Ali Merchant
Principal Cloud Architect
Olney,MD
Summary
Seasoned Architecture Manager adept at seamlessly integrating project technical aspects and making information relatable to non-technical personnel. Experienced leader and program manager with 25 years history in field. Clear communicator, decision maker and problem solver.
Overview
25
25
years of professional experience
5
5
years of post-secondary education
8
8
Certifications
Work History
Senior Cloud Architect Manager
Accenture Federal Services
Germantown, MD
10.2019 - Current
- Azure Experience
- Developed and implemented performance improvement strategies and plans to promote continuous improvement.
- Design, implement, and architect scalable landing zones in Azure Cloud for Department of Energy
- Competent professional with over 20 years of rich experience in Compute Infrastructure Management
- Experienced in large scale migration of on-premises workloads to Azure using Azure Site Recovery
- Prepare architecture and operational documentation including design diagrams and runbook
- Participate in triage calls for major incidents and help drive resolutions and follow up with long term remediation
- Deploy Azure resources with Infrastructure as code using ARM, PowerShell, Blueprint, and visual studio
- Provide day to day direction to project team and regular project status to customer using agile and scrum methodologies
- Evaluate training needs and provide for career development of subordinates
- Develop and conduct performance objectives for staff and make hiring and termination decisions
- Lead transformational projects centered around Azure cloud services
- Exercise creativity, independent judgment, and business acumen in selecting methods and techniques
- Manage complex business and logistical challenges with stakeholders across organization
- Driving development and engineering teams in executing projects against committed milestones
- High level of focus on delivery, benefits, identifying opportunities and providing technical leadership
- Exercise creativity, independent judgment, business acumen and lead effectively across many projects
- Able to effectively communicate with wide range of clients and mentor coworkers
- Capable of quickly learning and delivering solutions as individual and as part of team
- Provide technical leadership, guidance, and assistance to team in implementation of established architecture and designs
- Accountable for quality delivery of all assigned engagements from project management perspective
- Proficient in project management, leadership, team building, meeting management, problem resolution, risk management and decision-making skills
- Demonstrate understanding of partner business models, business strategy, cloud solutions, financial analysis, marketing planning and customer management framework
- Participated in continuous improvement by generating suggestions, engaging in problem-solving activities to support teamwork.
Principal Cloud Architect
Leidos - Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Service
Baltimore, MD
06.2017 - 10.2019
- AWS Experience
- Defined cloud architecture for both hybrid and non-hybrid cloud solutions.
- Displayed sound understanding of standard networking protocols, virtual networks and load balancing.
- Proficient in AWS services like EFS, ASG, ELB, EBS, EC2, S3, RDS, SNS, Cloudwatch, Cloudtrail, Route 53, VPC, Direct Connect, Cloud Formation, VPC Peering, Glacier, Snowball, Storage and File Gateways
- Expertise in architecting default and custom VPCs in AWS using network ACLs, security groups, NAT gateways, IGW, custom and main route tables, VGW in public, vpn, and private subnets in hybrid cloud
- Responsible for designing AWS IaaS in managed service environment using AWS console and CLI
- Maintained compliance with cybersecurity regulations and measures and tracked, assessed, integrated and reported on modernization and migration processes.
- Interfaced directly with customers, stakeholders and end-users regarding capability architectures, requirements use cases and stories to derive, develop and decompose next-cycle updates and specifications.
- Strong understanding of multiple availability zone, resiliency, fault tolerance and multiple AWS regions
- Ability to design 3-tier architecture and high availability on cloud adhering to DR best practices
- Provided architectural leadership and guidance to technical teams to deliver robust, highly scalable and cost-effective solutions.
- Provided 2nd and 3rd level technical support and troubleshooting to internal and external clients.
- SAN Experience
- Work in large-scale distributed storage environment on EMC Unity spanning data centers and regions
- Review real-time performance reports and utilization metrics across storage infrastructure
- Participate in weekly agile and scrum calls and focus on completing projects on time
- Assist devops and operational team in platform diagnosis, response, measurement, and automation
- Lead analysis of current environment for deficiencies and provided real time solutions
- Lead and assisted operational teams in infrastructure system upgrades and participate in DR activities
- Provide recommendations to improve SAN infrastructure and lead critical issues and RCA
- Proactively collaborate with vendors to coordinate and schedule service, maintenance, and updates
- Assisting with disaster recovery tests and business continuity plan
- Windows & Backup Experience
- Configure and manage backups of NDMP/FS/VM/NFS environment hosted on Veritas appliances
- Configure replication of all backup images to DR site on dedup disks on LTO tapes using tape library
- Experience in cloud management platform such as Service Now for ticketing and slack for collaboration
- Built and maintained network infrastructure consisting of Windows, Linux and virtual products.
Senior Storage & Virtualization Architect
IBM Watson Research
Bethesda, MD
01.2009 - 06.2017
- SAN Experience
- Specialized in setting up IBM 5000/6000, SVCs, Flash840 and Storwize V7000
- Implemented XIV GEN 3 storage subsystems across IBM research facilities with 25PB of data
- Installed and configured Cisco 9509, 9513, 9710 MDS directors in NPIV mode
- Engineered san environment to have dual path redundancy in single fabric for all servers
- VMWARE Experience
- Implemented VROPS for monitoring, capture data for root cause analysis and capacity reports
- Configured ESXi servers and implemented HA/DRS clusters along with Virtual Center and VMotion
- Configured syslog servers across ESXi infrastructure for security compliance and auditing
- Familiar with scripting languages such as Shell, PowerShell, ESXCLI, Storage CLI and vSphere CLI
- Completed P2V migration of Linux & Windows servers using VMware converter tool
- Implemented VMware Update Manager to automate installation of security patches on VMs/ESX servers
- Implemented VEEAM for live migration of VMs across virtual centers in environment with zero downtime
- Configured automatic provisioning of windows/linux VM using templates and sysprep in virtual center
- Windows Experience
- Managed enterprise AD environment for 1000 users and implemented group policies in multiple sites
- Used IBM Big Fix for patch management, auditing, and compliance
- Implemented change control process for weekly maintenances of all systems
- Identified opportunities to enhance service delivery in operations and other management processes
- Developed internal SOP, DOU, RCA templates for operations team and deliver on project commitments.
Senior Storage Engineer
The New York Times
New York, NY
03.2008 - 01.2009
- SAN Experience
- Configured zoning and lun provisioning on EMC, HP, and IBM storage
- Configured HP C7000 Blade and provisioned windows server using scripts
- Installed IBM Storage Manager and EMC Navisphere to facilitate LUN provisioning for block and file
- Ran daily capacity and performance reports on File and Block pools in multiple sites
Senior Systems Consultant
MTM Technologies
New York, NY
05.2005 - 02.2008
- SAN Experience
- Installed and configured HP EVA 5000 SANs for major hospitals and law firms
- Implemented DR procedures for SAN failover/failback during annual DR test
- Configured async replication of storage and defined RPO/RTO per business requirements
Education
B.A - Psychology
Queens College of The City University of New York
Flushing, NY 01.1993 - 06.1998
Skills
Technology integration
Strategic planning
Team Building
Proposal creation
Teamwork and Collaboration
Analytical and Critical Thinking
Decision-Making
Multitasking Abilities
Planning and Coordination
Certification
AWS Solutions Architect
Timeline
Senior Cloud Architect Manager
Accenture Federal Services
10.2019 - Current
Principal Cloud Architect
Leidos - Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Service
06.2017 - 10.2019
Senior Storage & Virtualization Architect
IBM Watson Research
01.2009 - 06.2017
Senior Storage Engineer
The New York Times
03.2008 - 01.2009
Senior Systems Consultant
MTM Technologies
05.2005 - 02.2008
B.A - Psychology
Queens College of The City University of New York
01.1993 - 06.1998