Accelerated Personal Growth to Engineering Management within a year - After only 1 year in the SE role, promoted to SEM to lead SLED Southwest. Provided guidance and coaching early on to support my peers when in the SE role. Helped grow those around me to be successful and grow into SE2, Sr. SE, and eventually SEM roles.
Brokered relationships to build a more successful Palo Alto Networks - Worked with key internal parties to provide feedback to build better marketing for events, improve our products for the SLED market, and overall increase the visibility of SLED at Palo Alto Networks internally and with our customers.
SE Enablement - Work with the SE Enablement team regularly to provide feedback on tools, training, and other enablement materials and their efficacy in onboarding engineers. Achieved a Subject Matter Expert badge with the Certification team in providing guidance around the PSE Professional exams.
Recognition - In my first year as an SE, rated as one of the top 3 engineers in all Enterprise West. Exceptional rating the past two years as an SE Manager. Recognized as a thought leader in SLED Nationwide and have ongoing relationships with Product Management around building our products and telling a story for SLED-focused success.
Principal Solutions Architect, SLED
Palo Alto Networks, Santa Clara, CA, March 2020 - Present
Build bridges between strong security controls and realistic business challenges and needs. Partner with the 50 States, 50 largest municipalities, 50 largest K12 school districts, and 100 largest R1 universities. Map security controls to capabilities to drive outcomes. Work with peer Solutions Architects to build mapping to CISA guidance and grants. Provided executive-level architecture guidance to C-levels within our partnerships.
Systems Engineering Manager, SLED
Palo Alto Networks, Santa Clara, CA, August 2017 - March 2020
Built the SLED California, Pacific, and Southwest team, successfully hiring 8 new engineers into the business. Coached my team in the 7 habits of highly effective SEs. Provided support and brokered relationships to help win multi-million dollar deals. Worked with SLED leadership to build out SLED focused whitepapers and other customer-facing collateral; built CJIS compliance documentation as well as pre-breach checklist to drive speedboat pipeline; also built out Erate and other funding documentation and requests for our Funds for Learning team. Hosted and built webinars with the Southwest engineers to enable business continuity and remote learning.
Systems Engineer, Named SLED, Los Angeles
Palo Alto Networks, Santa Clara, CA, July 2016 - August 2017
Part of a sales team that was responsible for selling Palo Alto Networks products into SLED accounts in the Greater Los Angeles area. My primary functions were to work with new and existing customers to assist them in better understanding why Palo Alto Networks products are a perfect fit for their environment. Ancillary goals include improving the Palo Alto Networks pitch for the SLED market, improving the demo systems for SLED specific challenges, and providing support to my fellow Systems Engineers utilizing my past 13 years working in IT in the SLED vertical.
Network Manager
Moreno Valley Unified School District, Moreno Valley, CA
In charge of the maintenance, upgrades, and deployment of the District’s Cisco and Palo Alto Networks infrastructure devices. Co-managed a team of 4 technical leads and 10 technicians. Supported 2 PAN-5060 next-gen firewalls in a hot/cold spare config. Planned, purchased, and deployed 2000 new Cisco access points and 1000 new Cisco switches to support over 27,000 Chromebooks district-wide.
Student Information Systems Administrator
Moreno Valley Unified School District, Moreno Valley, CA
In charge of maintenance and support of a web-based student information system used to track the educational information of over 36,000 students spread out over 42 sites. Co-managed a team of 4 technical leads and 10 technicians.
Network Engineer
Menifee Union School District, Menifee, CA
Technical lead in charge of over 35 servers as well as over 120 network infrastructure devices. Project lead on planning, purchasing, and deployment of technology for 3 new schools.
Computer Technician
Moreno Valley Unified School District, Moreno Valley, CA
2007 California State University at San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA
B.S. in Computer Science, June 2007, Departmental Honors
Coursework included: Database Systems, Advanced Computer Architecture, Numerical Computation, Operating Systems, Software Engineering. Dean’s list multiple quarters. Graduated with Departmental Honors. On-the-fly learning of new programming languages and methods for upper-level classes. As Documentation Team Manage for Software Engineering, I established a basis to achieve “Level 3: Defined” at Carnegie Mellon University's Capability Maturity Model for our “business.”
In Progress, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA
M.S. in Cyber Security Operations and Leadership, Expected April 2022
Coursework includes: Applied Cryptography, Cyber Security Operational Policy, Management and Cyber Security, Secure Software Design and Development, Network Visualization and Vulnerability Detection, Cyber Intelligence, Cyber Incident Response. Courses are designed to provide individuals with the knowledge they need to lead cybersecurity teams and build the operations necessary to properly implement a holistic cyber security posture in an organization.