Principal Engineer: Advanced Technical Solutions & Operations

Cohesity
May 2018 – Present · 4 yrs 4 mos

More than 160 field engagements for enterprise, SLED, federal, international, and mid-market prospects covering NAS, customer demos, sizing lab configuration, and qualification of opportunities based on features and performance. Developed and maintained virtualized demo labs with step-by-step instructions and REST automation for Kubernetes backup and NAS (SmartFiles). Reviewed and tested additional demo labs. Presented at the sales engineering summit twice. Served as a track lead and session reviewer. Ran introductory labs for and presented to early-stage prospects. Trained sales engineers during 16 separate on-boarding classes on sizing, NAS, POCs, and networking. Worked with legal and sales operations teams to develop Litmos training programs for sizing, NAS, and POCs. Evaluated and reviewed product guarantees. Measured NAS performance. Developed automation for repeatable performance measurement. Worked with engineering, technical marketing, and product management teams to develop performance test plans. Reviewed performance collateral, comparing it against my results, and troubleshot issues with engineering tests. Assisted customers, support, and SEs with performance problems. Used Google Apps Script to create a POC documentation automation tool, which has been used for over 200 POCs. Evaluated POC tools, comparing them against each other and the automated process I created. Worked with test plan developers and SE leaders to develop POC best practices and proof of value. Planned and oversaw data mapping between the newer POC tool and Salesforce. Wrote selection criteria for the newer POC tool and made a purchasing recommendation. Filed more than 20 product bugs for preview and production releases. Documented NAS sizing requirements and recommended sources of sizing data. Assisted in preparation for analyst calls. Presented on partner webcasts. Organized and ran a pre-sales NAS working group for exchanging sales tactics, product enhancements and technical issues.

VxFlex OS (formerly ScaleIO) Principal Technical Marketing Engineer

Dell EMC
Mar 2016 – May 2018 · 2 yrs 3 mos

Published white papers and demo videos. Reviewed technical content for accuracy and writing quality. Built hyper-converged clusters on ESXi and two-layer clusters on Linux. Troubleshot storage problems on multiple hardware platforms and media types. Automated setup with PowerShell. Supported and appeared on webcasts. Coordinated with engineering, product marketing, and product management teams. Gave conference presentations. Staffed conference booths. Maintained YouTube channel.

Technical Marketing Engineer

NetApp
Sep 2012 – Mar 2016 · 3 yrs 7 mos

Acted as a field and customer facing clustered Data ONTAP subject matter expert. Maintained technical reports and FAQs. Worked with product managers and engineers to understand and describe new functionality. Presented clustered Data ONTAP to prospects, customers, and partners during more than 90 executive briefings. Awarded FY15Q4 Executive Briefing Center Presenter of the Quarter. Worked with internal early adopters to develop best practices. Presented 36 technical sessions at 9 conferences to audiences as large as 200 people. Reviewed peer collateral and presentations. Wrote and maintained introductory technical presentations for customers and sales engineers. Developed animations to illustrate product functionality. Presented release launch webcasts. Developed booth demos. Staffed conference booths. Developed virtualized training labs.

Filesystem Performance Measurement Engineer

NetApp
Jan 2006 – Sep 2012 · 6 yrs 9 mos

Measured the performance of Data ONTAP. Investigated regressions. Filed bugs. Assisted with support escalations. Supported more than 180 lab users. Maintained over 50,000 lines of TCL code, 20,000 lines of Perl code, and 80,000 lines of Python code. Followed agile software development practices, including test driven development and iterative development. Reviewed peer code changes. Wrote automation for and measured the performance of advanced Data ONTAP features, including virtual storage appliance, striped volumes, scalable SAN, FlexCache, and integrated antivirus. Performed maintenance and troubleshooting tasks on Force10, Brocade, and Cisco switches. Analyzed lab utilization. Wrote and deployed code that improved lab efficiency by 35%. Performed ad-hoc database searches and data mining. Provided developer requested automation changes. Interviewed candidates. Wrote storage failover performance reporting utilities. Tuned and measured appliance I/O for Performance Quick Reference (PQR) reports.

Technical Support and Escalations Engineer

NetApp
DEC 2003 – JAN 2006 · 2 YRS 2 MOS

Closed over 1,600 customer support cases. Coordinated and documented support efforts between customers, internal groups, and third party vendors. Solved diverse NAS, SAN, and networking issues involving Unix, Linux, and Windows. Focused on Oracle related cases. Developed workarounds for new and previously documented problems. Documented new product feature requests. Resolved configuration, authentication, backup, recovery, and performance issues. Reproduced customer environments. Received a Peer Recognition Award. Promoted to escalations engineer.

Financial Advisor / Trainee

Morgan Keegan
Nov 2002 – Jul 2003 · 9 mos

Passed the Series 7, the Series 66, and the Life and Health Insurance exams. Developed a fundamental understanding of financial instruments.

Network Engineer (US Postal Service NOC)

MCI
AUG 1998 – OCT 2002 · 4 YRS 3 MOS

Responsible for around-the-clock operation of 15 Tru64 Unix servers running a distributed network management system and an Oracle database. Granted sensitive security clearance by the US Postal Service (USPS). Designed and implemented an inventory management system for the nationwide USPS network. Implemented a redesign of the network fault management system. Led a project to set up a backup network operations center. Analyzed historical network fault data. Implemented filters to reduce the total number of alarms per network fault. Maintained backups. Maintained the list of objects registered with the network management system. Managed a Cisco Catalyst switched network. Supported customers on Windows and Tru64 Unix. Promoted to senior engineer.

BS, Computer Science

North Carolina State University
1993 – 1998

Activities and societies: Minor in English, Java development co-op at Ericsson
Graduate classes in Operating Systems and Compiler Construction