Profile
Highly technical and seasoned technology leader with over 25 years of experience in Cloud, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Architecture, Cybersecurity, software development, and leadership. Proven ability to successfully grow and lead individuals and remote teams which deliver high-quality software and solutions against aggressive deadlines. Demonstrated success constructing high-performing teams built on a foundation of transparency, trust, and communication. Passionate about cloud technology, AI infrastructure, high availability, people development, and committed to fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
Work Experience
Head of Infrastructure Architecture
Led a small team of elite director-level architects responsible for strategic technical leadership across PayPal's core infrastructure domains. Reported to the SVP of Infrastructure.
- Established and led the Infrastructure Architecture team, providing strategic direction and technical leadership for SRE, Developer Platforms, public and private cloud infrastructure, and AI/ML initiatives.
- Drove architectural vision and standards across PayPal's infrastructure portfolio, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy and industry best practices.
- Partnered with engineering leadership to define infrastructure roadmaps, enabling scalability, reliability, and innovation across the organization.
- Provided architectural oversight for AI/ML infrastructure including on-premise GPU compute deployments, cloud strategy, and platform modernization to support PayPal's evolving business needs.
- Designed PayPal's future cell-based architecture, leading the strategic migration away from a foundational design I originally architected over a decade ago that continues to run PayPal's production infrastructure today.
- Led architecture forums responsible for reviewing and approving Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), ensuring technical consistency and alignment across infrastructure initiatives.
- Served as lead infrastructure architect for the Cloud Modernization initiative, driving the cloud-native redesign of PayPal on Google Cloud Platform.
- Functioned as Infrastructure Domain Architect lead for Enterprise Architecture with dotted line reporting to the VP of Enterprise Architecture.
- Served as technical leadership for Root Cause Analyses (RCAs), driving improvements to site reliability and operational excellence across PayPal.
Head of Cyber Defense
Led a global team spanning Cybersecurity operations centers in the US, Singapore, and China. Owned the overarching strategy and vision for the Cybersecurity Defense Center, overseeing its implementation across PayPal and its diverse business units at a global scale.
- Orchestrated strategic hiring initiatives, assembling a high-performing team of cybersecurity experts, contributing significantly to the organization's resilience against emerging threats.
- Implemented effective retention strategies resulting in a substantial improvement, fostering a culture of commitment and dedication among team members.
- Mentored and cultivated leadership potential within the team, fostering professional growth and preparing individuals for elevated responsibilities.
- Demonstrated strong critical incident leadership, providing a visible and authoritative presence at the executive level during cybersecurity incidents.
- Conducted in-depth technical Root Cause Analyses (RCAs), collaborating seamlessly with Threat Engineering, Threat Intelligence, Threat Hunting, Offensive Security, Bug Bounty, and Vulnerability Management teams.
- Maintained a robust collaboration with legal departments, fraud prevention teams, and other critical incident response units, ensuring a comprehensive and coordinated approach to cybersecurity incidents.
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
Co-founded Aspireship, assuming the role of Chief Technology Officer, and successfully scaled the company to 18 employees with an impressive $2 million in annual recurring revenue. Directly reported to the CEO, overseeing all facets of software development, information technology, and cybersecurity.
- Led pivotal discussions in executive leadership meetings, contributing valuable insights to budgeting, revenue strategies, and product development, playing a key role in shaping the company's overall direction.
- Actively engaged with venture capitalists and angel investors, demonstrating a keen ability to articulate the company's vision and value proposition, resulting in successful capital raising efforts.
- Played a pivotal role in building the company's executive team, marketing team, candidate experience team, and software engineering team, contributing significantly to the establishment of a cohesive and high-performing organizational structure.
- Spearheaded all aspects of technology architecture, including budgeting, purchasing, governance, policy development, and security protocols, ensuring a robust and resilient technology infrastructure.
- Collaborated closely with the Head of Product to develop a comprehensive product and technology roadmap, aligning technology initiatives with the company's strategic goals.
- Implemented a Domain Driven Design approach to the software platform, leveraging Python, Flask, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, React, Docker, AWS, and GCP.
Head of Public Cloud Engineering
As the Lead Architect for PayPal's groundbreaking Google Cloud implementation, I spearheaded the creation, management, and leadership of PayPal's inaugural Public Cloud Engineering team.
- Orchestrated the end-to-end design and implementation of PayPal's Google Cloud architecture, security framework, and governance protocols, ensuring seamless integration with existing on-premise private cloud environments.
- Designed intricate Identity and Access Management (IAM) structures, encompassing Projects and Folders, while crafting robust security and network architectures tailored to Google Cloud.
- Developed and implemented an automated system utilizing Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), efficiently generating Google Cloud Folders and Projects with essential IAM configurations, quota management, and security controls.
- Led cross-functional initiatives aimed at enhancing public cloud awareness and proficiency across key teams, conducting comprehensive training sessions on cloud-native methodologies.
Director, Cloud Platform and Engineering
Led cloud architecture and engineering teams. Designed and built a hybrid cloud with AWS and OpenStack. Developed in-house platform services for Symantec's enterprise security products with a security-first mindset.
- Designed and implemented the AWS/OpenStack hybrid cloud architecture for Symantec Enterprise applications.
- Served as lead architect and developer (Go, Python) for the Cloud Intelligence Service (CIS), a CMDB providing data-driven insights and enabling automation, provisioning, and environmental consistency.
- Led the Resilience efforts to increase availability for Symantec Enterprise SaaS products for Symantec's board of directors.
- Acted as lead architect for Event Services (Java) for the Common Cloud (SaaS) platform, used by Symantec Enterprise Security products.
Senior Architect, Site Reliability Engineering
Led the design and implementation of a next-generation data center campus and availability zone pattern for a multi-tenant private cloud. Served as operations architect for various software systems, including an in-memory NoSQL datastore, the replatforming program, and all checkout and point of sale systems.
- Led the design and implementation of the next generation data center campus and availability zone pattern for a multi-tenant private cloud at PayPal and eBay, in production since 2012.
- Designed and implemented PayPal's production disaster recovery (DR) data center strategy.
- Designed and implemented global traffic management routing for the production site, allowing for shifting traffic between availability zones and regions.
- Acted as operations architect for an in-memory NoSQL datastore, providing fast, linearizable data with high availability at scale.
- Ops architect leader for the replatforming program, an initiative to re-write PayPal's payment software to enable high availability and scalability.
- Designed and served as operations architect for an in-house layer 7 router/proxy, replacing front-end routing with automated retry of failed requests.
- Acted as operations architect for checkout and point of sale systems deployed at retailers such as Home Depot, Radio Shack, and Babies R Us.
- Created architectural standards and frameworks and led the implementation of these changes.
Systems Administrator, Production Services
- Imaged Linux & Solaris systems using Kickstart and Jumpstart.
- Deployed applications, managed code releases, patch and firmware levels.
- Primary owner of Nagios & Foglight utilized for monitoring all hosts and services.
- Designed and developed an asset tracking system using Perl and MySQL.
Internet Engineer
Performed a hybrid role of Senior Network Engineer & Systems Engineer. Traveled and installed cable modem head ends for new Cable service markets. Turned up and maintained Internet circuits (T1, DS3, OC3, OC12).
- Troubleshot & resolved core network routing (EIGRP, BGP, RIP) issues.
- Managed Mail Servers, Web Mail, DNS, Web Servers, and monitoring tools.
- Wrote Perl scripts for IP Reports, Network device management, and LDAP management.
- Wrote a call center ticketing system (ASP) and customized webmail system (PHP).
Senior Systems Administrator
Most senior technical position in the company, responsible for all Unix and Linux systems and networks for Dial Up and DSL. Handled all IT responsibilities while attending school full-time.
- Managed Linux Redhat, Solaris and BSDi systems running Apache, Sendmail, etc.
- Maintained all Cisco 7204 VXR routing configuration for IP & BGP.
- Developed services in PHP to add new DSL subscribers to routers.
- Monitored, troubleshot & restored all server & network outages.