Director Of Information Technology Deep knowledge in AWS Azure

PROFILE

A passionate leader of high producing, cohesive technology teams that lift more than their weight, specialize in driving value across the board through system consolidation and standardization, quality vendor management, strategic cost discipline, and high availability infrastructure. Focus is in providing superior service delivery to stakeholders and enabling business efficiency and driving continuous improvement. Excel at cultivating and nurturing collaborative relationships with employees, management, and executives, while building consensus across all organizational levels.

Leadership

Developed from-scratch Customer Support (CSM) and Professional Services departments while providing deep leadership and mentorship experience to all staff members.

Data-driven, outcome-oriented servant leadership that attracts the strongest talent and empowers them to do the best work of their career, with a strong desire to learn, grow, and develop as the company grows.

Manage and mentor a team of technology and business professionals, fostering collaboration and a positive workplace.

IT Operations & Infrastructure

Oversee the daily IT operations, ensuring reliability, performance, and security of all networks, server, and cloud infrastructure and are configured for optimal performance, availability, and scalability.

Support engineering, finance, and other departments by aligning IT resources to business objectives.

Strong hands-on experience working with a broad range of technologies.

Cybersecurity

Implement and monitor comprehensive information security plans, ensuring alignment with NIST, HIPPA, Hi-Trust, and other relevant standards.

Enforce security policies, especially around export-controlled data, including network segmentation, access controls, and data encryption. Ensure compliance with all regulatory requirements.

Develop and update risk assessments, ensuring that IT and cybersecurity risks are identified, prioritized, and mitigated.

Compliance & Risk Management

Ensure compliance with all regulatory requirements including the NIST cybersecurity frameworks

Assist in audits and assessments to validate IT and cybersecurity readiness, ensuring that companies can meet all necessary compliance obligations.

Develop and update risk assessments, ensuring that IT and cybersecurity risks are identified, prioritized, and mitigated.

EDUCATION \ CERTIFICATIONS

University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Arkansas Bachelor of Science in Information Systems

Certified Information Systems Security Professional Certified Novell Administrator

Microsoft MCITP Citrix Certified Administrator

Microsoft MCTS Microsoft MCDBA

Microsoft MCSE

WORK HISTORY

Professional Medical Services \ Elevate Patient Financial Services (Healthcare & Medical Billing)

Fort Worth, Texas

Director, Information Technology Services May 2019 – present

Hands-on leadership style while leading a large national team (CSM, PS, PSE, SD, etc.) to ensure the smooth and continuous operation of the infrastructure that powers the business.

Deep technical knowledge and experience in AWS & Azure, and on-premises environments.

Ensure that infrastructure operations are meeting service levels and are optimized and continually improved, with a focus on minimizing any problems with the day-to-day infrastructure delivery of services.

Diagnosed and resolved complex hardware, software, and connectivity problems.

Worked with the executive leadership to develop short and long-term plans and budgets for the infrastructure team.

Ensured the appropriate security governances and controls were in place and appropriate for the risk profile of the company

Assisted in the development and implementation of Fed Ramp (medium) certification.

Deep broad technical knowledge across all major SaaS and on-premises applications.

Represented all constituents related to use case, delivery, and support of the companies’ offerings.

Develop and managed the execution of detailed project plans for the implementation, upgrade, and customization of platform to meet/exceed customer requirements.

Responsible for driving project execution to ensure on-time delivery and customer satisfaction.

Participate in RFP activities to secure additional business within the commercial and federal markets.

Support system architecture definition, hardware/software specification and/or design, implementation, testing, client training, problem identification, and solution deployment.

Responsible for capacity planning, resource allocation, and budgeting efforts across the global team.

Updated and developed ongoing policies and procedures in adherence to various security audits (PCI, HIPPA, Hi-Trust)

Deep knowledge and experience within the SIEM and SOAR products such as Devo Technology, Google, Palo Alto, etc. Experience in developing complex SOAR playbooks (xSOAR).

Devo Technology (Cybersecurity, SIEM, SOAR, UEBA, AI)

Boston, MA (remote)

Global Director, Professional Services July 2022 – January 2025

Manage global technical project manager and engineering teams across multiple global markets (US, EMEA, APAC)

Supporting pre-sales processes and working with sales and account management professionals to win new business.

Assisted in the development and implementation of Fed Ramp (medium) certification.

Deep broad technical knowledge across all major SaaS and on-premises applications.

Assisted and updated process to improve product offerings and influence new development for the product pipeline.

Represented all constituents related to use case, delivery, and support of the companies’ offerings.

Responsible for building and scaling delivery, implementation and security consulting services.

Develop and managed the execution of detailed project plans for the implementation, upgrade, and customization of platform to meet/exceed customer requirements.

Responsible for driving project execution to ensure on-time delivery and customer satisfaction.

Participate in RFP activities to secure additional business within the commercial and federal markets.

Facilitating cross-functional coordination with presales, professional services, customer success, cloud operations and customer support.

Support system architecture definition, hardware/software specification and/or design, implementation, testing, client training, problem identification, and solution deployment.

Assisted in pre and post sales engagements by participating in sales scoping calls, coordinating delivery efforts during POCs, trials, and production cutovers.

Responsible for capacity planning, resource allocation, and budgeting efforts across the global Professional Services team.

Binary Defense (Managed Security Services Provider)

Dallas, Texas

IT Manager – Global Operations May 2015 – May 2019

Maintained and supported a global infrastructure team of twelve, with offices in Dallas, San Francisco, London, and Singapore.

Experienced in designing and deploying distributed systems architectures in a heterogeneous environment, including Azure and AWS, in an environment that provides minimal downtime for the primary business applications and critical users.

Oversaw clustered infrastructure of applications and system servers operating in a hybrid Active Directory domain (on-premises and Azure).

Installed and maintained multiple Exchange servers operating at Exchange 2010 through Exchange 2016, within both onsite and hybrid premises.

Developed strategic plans to align the internal network with the current network security planning recommendations.

Analyzed existing daily procedures for efficiency and effectiveness, determine operational requirements for installation, operation, and maintenance of back-office and client systems.

Additional responsibilities included planning system maintenance and upgrades utilizing automated software update services, maintaining shadow file services, as well as disaster recovery and business continuity procedures

Documentation of threats and remediation steps were significant roles in this project while working with the server owners and business administrators to maintain system availability.

Tarrant Technology Partners (Managed Services Provider)

Fort Worth, Texas

Sr. Infrastructure Engineer May 2010 – May 2015

Responsible for the development and support of multiple media to large networks including back-office environments compromising of Windows servers, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL.

Extensive experience with the design, implementation, and support domain infrastructures including GPO’s, domain trusts, DNS, and network security.

Setup and maintain multiple WAN links to multiple clients, offering network services while maximizing data security through multiple levels of encryption.

Dedicated to the handling of networking & database administration with technical expertise in the implementation, operations and support functions.

Coordinated system/requirement analysis for understanding client business processes and mapping them to required framework standards.

Responsibilities included the creation, deployment, and management of over 2,000 servers within a virtual (Hyper-V and Citrix) environment.

Configured and supported Active Roles Server to control access and change management within an Active Directory multi-domain environment.

Primary responsibilities also included leading the vulnerability management initiatives utilizing the Nessus scanning suite for internal scans (created custom policies dependent on host location) while utilizing 3rd party vendors for external vulnerability testing.

myIT.com (Managed Services Provider)

Bedford, Texas

Lead Engineer / Lead Virtualization Engineer November 2008 - April 2010

Designed and Configuring the WAN infrastructure, including the redesign of internet connectivity infrastructure for meeting bandwidth requirements.

Successfully implemented Checkpoint Firewalls to protect and authenticate local-net and DMZ environments.

Successfully designed policies, NAT and anti-spoofing for internal and external networks, as well as Internet gateways. Configured and worked on Inbound and outbound Load balancer using product called Link Proof.

Implemented and supported fiber channel disk arrays with Dell Power vault 650F storage network arrays. Evaluated and created plans to deploy Windows Advanced server in a separate domain (Active Directory Services), to be integrated into an existing environment once the production environment was ready to migrate to Windows the ADS models.

Extensive experience in critical data center operations and standard operating principles within a virtual infrastructure.

Extensive experience in VMware technologies such as Six, VCenter, Citrix technologies such as Xantippe, EServer, and HDX. Windows Hyper-V, VMware sphere, and EServer experience.

Experience with enterprise hardware and technologies including storage controllers, remote management cards, enterprise storage solutions including iSCSI, FC, NAS, and other leading technologies.

Microsoft (Mobile device software development)

Plano, Texas

Senior Systems Engineer April 2004 - Nov 2008

Responsibilities include dual responsibility for the management of business operations and Information Systems designed to process, track, and report on the daily stability of the environment.

Deploy and maintain VMWare infrastructure which includes approximately 300 virtual servers and reviewing all physical and legacy servers to determine if they would be candidates for server virtualization, which will reduce potential expenses by de-commissioning the physical hardware.

Accountable for the management of the financial direction of the department including budget forecasting, cost benefit analysis, license discovery and cost negotiations with multiple vendors to obtain the best cost for the company.

Managed a staff of seven while operating systems uptime over 99%. Responsibilities included the discovery of Active Directory OU and GPO discovery, planning best practices and implementing network changes that increase both system and end-user efficiency

LinkedIn Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/dennyhixson

Legacy positions, references and letters of recommendation available upon request.

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