Engineer Project

Alan W. Simpson

**Dublin Drive

Granite City, IL 62040

Cell: 618-***-****

*********@*****.***

EXPERIENCE

Vice President, Information Technology

1st MidAmerica Credit Union, Wood River IL 11/07 – Present

Duties:

Manage designing and maintaining of the network / telephony and security systems for fourteen branches in Illinois, Missouri and the data center for the Credit Union.

Maintain IT vendor relationships and the IT budget for the Credit Union.

Work closely with the CEO, presenting design and budgetary ideas to the Credit Union board of directors.

Act as the security officer for the credit union, working closely with law enforcement officials and the FBI on scams, hacks, and intrusion attempts presented to the Credit Union.

Accomplishments at 1st MidAmerica Credit Union:

Completed internal and external audit by 3rd party vendor Dec 2015. Passed all testing with comments made that 1stMidAmerica’s IT was in his top 5 for most secure he had evaluated.

Merged with 6 Credit Unions with a total replacement of all IT systems. The latest being 65 million in assets. Merged all date from their core processors to ours. Completed on time on budget with no down time from merger. Transition was seamless to the members.

In 2012, 1st MidAmerica had its first NCUA IT audit in the history of the Credit Union. There were no recommendations found.

Re-designed the outdated problematic network, a total redesign that replaced the complete network. The project moved from a hosted solution that took up to a week to receive a report to an in-house system that generated a report in minutes. Added all routers/ switches at the main core and all branches with new Cisco equipment. Replaced the current firewall/security systems with Cisco ASA Firewalls, Iron Port spam filtering and Websense URL filtering.

Design a DR plan and redundancies for failover in all servers/networks.

Installation of a managed AT&T MPLS network to all branches with redundant internet circuits for failover.

Implemented IT policies and procedures to include internet usage, email retention, password security, and safe guarding of company information.

Designed and installed cable plant, network, and connectivity to new branches.

Designed and implemented a Cisco Voice-Over IP phone system to include the call center and voice recordings.

Moved to a total in-house maintenance plan, cutting costs of bringing outside vendors in on work that the IT staff can accomplish.

Installed network monitoring tools and first alert IDS/IPS to include Websense, Iron Port, Qualys, Trip Wire, and Cisco ASA IPS so the Credit Union is now proactive instead of reactive.

Designed and built out a 1000 sq. ft. data center with generator and battery backup to ensure 24/7 operations in the event of a disaster.

In the time spent at 1stMidAmerica, I have been the key point for a savings of over $500,000 for vendors not meeting SLA’s, contract negotiations, and the build out of the data center.

Director, Technical Services, Network, Telecommunications and DSA

Horace Mann Companies - Springfield, IL 12/05 – 11/07

Duties:

Oversaw administration of associates, consultants and third party vendors.

Directed projects dealing with system stability, availability, performance and security of the network and telecom systems.

Oversaw and directed, in conjunction with network/telecom development project managers, the analysis of business and technical requirements, development of current and future growth needs, and the design and implementation of automated systems solutions.

Instituted controls to keep projects on track, processed associate reviews and merit increases in a timely fashion, and assisted in developing departmental budgets.

Responded to corporate and field operations based issues, changed priorities and escalated issues where appropriate, and kept all interested parties abreast of developments and decisions in a timely fashion.

Established close working relationships with other functional group leaders and IT departments, took direction from the VP of Technical Services and the CIO, and established clear executable plans to continue to provide associates with technical solutions to fulfill their business and customers' expectations.

Participated with peers, the VP of Technical Services, and the CIO in strategic planning for systems that cater for future company growth and new company ventures.

Recruited, motivated, and managed the system’s infrastructure associates and ensured a professional and productive work environment for the group.

Accomplishments at Horace Mann Companies:

Replaced WAN circuits from AT&T to Sprint which involved reconfiguring multiple pieces of equipment to match the new WAN circuit. From internal platforms to remote and outside vendor links.

Replaced CORE infrastructure by removing Cabletron infrastructure with dual Cisco 6509’s. At this time we also dual homed the data center servers to Gigabit and gave them a failover path in case of outages.

Completely rewired home office, which involved replacing the old wire infrastructure that was category 5 wiring with category 6 wiring. We recovered all old wiring then mapped out and replaced with category 6 and fiber cable. The project covered six floors, the basement, and the data center. We consumed 600,000 feet of wire and 200,000 feet of fiber.

Replaced all closet switches with Cisco 3750 POE managed switches, covering six floors, the basement in the main building, and three other buildings, one with three floors, and two single-story buildings. Overall, it consisted of configuring and implementing over 127 switches.

Replaced the old Siemens telephone switch with VOIP, covering four main buildings and seven remote locations. Overall, we designed and implemented a network of over 1400 phones. We also designed and implemented call centers and help desks with the ability of skills-based routing and true real-time voice recording. This was done on the Cisco platform using all Cisco devices. In this plan, we also designed and implemented a disaster recovery system that the company never had before.

Leveraged partnerships with vendors to drive technology advancement resulting in business value for customers.

Designed and implemented wireless networking to the company, wiring two buildings to utilize a Cisco wireless network. Implemented a point-to-point wireless bridge so a building that was unable to install fiber could take advantage of the higher speed networks (performed on a Cisco platform), and utilized the Odyssey client for secure logins.

Designed and purchased the equipment to build out a disaster recovery site. Implemented in early 2007, it gave the ability for the telephony and network area to failover without interruption of service to the company.

Designed and purchased equipment to enable agents to take advantage of the VOIP system and VPN network to bring a substantial savings to the company.

Designed and project managed new data center to ensure no outage whatsoever.

Sr. Project Engineer

AT&T at MasterCard International - Wentzville, MO 01/01 - 12/05

Duties:

Served as Project Engineer for connectivity of all MasterCard networks throughout Asia and Australia using the Cisco platform.

Recommended cost saving upgrades and deletions to the network. Held weekly Monday night conference calls to communicate these changes to clients overseas.

Managed completion of 192 complex implementation activities from receiving the request from client, designing and ordering equipment and circuits, supervising delivery, and, finally, installation and implementation. Followed by checks and services for certification of these sites.

Setup and managed other multiple node WAN projects for MasterCard with over 250 sites worldwide.

Accomplishments at AT&T at MasterCard Int.:

Serving as Project Engineer for all of Asia and Australia, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and others, I adjusted to language and cultural differences, and often rearranged my schedule to accommodate for time zone differences.

Implemented and managed the network refresh project for the Asian region which increased the configuration change activities significantly over previous years without impacting normal business cycle activities for the region.

Implemented the new multi-million dollar Australia VPN Project through transition periods in procurement COE and in procurement procedures from leased hardware to purchased.

LAN/WAN Engineer, Tier 3

Edward Jones - Maryland Heights, MO 02/00- 12/00

Senior Network Engineer II

ATT Solutions Client Support Center - Durham, NC 11/99 - 02/00

Senior Network Analyst/Technical Manager IV

Illinois State Department of Transportation - Springfield, IL 06/99 - 11/99

Information Technology Specialist

Illini Technology, Inc. - Springfield, IL 07/98 - 05/99

Owner

Tech Pro Computing - Macomb, IL 09/97 - 07/98

I.S. Team Leader/Hardware Manager

Methode Electronics - Carthage, IL 10/95 - 09/97

Owner

Tech Pro Electronics, Inc. - Springfield, IL 04/93 - 02/95

Digital Computer Mechanic/Electronics Mechanic

Department Military Affairs 09/86 - 04/94

(27F) Computer Radar Technician

US Army, 101st Airborne Division - Ft. Campbell, KY 12/80 - 12/84

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