Stephen Ford, PMP
***********.***@*****.*** linkedin.com/in/fordste 678-***-**** Atlanta, GA, 30329
IT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT MANAGER
IT infrastructure project manager with 20+ years of experience in optimizing datacenters and business processes. Prioritizes a servant style leadership while bringing authoritarian leadership when needed. Focuses on a holistic approach to projects, seeing how choices made today impact customers tomorrow. Passionate about building teams at all levels of an organization, resulting in projects meeting the triple constraints of cost, scope, and time.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Meeting Facilitation
Disaster Recovery
Infrastructure Design
Generating WBS
Data Protection
System Standardization
Procurement
Security
Virtualization
Microsoft Project
Root Cause Analysis
Patch management
Scrum Agile Lean Waterfall Methodologies
Performance Monitoring and Tuning
Cross functional Team Collaboration
Project Management
Vendor Relations
Sense of Humor
Technical Specifications and Requirements Gathering
Managing multiple datacenters
Managing 1000+ servers
EXPERIENCE
LIAISON TECHNOLOGIES - Alpharetta, GA 04/16 – 11/17
SENIOR SYSTEM ENGINEER
Salvaged a datacenter migration which was 2 years behind the closure date saving the company $300K/year:
Took over an eight-month overdue service migration project and successfully closed it in 6 weeks. Upon closure, the customer renewed and expanded their $2M/year contract to $2.4M/year.
Took over the migration of the company’s core revenue generating services (70% of the company’s $89M annual revenue) across datacenters. I successfully led the closure of the project with a team of 25 personnel across 6 departments in 9 months.
Led 5 cross-functional teams with 20 personnel in initiatives to standardize IT infrastructure:
Led working sessions with developers, QA, networking, application engineers and DevOps to identify and eliminate infrastructure bottle necks that improved system stability and performance.
Automated and standardized server and Oracle database deployments cutting deployment times by 75%.
GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY - Atlanta, GA 08/07 – 04/16
INFRASTRUTURE ENGINEER LEAD, CENTRAL IT
Assistant manager of nine-person team:
Conducted first and second-round interviews
Helped define staff annual goals and conducted performance reviews
Managed vendor relations including RFQs, SOWs and price negotiations
Coordinated projects across team members and departments
Led the datacenter merger of GSU and Georgia Perimeter College:
Conducted fact finding working sessions with negative stake holders
Juggled multiple projects to meet a unified student registration system deadline
Led the creation of a Disaster Recovery Datacenter for GSU:
Generated WBS showing server, storage and network deliverables to support a DR site
Supervised procurements to comply with state regulations
Technical liaison to the Board of Regents University System of Georgia:
Evaluated and recommended the use of EMC Atmos for a cloud storage solution for universities and colleges in the State of Georgia
Evaluated and rejected the use of EMC Avamar for a data protection solution for universities and colleges in the State of Georgia
Participated in state level annual meetings to prioritize and budget projects
SPELMAN COLLEGE – Atlanta, GA 07/01 – 08/06
SYSTEMS ENGINEER
Designed and refreshed hardware of the college’s core infrastructure twice with minimal downtime
Worked closely with the faculty, staff and students of the Computer Science department and helped with senior projects and scholastic events
AUBURN UNIVERSITY – Auburn, AL 09/97 – 07/01
SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR, COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR, COLLEGE OF VETERINARY MEDICINE
EDUCATION
Master of Science in Computer Science – Auburn University
Thesis: Use of Java in Middle-Ware for Distributed Databases
Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering– Auburn University
ADVANCED CERTIFICATIONS AND TRAINING
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Landmark Team, Management, and Leadership Program