Thirty years, one road

Initiation · 1996 to 1999

1996

Half running the systems, half teaching them

My first job put two things in one title: keep the technology working, and teach people to use it. Thirty years later the job still has both halves.

Compris Technologies · Technology and training manager

1997

Unix behind the cash register

Unix and point-of-sale support at POSTEC, on the systems stores rang up their sales through.

POSTEC · Unix and point-of-sale support

1998

An ISP in the dial-up years

Unix and Windows NT administration for BellSouth's internet service, and training the IS staff who ran it with me.

BellSouth.net · Unix and NT administrator, trainer for IS

1999

The network and the Unix boxes, end to end

Network and Unix administration at Online Insight, my last permanent job before going out on my own.

Online Insight · Network and Unix administrator

The architect · 2000 to 2011

2000

My own firm

I started taking contracts through Majere Enterprises, my own firm. Most of the companies on this stretch of road hired me through it.

Majere Enterprises · Founder

2000

The first architect title

Infrastructure administration and architecture at Trisect Systems, from May 2000 into 2001.

Trisect Systems · Infrastructure administrator and architect · through Majere Enterprises

2000

Internet by satellite

Senior Unix architect at StarBand, which sold internet service by satellite dish, from December 2000 to March 2001.

StarBand Communications · Senior Unix architect · through Majere Enterprises

2001

Architect and trainer at HP

Architecture work at Hewlett-Packard in the spring and summer of 2001, and teaching it. Training stayed half the job.

Hewlett-Packard · Senior architect and trainer · through Majere Enterprises

2001

Online bill payment

Systems engineering and training at CheckFree, the online bill-payment company, from May 2001 to November 2002.

CheckFree · Systems engineer and trainer · through Majere Enterprises

2003

The only IT person in the building

I came in as the sole administrator and architect for MemberClicks' production network, rebuilt it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and moved it into a colocation facility. Three months in they hired me full time, and I taught their infrastructure classes every month.

MemberClicks · Infrastructure architect

2004

Homeland Security's procurement system

Back at HP, one of five architects and engineers supporting a premier new client, the Department of Homeland Security, and its round-the-clock procurement application on HP-UX and ProLiant.

Hewlett-Packard · Platform administrator · through Majere Enterprises

2005

AIX and Oracle at high volume

The only systems and network architect beside a DBA, on a platform with extremely high transaction volume: AIX 4.3 to 5.3 migrations, Oracle, F5 load balancers. A two-month contract that kept being extended.

MarketWorks · Production engineer · through Majere Enterprises

2006

One machine becomes many

Technical lead for shared virtualization across BellSouth's business units: AIX logical partitions on IBM p570s and p590s, VMware ESX, Sun zones on T2000s and EMC storage, designed down to the card and the cable. BellSouth became AT&T while I was there.

BellSouth / AT&T Southeast · Technical infrastructure architect · through Majere Enterprises

2007

SAP on Sun, at scale

EDS brought me in to architect a virtualized SAP implementation for one of its primary clients: 500 virtual machines across 50 Sun servers on EMC DMX and CLARiiON storage. It grew into every hard virtualization request the client had, including more than 500 Solaris containers.

EDS · Integration engineer · through Majere Enterprises

2008

Backup at GE's scale

Storage engineering for GE's Global Infrastructure Services: Symantec NetBackup with Data Domain virtual tape libraries, on Linux and Solaris.

General Electric · Storage engineer · through Majere Enterprises

2009

First technical hire in a new market

OnX was expanding from Canada into the United States and I was its first technical person here, working from the CTO's office. The largest project was a 30,000-seat virtual desktop rollout for a utility on Citrix. VMware and Citrix certifications followed in 2009 and 2010.

OnX Enterprise Solutions · Senior technical consultant, virtualization

2011

Building the SAP appliance

Claricent was an SAP business-intelligence specialist. I designed and launched its BI appliances, virtual and physical, from technical feasibility and cost projections to the alliances behind them.

Claricent · Principal product engineer, virtualization

Leadership · 2012 to 2019

2012

My first leadership role

WorthPoint's IT department had left with little notice. I came in under contract to replace it, then came back as Director to run operations and move the company out of its Qwest data center onto Amazon Web Services, with Chef.

WorthPoint · Director of Infrastructure and Operations

2013

Student data, held to a higher bar

Running IT operations on AWS for a nonprofit building secure data services for educational agencies, with a team of five SREs and coders, Chef and a DevOps practice. The company closed in August 2014.

inBloom · Senior Manager of IT Operations

2014

Outages from forty hours a month to under one

Eleven direct reports across infrastructure, support and data services. In my first three months, outages and failed deployments dropped below an hour a month, and engineering moved to DevOps and from waterfall to Scrum within the year.

Inform, Inc · Director of Engineering Operations and DevOps

2017

From millions to billions

Scaling a Fortune 500 marketing platform from millions to billions of daily transactions. The team grew from thirty to seventy, and the platform moved onto Kubernetes at forty percent lower cost.

IgnitionOne · VP of Technical Operations

2018

Architect to the CTO and CEO

Global architect for the Sentience and Forge IoT platform across Connected Plane, Plant, Home and Worker, an organization of about 3,000 developers and 300 operations engineers, and the primary architecture advisor to Honeywell's CTO and CEO.

Honeywell · Principal Digital Architect, Connected Enterprises

Consultant, trainer, evangelist · 2019 to now

2019

My own practice again

A distributed consultancy, staffed across India, the Philippines, California and Atlanta, delivering transformation and technical enablement to enterprises in insurance, banking, transportation, manufacturing and technology.

The Performant Professionals · Founder and Principal

2019

Two thousand engineers to certification

DevOps and cloud transformations for Fortune 500 clients, and about 2,000 engineers taken to certification at an 85% pass rate. The thirteen-week cloud program I built for Booz Allen Hamilton became its onboarding path for years.

Web Age Solutions · DevOps and CloudOps architect · through The Performant Professionals

2020

Fifty million a year in manufacturing

Platform architecture for three manufacturing customers worth $50M in annual recurring revenue, with their executives every day.

ThoughtWorks · Senior principal consultant and platform architect · through The Performant Professionals

2022

Inside the AWS certifications

Technical validation across the AWS certification portfolio, from May 2022 to March 2023.

Amazon Web Services · Certification technical architect · through The Performant Professionals

2022

The AI turn

November 2022, and the work began turning toward AI. Everything along the road from here is some part of that turn.

2023

Teaching becomes the job

Curriculum strategy across AWS, CNCF and AI, quality gate for every course and trainer, and talks on KodeKloud's behalf, including two at KubeCon Europe.

KodeKloud · Principal Training Architect

2026

KubeCon Europe, Amsterdam

Two talks at KubeCon in March: how Kubernetes actually ships, with Mumshad Mannambeth, and what beginners need to know about AI on Kubernetes.

2026

Agentic AI, in production

Working with leaders and organizations on putting AI into production without getting burned.

Accenture LearnVantage · AI Business Stream Lead for Leaders and Organizations

2026

A book and a keynote

Agentic DevOps with Claude Code came out in September, and in October the MCP Dev Summit keynote in Toronto on governing MCP for a workforce the size of a city.