relevant A- and PTR-records for client satellite domains, including domain

Miami, Fl, Us

IT Support to the Midwest regional headquarters, and Administrative Assistant to two clients: Nissan / Infiniti in Aurora, and Daimler Chrysler in Naperville.☑ Managed Windows network at regional headquarters for senior level staff.☑ Deployed, configured, and managed Active Directory user / group administration.☑ Lead support engineer responsible for procurement and installation of laptops, servers, and workstations.

Philadelphia, Pa, Us

Field Technician, contracted through EcoComp / Telemon, to Ameritech's DSL division, along with high profile installs for Focal and McLeod USA.☑ Wired and installed DSL service from demarc point to commercial and residential clients and performed high level troubleshooting of DSLAM and Redback issues☑ Lineman for CAT5/CAT6, coax, trunk, riser, MDF/IDF, and PoE runs using TIA/EIA standards (568A/B).

Master Of Business Administration, Concentration In Project Management

Bachelor Of Science, Network And Communications Management