Damon West

Experience

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  911 Mapping Systems Inc

  Jan 1993 - Jan 1994

  Programmer

  • Chosen for programming skills to create an add-in tool that automated the separation and annotation of streets along specified boundaries and addresses in a precision geographical mapping program.

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  Micro Center

  Jan 1994 - Jan 1995

  Computer Technician

  Superior technical skills and the ability to quickly resolve complex hardware and software problems.• Tasked to handle front-line, immediate need computer problems.• Trained new computer technicians and developed and cultivated strong customer service skills.

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  Scripps Howard

  Jan 1995 - Jan 1997

  LAN Support Technician

  Managed day-to-day operation of a 150+ user PC LAN that included server, network, desktop, OS and application level support.• Selected for demonstrated ability to design and develop an asset management database in Microsoft Access to track all computer hardware/software within corporate office.• Selected for interest and skills to be a developer of the new E. W. Scripps Intranet, which included designing homegrown browser based applications that would minimize external consulting cost and improve productivity. Show less

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  Compaq

  Jan 1997 - Jan 2002

  Global Email Systems Engineer

  • Team lead with ten reports; five in India, five US based.• Management of global environments through hands-on technical involvement, peer knowledge sharing• Key technical management role in the rollout of a global, enterprise wide Exchange 2000 solution designed to replace the existing 460,000+ user Exchange 5.5 environment.• Developed installation plan, specify hardware, direct, and document addition of additional Exchange 2000 clusters into existing environment• Piloted and managed an enterprise iPlanet messaging solution. Served as liaison between customer and vendor, offering solutions to complex integration, management and political issues.• Directly responsible in the success of a 30,000+ mailbox, global Microsoft Exchange environment by utilizing proven technical skills, streamlining redundant processes, automating former manual processes• Responsible for 24x7 support including all hardware and software installations, backups/restores, systems monitoring and management, upgrades/service packs/hotfixes, and account management Show less

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  ISI, LLC

  Jan 2003 - Jan 2004

  Engineering Manager

  • Eight direct reports• Management of highly technical engineering team that supports core business.• Successfully juggle staffing for Operations, Support and internal IT needs.• Successfully manage all departmental HR issues such as hiring, discipline, and morale.• Played key role in developing metrics and reporting that reflect efficiencies and utilization of the Engineering Department.

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  Education Lending Group, Inc. / Student Loan Xpress

  Aug 2004 - Oct 2008

  Infrastructure Engineer

  Senior infrastructure design, engineering and management.• Designed, built, and migrated company Windows infrastructure from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003.• Leveraged Active Directory and Exchange knowledge to streamline the design and increase efficiency in a newly designed Windows environment.• Responsible for day to day management of Windows 2000/2003 and Exchange 2003 enterprise infrastructure.• Acts as subject matter expert for all applications introduced into the Windows environment. Show less

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  First Financial Bank

  Oct 2008 - Oct 2018

  Senior Systems Engineer

  As a Senior Engineer on a small team, I hold primary responsibility for Exchange messaging, email archive, Load Balancers, eDiscovery, Linux servers, VMware, Cisco Blade Server infrastructure, Azure cloud initiatives, and CyberArk with secondary responsibility for Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, and file systems. I also serve as the IT liaison to our Legal department for all Technical eDiscovery matters. I approach things from an automation perspective, saving the company money by scripting manual, error prone procedures.Key Projects and Initiatives• Built the company’s first hardware load balancer environment to front our Exchange and Citrix enterprise initiatives• Designed, built, and migrated enterprise Exchange 2010 environment to Exchange 2016 on prem with complete project responsibility• Designed, installed, migrated and managed transition from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010• Played primary role in consolidating physical infrastructure to virtual with a current ~90% virtualization• Played primary role in designing, planning, and migrating two onsite datacenters to remote lights out datacenters• Designed, planned, migrated, and managed transition from discrete physical servers to HP C7000 blade infrastructure, consolidating 15+ racks to a single rack VMware host infrastructure• Designed, planned, migrated all user data, and managed transition from NearPoint to SourceOne email archives• Planned and migrated HP C7000 1Gb network modules to 10Gb Flex10 modules• Primary role in management, patching, and upgrades in VMware environment• Primary role in design, planning, migration and management of HP C7000 blade chassis to Cisco UCS blade chassis• Primary role in planning and executing annual disaster recovery test Show less

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  GE

  Oct 2018 - now

  Staff Identity Management Engineer

  Oversee massive enterprise LDAP/AD directory aggregation as 3rd tier escalation SME in a non-operational role.• SME in AWS architecture and deployment.• Tasked with redesigning outdated on-prem infrastructure and moving to AWS.• Designed infrastructure to dynamically expand and contract based on load demands, maximizing load and cost.• Architected and deployed innovative, multi-tier infrastructure that leverages multiple AWS technologies, including Autoscaling, Elastic Load Balancers, Lambda, CloudWatch, EC2, S3, Glacier, SQS, and SNS which leverage custom built AMI's.• Utilized Packer, Ansible, and custom built Cloudwatch application alerting to create an environment that scales based on customer demand, maximizing run rate cost savings.• Maximized efficiency and resiliency by utilizing the CI/CD pipeline to streamline patch management and upgrades, and dramatically decrease recovery time in the event of failure. • By using Autoscaling to adjust resources based on customer load, achieved a cost savings of $36K-$72k/year over current on-prem deployment.• Lead role in Virtual Directory Services design vision and implementation.• Lead role in guiding team toward architectural and design goals. Show less