Resume

Introduction

I am a self-taught IT Consultant with a strong background in systems and consulting clients. With a decade of professional experience (8 years being in managed services), I have a strong understanding of the IT needs in a wide variety of business sectors. My passion is to automate and simplify IT processes / systems to allow businesses to focus on their business problems and not on technology problems.

I have a wide knowledge base that includes: Servers (Windows and Linux), Networking (Firewalls and Switches), Storage (NAS and SAN), Virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V, Proxmox), Containerization (Docker and Podman), Automation (Ansible), Cloud (Azure and AWS), and DevOps (Ansible, Git, PowerShell, and Bash)

With my varied skill set, I can work with any team in an organization to find ways to achieve desired business outcomes. At the same time, I can assist my team with automating and improving processes that can span across different IT verticals.

I am a strong proponent of continuous learning to keep my skills sharp in an ever-changing industry. I intend to become a Red Hat Certified Architect to further expand my skill set.

Experience

Cleared Maintenance Engineer (CME) Ansible Technical Account Manager (TAM)

Red Hat

August 2023 - Present

• Serve as the primary customer advocate within Red Hat, facilitating communication and collaboration across teams
• Provide proactive guidance and recommendations to customers on best practices and approaches to address their specific business needs
• Manage and prioritize the resolution of customer issues, including the coordination of resources within Red Hat and customer environments
• Develop and maintain relationships with key customer stakeholders to help them achieve their business goals
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to customers to help them achieve their business goals
• Develop and deliver technical presentations and demonstrations to customers
• Provide feedback to the Red Hat product management and engineering teams on customer requirements and issues
• Contribute to the development of best practices, knowledge articles, and other technical documentation
• Participate in the development and delivery of training and enablement programs for customers and partners
• Contribute to the development and execution of customer success plans
• Hands-on support with clients to help them implement the Ansible Automation Platform and other Red Hat solutions

Project Manager and Core Contributor

Universal Blue

February 2023 - Present (Volunteer)

• Engage with the community to understand their needs and desires for the project
• Manage the project roadmap and ensure that the project is on track to meet its goals
• Coordinate with other contributors to ensure that the project is moving forward
• Develop and maintain relationships with key stakeholders in the community and the Fedora Project
• Contribute code to the project to help it meet its goals (my specific contribution was with our ISO builder)
• Develop and deliver technical presentations and demonstrations to the community (see here for my media appearances)
• Provide feedback to the project leadership on community requirements and issues
• Contribute to the development of best practices, knowledge articles, and other technical documentation

Systems Engineer

Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities

July 2022 - August 2023

• Documented existing environment
• Upgraded Satellite to the latest version and re-architected it to have access to air-gapped environment
• Deployed Red Hat Insights to all non air-gapped environments
• Proposed and executed on a project to implement the Ansible Automation Platform in Azure
• Wrote Ansible Playbooks to automate infrastructure management, deployments, security controls, and patching
• Assisted with processes surrounding Azure DevOps to start building pipelines and processes for infrastructure deployments
• Executed the migration of several workloads from Oracle Linux 7 to RHEL 8

Systems Administrator

Whizkids Tech

August 2021 - July 2022

• Troubleshoot software/hardware issues on both workstations (Windows 7 - 10) and servers (Windows Server 2008 R2 - 2019) within our clients' environments remotely and onsite for over 20 individual clients
• Configure, deploy, and manage networking equipment (Cisco Small Business Switches, Netgate pfSense Firewalls, and Dell SonicWall Firewalls)
• Provide Scopes of Work (SOWs) to Sales and Project Team for solutions to implement
• Execute infrastructure projects for clients and internal initiatives
• Provide actionable input to the CEO and Service Manager to improve processes and service delivery
• Create PowerShell and ConnectWise Automate scripts to automate the deployment of software on workstations and servers
• Configure, deploy, and manage Storagecraft backup solutions (both local and cloud)

IT Consultant

Inside Edge Commercial Interior Services

December 2020 - August 2021

• Troubleshooting software/hardware issues on both workstations and servers
• Document work inside Jira for issues worked
• Write documentation for manual processes
• Provided expertise and suggestions for projects and other changes needed to keep infrastructure up to date and secure

Service Reliability Engineer

Joyent

September 2020 - December 2020

• Create scripts to automate deployments, upgrades, and processes using Ansible
• Document work inside Jira for issues worked
• Write documentation for manual processes
• Work with the team on custom software implementations with the development team
• Utilize version control (Git) to document scripts and fix bugs in scripts

Managed Linux Server Engineer

Insight

November 2019 - September 2020

• Provide primary Linux Server support for a Fortune 500 client
• Troubleshoot issues related to their AWS implementation
• Design solutions for automation of management (patching, deployment of new resources, and proactively preventing issues) using Terraform, Ansible, and existing legacy tooling
• Serve as a backup for Windows Server related issues and other compute resources due to prior experience
• Assist with other client environments as needed (Windows or Linux)
• Collaborate with other departments, including account management, to ensure we provide excellent service
• Document troubleshooting processes to ensure we have a good baseline for automation and for assisting lower level engineers with troubleshooting

Systems Engineer

a COUPLE of GURUS

October 2014 - November 2019

Technical Duties:

• Troubleshoot software/hardware issues on both workstations and servers within our clients' environments remotely and onsite for over 40 individual clients.
• Configure and deploy hardware and software solutions remotely and onsite
• Configure and deploy networking equipment (routers, switches, and firewalls)
• Create scripts to automate the deployment of software and patch management on clients machines
• Configure and deploy backup solutions (both local and cloud)
• Serve as an escalation point for lower level engineers to assist with service items
• Approve Change Management requests for engineers
• Assist with Projects

Non-Technical Roles:

• Assist in technical account management for our largest clients
• Create quotes for Account manager to present to resolve IT issues
• Write technical documentation internally and for clients.
• Work with Finance, Manufacturing, Medical, and Service Industry-based clients.

Technical Proficiencies

Certifications

• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) (RHEL 8 and RHEL 9)
• Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) (RHEL 8 and RHEL 9)
• Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers
• Amazon Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
• LPIC Linux Essentials
• CompTIA Network+
• CompTIA A+
• Datto Advanced Training (Disaster Recovery Product)

Cloud

Programming, Scripting, and Platforms

Networking

Operating Systems

Virtualization