Career Summary¶
Brief Work History¶
| Company | Position | Years | Picture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Innovative Dynamic Networks | Network Administrator | 2020-2021 |  |
| Menard Inc. | System Administrator 1 | 2021-2024 |  |
| Menard Inc. | System Administrator 2 | 2024-2025 | ! PHOTO NOT FOUND ! |
| Menard Inc. | Developer 1 | 2025-2026 |  |
| Palo Alto Networks | Staff DevOps Engineer | 2026- |  |
Synopsis¶
Menard Inc.¶
Network Administration¶
I have spent the first half of this decade working as a system administrator focused on networking. While not a part of any of my job descriptions, whenever the opportunities presented themselves, I developed network automation solutions.
My deliverables started with network configuration deployment automation, but I soon branched out to push-button network task automation, helping empower level 1 support staff to perform specific tasks previously reserved for level 2 or level 3 support staff. I quickly made a name for myself as the automation guy from the network team.
Before too long, I was sought after and given more and more complex automation tasks. I was able to eliminate a year's worth of night work for the network administrators and speed up a project's timeline with a large-scale network deployment automation, touching several management systems. I also whipped up a team of interns and created a network device rollout automation solution used to speed up and simplify network device rollouts so much that the rollout process can be moved to our logistics teams instead of our network technical team.
Early on, while creating these automation deliverables and seeing its transformative impact for the benefitting infrastructure teams, I fell in love with this type of work. I had no work or educational background with software development, so it was my first foray into that field. I chose to double down on what was emerging as my passion.
Infrastructure Automation Team Foundation¶
Fast forward to Summer 2025, I was promoted to an infrastructure automation developer on a brand new development team. I excelled being allowed to work full-time on infrastructure automation projects. I grew so much as a leader, taking ownership of my team's deliverables and steering this team into the future. I took on mentorship responsibilities and happily trained the rest of my team (including new team members!). I took ownership of our team's knowledge management and pioneered new approaches to sharing what we know with others. My fingerprints are scattered throughout the team's output. I have learned so much during this time on the team and have learned some very important lessons on development as well as ops. While it was extremely demanding at times, I emerged as a much stronger professional and overcame immense difficulty to get some seriously transformative automation out there for our ops teams. I loved my time on this team and loved creating a strong foundation for this team, my time at Menards has come to a bittersweet end in Summer 2026.
Palo Alto Networks¶
In Summer of 2026, I began a new chapter in my career with Palo Alto Networks as a Staff DevOps Engineer! I am very excited to pick up foundational skills while scontributing majorly to the teams I will be a part of! This move to California will be a major change for me and my family, but we are excited to take this challenge on and can't wait to see where things go from here!