Candidate ID: #37
Location: Herndon, VA
Clearance: DoD and IC (TS/SCI + CI Poly), DHS (Suitability, TS)

EMPLOYMENT SUMMARY

• Current/Most Recent: ~9 months (2026 – Present) as a DevOps engineer and Red Hat Linux system administrator supporting a Navy program — administers RHEL systems across on-premise and AWS environments, develops Ansible playbooks for automation (log rotation for audit and syslog, container tooling, and related tasks), manages Ansible Automation Platform, Satellite, and GitLab, builds and patches Linux machines, troubleshoots end-to-end issues, and trains and mentors junior Linux administrators
• Past: 30+ years of progressive software, systems, network, and cybersecurity engineering experience across DoD, intelligence community, DHS, federal civilian, and commercial telecom sectors, including roles as senior principal engineer, solution architect, team lead, and senior program manager — deep experience spanning cloud engineering, DevSecOps and CI/CD, big data analytics, penetration testing and vulnerability management, enterprise system and network administration, VoIP/telecom architecture, and standards development; concurrently an adjunct professor (two promotions to full professor) teaching graduate and undergraduate computing courses since 2009

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Cloud Engineering & DevOps Automation – Built an end-to-end cloud system for an IC customer and prototyped cloud services for a geospatial program; served as AWS administrator and help desk lead configuring and troubleshooting VPCs, subnets, endpoints, security groups, Identity Center, IAM users/roles/policies, access keys, SSM, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, EventBridge, Lambda, and Parameter Store; worked in Kubernetes, OpenShift, GitLab CI/CD, ServiceNow, and REST API automation; and designed and taught hands-on cloud lab curriculum at the graduate level for six years
• Cybersecurity Engineering & Offensive Security – Performed red team penetration testing and developed offensive tooling on Kali Linux using Cobalt Strike, Aggressor scripts, and Python; ran source code and infrastructure vulnerability scanning with Fortify, Checkmarx, Sonatype Nexus, SonarQube, Nessus, and Twistlock across Windows and Linux in multiple languages; established a trusted CA and signed TLS/SSL certificates inside a closed environment; remediated STIG/SCAP and CIS benchmark findings; and defined RMF and FedRAMP requirements
• Big Data & Analytics Platform Engineering – Built an Elasticsearch cluster and cloud testing environment from scratch as team lead, developed distributed and parallel processing for a big data lake, and filtered and parsed data across Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and multiple Splunk tiers, replacing a commercial data pipeline product; performed data analysis on a fielded Army big data platform involving Hadoop, NiFi, threat hunt, feed health, and triage workflows, and authored the associated test plan; and developed a machine learning proposal and prototype for cybersecurity threat detection
• Systems, Network & Communications Engineering – Served nine years as a lead communications engineer for a federally funded R&D center, leading cloud analysis for network integrated evaluations and a joint mobility gateway effort, comparing six military VoIP implementations, authoring service descriptions, dial plan trade studies, and a service-wide VoIP strategic roadmap, and defining SATCOM and combatant command requirements; wrote market surveys, security master plans, and access network requirements for a homeland security customer; and won $175K in internal innovation grants to prototype secure VoIP over cellular as a replacement for legacy government secure phones
• Product Architecture, Standards & Intellectual Property – Architected carrier-class VoIP media gateways and Class 5 switch interfaces, wrote system specifications and high-level software designs, and led development teams in C/C++ on real-time operating systems; served as senior program manager for a cable telephony standards portfolio and managed twelve architects implementing those features; contributed to international telecom standards working groups; wrote eight funding proposals with six returning grants in excess of $1M; and enhanced video and DSP performance across multiple encoder platforms
• Teaching & Technical Leadership – Taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Java programming, information technology systems, computer hardware and software architecture, computer forensics, network security, network communications, and project management across four universities; designed multiple courses from scratch; earned repeated Teacher of the Year nominations; and delivered network security, VoIP essentials, and VoIP security instruction to federal and IC audiences

CREDENTIALS

• Ph.D. Industrial Engineering; M.S. Computer Science / Telecommunications; doctoral candidate (passed qualifying exam), Computer Science / Telecommunications; M.B.A.; B.A. Law with education minor. Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH); CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP); CompTIA Cloud+ (in progress). Bootcamp and vendor training in Splunk, AWS solution architecture, machine learning, penetration testing, CISSP, Red Hat Linux administration, Ansible, Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD, OpenShift, ServiceNow, and computer forensics. Author of a 1992 networking textbook and 26 conference papers; nine granted patents across multiple international families.