Darren Lawrence
Wichita,KS
Summary
Experienced and customer-focused Technical Account manager with 10+ years in the software industry. Ability to manage multiple customers and build relationships with key customer stakeholders as well as account teams. In building customer relationships and helping drive customer retention I strive to provide proactive engagements to help identify potential risks and provide timely solutions, and if needed to serve as a customer advocate with Support, Engineering, or Product teams.
Overview
14
14
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Partner Technical Account Manager
Red Hat, Inc.
06.2019 - Current
- Develop and manage relationships with strategic partner accounts that develop solutions on Red Hat's Linux and Kubernetes platforms, and help define and implement success plans that align with individual partner accounts goals and objectives.
- Proactively work with partner accounts to improve the customer support process and to find solutions for end customers quicker.
- Work closely with both internal and partner field teams to help with partner solutions meet customer goals and successful implementations.
- Liaised between engineering and product management teams for Red Hat and partner accounts, developing solutions based on partner and end customer feedback and platform adoption.
- Work with multiple key stakeholders on product roadmaps and forewarn of technology changes that could be disruptive or impactful to end customers.
- Collaborated with IBM CSM to provide proactive bulletins, technical training sessions, and resolutions to enhance customer retention.
- Produced quarterly business reviews with senior executives, delivering insights on support and training goals aligned with partner success plans.
- Created customer knowledge base articles based on customer experiences and solutions.
- Assisted in the creation of a new team focused on strategic partner accounts.
Technical Account Manager
Red Hat, Inc.
10.2015 - 06.2019
- Develop and maintain strong relationships with customers and own the post-sales technical customer engagement.
- Work closely with all members of a customers account team to help drive product adoption, discuss upsell opportunities, and make sure customer success plans still meet customer goals and expectations.
- Led quarterly reviews, providing insights on product adoption and identifying improvement patterns to enhance customer satisfaction.
- Reviewed customer environments with technical support and provided proactive solutions.
- Review product roadmaps and product changes that are likely to impact customers environment.
- Serve customers advocate within Red Hat support, product management, and engineering teams.
- Oversaw internal team managing technical bulletin alerts, enabling global TAMs to deliver proactive customer alerts.
- Provide technical training and presentations session onsite and remote with customers.
- Write and publish Customer knowledge base articles based on customer experience or solutions.
Senior Windows/Linux Delivery Analyst
Koch Business Solutions
08.2013 - 10.2015
- Function as a project technical lead within KBS Platform Services server team.
- Led technical solutions for new technologies including cloud, big data, and HPC computing.
- Oversaw projects for migrating SAP systems from HP-UX to RHEL 6.5 servers and deploying SAP HANA environments.
- Designed virtual server farms for Georgia Pacific, enabling DBA team to replace aging Oracle database servers with a virtual environment.
- Developed solution for KBS HR IT to complete their Windows Server 2003 file server upgrade project. The solution allows us to migrate file servers with minimal downtime and a little to no risk of data loss.
- Consulted with various companies within Koch Industries to understand business requirements and delivered tailored solutions.
Senior Linux Analyst
Koch Business Solutions
05.2012 - 08.2013
- Served as senior SME for Linux servers, leading escalations for Linux operations support across multiple teams.
- Redesigned Linux/Unix server AD authentication for Cross Domain connections, leading deployment projects across FHR and Koch Fertilizer environments.
- Design and build Linux servers and coordinate system migrations and go-live dates on new systems.
- Defined customer needs and implemented new systems or hardware for server improvements.
- Oversaw the installation of the Oracle Exadata and Exalytics systems for Koch Fertilizer. Acted as the KBS representative for the discovery sessions on these systems and helped define the support procedures for the Linux Operations team.
- Conducted a proof of concept test with FHR for deployment of RHEL 6 and Oracle 11.
- System Administrator supporting Linux servers across multiple companies within Koch Industries.
Education
B.S. - Computer Operations
Southwestern College
Winfield, KS05-2007
Diploma - Computer Programming
Vatterott College
Wichita, KS04-2004
Skills
- Linux
- Kubernetes
- Python
- Technical Strategy
- Customer Success
- Cloud architecture
- Project Management
- Metrics-driven
- Team Collaboration
- Onboarding Support
Accomplishments
- Won the Quintessential Collaboration Exceed Award 3x as the TAM for overseeing solutions for Strategic Partners and their end customers.
- Summit Rating Committee Award for being accepted to the committee to review presentations proposals for Red Hat Annual Customer Summit.
- Co-delivered Presentation at IBM Tech Fest 2023 with IBM CSM team lead around Openshift Upgrades and best practices with an NPS presentation score of 100.
- Spearheaded the development of internal process for Red Hat TAMs Globally to use customer Insights data to deliver proactive reports and feedback on customers environments.
- Developed the initial Support and Enablement Program for Openshift for Red Hat Partner account technical support teams.
- Wrote and published Red Hat Support and IBM Cloud Paks FAQ for all global customers as well as frequently help review and write IBM own documentation around CloudPak Support.
Timeline
Senior Partner Technical Account Manager
Red Hat, Inc.
06.2019 - Current
Technical Account Manager
Red Hat, Inc.
10.2015 - 06.2019
Senior Windows/Linux Delivery Analyst
Koch Business Solutions
08.2013 - 10.2015
Senior Linux Analyst
Koch Business Solutions
05.2012 - 08.2013
B.S. - Computer Operations
Southwestern College
Diploma - Computer Programming
Vatterott College