CJW–02
career timeline
leadership · forward deployment · platforms
index
V.0.1.0
i am a technology leader and hands-on platform engineer with roughly seventeen years of progressive experience — now strongest in platform engineering leadership, enterprise kubernetes / sre, and forward-deployed / customer engineering.
the arc runs from systems administration through cloud and automation into microsoft customer engineering, then enterprise azure platforms, and now leading automation and container platforms in a regulated healthcare environment.
recruiters scanning for leadership, fde-style delivery, or platform depth: start with the current duke manager role, the microsoft fasttrack years, and the project case studies linked from those pages.
leadership
people + portfolio ownership — sre and software disciplines, platform strategy, clear ownership models.
forward deployment
customer → production — discovery, architecture, pocs, readiness, and product feedback loops.
platform engineering
platforms as products — openshift, aks, gitops, automation, developer enablement.
timeline
nov 2024 – present
01
it manager, automation & container platforms
duke health
i lead the automation & container platforms function for duke health technology solutions — a multidisciplinary engineering organization spanning site reliability and software development. we own enterprise platforms that help application teams build, deploy, automate, secure, and operate modern workloads in a regulated healthcare environment.
jan 2022 – nov 2024
02
senior cloud platform engineer
duke health
before moving into management, i served as a senior cloud platform engineer — bridging microsoft cloud engineering experience into enterprise platform leadership.
jan 2018 – jan 2022
03
senior azure fasttrack engineer
microsoft
at microsoft i did forward-deployed customer engineering on azure fasttrack — sitting between enterprise customers, field engineering, and azure product teams. the job was to take complex adoption problems from discovery through architecture, proof-of-concept, and production readiness — then feed what we learned back into the platform.
jan 2016 – jan 2018
04
lead enterprise infrastructure engineer, cloud & automation
metlife
at metlife my career moved decisively toward cloud and automation — shaping roadmaps and building repeatable delivery systems.
jan 2012 – jan 2016
05
senior system administrator
acumen
i operated infrastructure for a healthcare software organization and moved from traditional systems administration toward infrastructure architecture and automation.
jan 2009 – jan 2012
06
system administrator
ipas
at ipas i built a broad enterprise infrastructure foundation — the systems thinking that later helped me understand cloud and kubernetes as complete platforms.