Director of IT

• Nov 2020 - Present

Senior Specialist, IT Infrastructure

• Nov 2015 - Sep 2019

Part of a multiple mandate multinational team responsible for maintaining the round-the-clock enterprise technology for the hedging desk, its development team, support staff and executive suite of the Chief Investment Office - Capital Markets Hedging Group. Activities consisted of performing an operational (DevOps) role in the Agile (SDLC) development of a critical analytic website, compute of market feeds, vendor initiatives, communications and infrastructure support. Overnight responsibilities focused on monitoring delivery and ingestion of the market feeds and compute processes that yielded the models used by traders. • Lead technical oversight for the CIO Hedging Trade Desk in charge of safeguarding Prudential’s assets. • Executed on project ownership managing cross-functional initiatives. Migrated GPU compute scalability to AWS cloud, on boarded Dynamo (CRM), and migrations of existing monolithic architectures to microservices • Extended operational DevOps role in an Agile SDLC environment developing critical proprietary tools. • Stabilized competing deployment schedules, Verisign certificate renewal, Jenkins deployments, SVN / GIT version control, Jira audit and artifact collection, and HPC Grid / NVidia GPU Cluster resources. • Standardized oversight of communications: IPC Turrets, IOS / Android mobile devices and services. • Accountable for the market feeds, data aggregation, and unerring continuation of the overnight processing. • Enhanced group efficiency considerably by adapting Jira to help communicate and track work. • Launched a comprehensive “How-To” procedure library and training materials for dissemination. Show less

Manager - Technical Administrator

• Mar 2011 - Nov 2015

Manager and primary Project Manager responsible for all technology functions and team support services for the institutional investor agency trading desk. Acted as liaison and SME in communicating its technology needs to the business and implementing those strategic enterprise initiatives and tactical projects as needed. • Oversaw large technology project initiatives including HQ office and DC move and renovation, DR collocation, IPC Unigy Turret V2 upgrade, FIX line consolidation, and VMWare implementation. • Led the evaluation and vetting of an EMS / OMS provider – Bloomberg, Fidessa, and Mixit. • Leveraged vendor management and contract negotiation skills to negotiate an $85K annual savings on the OMS contract and restructured a turret support contract saving $20K annually. • Reduced FIX costs by about $40,000 in 2012, $50,000 in 2013 and another $30,000 for 2015. • Answerable for project team performance metrics and conducting staff member reviews. Show less

Independent Consultant Manager - Network / Systems Administrator

• Apr 2009 - Mar 2011

Member of a support team focused on keeping the commodities buy-side trading desk and portfolio managers up and running while simultaneously executing the roll out of desktop upgrades to Thin Client Blade technology. • Performed 500+ Blade migrations at 3 locations using HP Thin Client GT7725 and HP ProLiant XW460C Blades. • Participated in business continuity and disaster recovery planning teams. • Setup designated locations for video conferencing for normal use as a natural extension of DR planning. • Performed disaster recovery remote site upgrade and user acceptance testing for 250 critical personnel. • Provide support for over 800 additional domestic and international back office business personnel. • Managed and coordinated new hire setup and deployments including AD and user access provisioning. Show less

Network Systems Administrator

• Jun 2007 - Jan 2009

Member of a team ensuring the round-the-clock maintenance and problem resolution for a demanding buy-side trading desk, portfolio managers, Home Office, and supporting personnel in multiple locations. Duties focused on end to end trade room functionality, desk-side and workstation support, network connectivity, back office infrastructure, communications (BES, IPC Turret, Avaya phone system), and server hardware functionality. • Performed all data center hardware installations, configurations, troubleshooting, and repairs. • Maintained application support for the major market data systems: Bloomberg, Eze Castle, ITG, Reuters. • Coordinated application updates and hardware projects with vendor companies such as IPC, EZE, and Oasys. • Managed a $130,000 HVAC installation / renovation project in the trading room. • Provided IQMX IPC Turret system support – negotiated $15,000 in contract cost savings. • Provided AD administration, logon script changes, and group policy updates. • Implemented infrastructure and application Quality of Service (QOS) reports. • Partnered with building management and outside vendors to handle all facility requests. Show less

Lead LAN Support Specialist

• Jun 1999 - May 2007

Quality Assurance Division: Lead LAN Support Specialist Senior Client Server Support Specialist Responsible for data center, 3rd level escalation support, mentoring junior staff, and making project recommendations to management. • Standardized equipment and procedures resulting in a 60% reduction in reported incidents. • Streamlined helpdesk for more sophisticated and efficient performance. • Rack, maintain, troubleshoot and repair server hardware and configurations for about 100 machines. • Provide project management leadership for group during rollouts and new implementations. • Delivered technology presentations and seminars for management, clients and peers. • Designed and built the first fully functional backup and recovery environment for the group. • Built and maintained clustered intranet web server farm. • Developed script and batch file tools for automating tasks. • Administrator of Serena Team Track defect tracking system. Show less

Technical Proficiencies:

• 1999 - 1999

Operating System Environment: AWS virtualization, VMWare virtualization, Windows XP / 7 / 10, Linux - Ubuntu / Red Hat, Windows Server 2008 R2 / 2012 R2, Mainframe TSO, JCL. Remote monitoring and management (RMM): Active Directory (AD) administration – security, login scripts, group policy, Nagios, Chrome Remote Desktop, Dameware RAS, pcAnywhere, RDP, LogMeIn, LANDesk, IBM Host on Demand MF emulator, Rumba, HP OpManager / iLO. Software: AWS cloud, Microsoft - Office (16 / 365), Exchange Server 2013, SQL Server 2016 / Express / Management Studio (SSMS), RIS, PXE, Ghost, WSUS, and WDS, Skype, Lotus Notes, Avaya, AIM, MS-DOS, Veritas, DataStax Cassandra, Dynamo SaaS-CRM, Order management Systems (EMS/OMS) – Bloomberg (Professional, Terminal, Anywhere, B-Unit), Mixit, Fidessa, Eze Trader Console, Reuters Bridge, Oasys Allocations, ITG, ISE, Quodd. DevOps: SDLC Methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, Lean), Jenkins, Apache Subversion Client - Tortoise SVN Version Control System (VCS), GIT, Atlassian Jira / Confluence, Remedy, Footprints, Apache Tomcat, Verisign, WinSCP, Putty, FileZilla. Networking / Communications: IPC Unigy Turret Phone System and Legacy IQMX, ARD’s, and FIX connections, market data pipes, Polycom, PBX / POTS lines, analog / digital phone systems, Avaya System Administration of Intuity / Definity phone and voicemail, video conferencing, RSA, VPN, SSH / Telnet, Terminal Emulation, Adic RMU, BES. Hardware: Server Hardware, IBM racks, IBM, HP, Compaq and Dell - PC / Laptop / Servers and compatibles, Microsoft HPC compute grid and GPU clusters, RAID Arrays, Dell Power Vault DLT tape drives, Adic Scalar 100 Tape Library SDLT \ DLT, Mirage burners. Show less