Derrick Bryant
Cloud Engineering Leader
Washington,DC
Summary
As a seasoned Cloud Engineering Leader and critical thinker with nearly 20 years of experience, I build high-performing teams and cloud-native platforms that enable fast, safe, and repeatable software delivery. I treat modern "DevOps" practices—GitOps, CI/CD, Agile, IaC, serverless, Kubernetes, containers, observability, and AI tools—as everyday essentials, not buzzwords.
I’m often a “misunderstood developer” — with a CS degree, solid coding skills, and a quick learner mindset, I bring deep software engineering experience to roles typically seen as infrastructure-focused. This unique blend lets me build tools and systems that truly resonate with developers, improving workflows and boosting productivity.
I move fast, cut through noise, and get things done. At my last role, I led the implementation of a true continuous delivery pipeline and a company-wide shift-left initiative that boosted quality, accelerated delivery, and contributed to a successful acquisition. Hands-on and collaborative, I reduce friction through automation, self-service platforms, AI-powered solutions, and elegant technical design.
People often say they feel more confident when I’m in the room—even if I’m not directly involved—because I bring calm, clarity, and a team-first mindset.
Overview
18
18
years of professional experience
2
2
Certificates
Work History
Cloud Architect
CareJourney by Arcadia
03.2023 - 09.2025
- Spearheaded the modernization of deployment infrastructure with a focus on CI/CD scalability, platform reliability, developer velocity, and cost.
- Architected and implemented true continuous delivery pipelines, and AI-powered internal tools to streamline engineering workflows and improve observability.
- Lead a company-wide shift-left initiative, integrating security, compliance, and testing earlier in the development lifecycle.
- Operated in a HIPAA-compliant environment, ensuring that infrastructure and processes met strict security and privacy standards.
- Defined and documented technical solutions, gathered requirements, and broke down initiatives into clear, actionable Jira epics, and stories.
- Drove sprint planning and roadmap alignment, ensuring team efforts tracked to long-term goals and business impact.
- Owned infrastructure improvements using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK), and implemented security best practices across AWS environments.
- Developed automated monitoring and compliance tools using AI/ML (e.g., Amazon Bedrock), improving incident response and system reliability.
- Known as a go-to problem solver across engineering, frequently pulled into cross-team efforts for architectural input and issue resolution.
- Worked across all teams to architect new products or optimize existing products.
- Mentored junior team members
- Maintained the Git version control system for seamless collaboration among developers and engineers during project lifecycles. Utilized GitOps principles.
- The tech stack includes, but is not limited to: AWS (EKS, Lambda, CDK, API Gateway, CloudFront), CircleCI, Git, Kubernetes, Serverless Framework, Terraform, Python, and more.
Senior Cloud Engineer
Carejourney by Arcadia
09.2021 - 02.2023
Cloud and DevOps Engineering Leader
Datometry
01.2016 - 06.2021
- I work across engineering, product, and customer focused scrum teams to design, develop, and implement cloud engineering efforts by educating, negotiating, and prioritizing efforts. I work with team leads to prioritize new development and technical debt across AWS, Azure, and GCP clouds to provide multiple Enterprise grade SaaS products.
- Some of my efforts include:
- Architecting cloud infrastructure for enterprise grade products with unique requirements
- Cloud cost management that lead to significant cost reduction
- Testing framework optimization greatly improving developer productivity
- Product test framework for newly supported platforms
- Cross team dependencies coordination
- Product observability improvements leading to less time troubleshooting customer issues
DevOps Team Lead
Millennial Media
10.2013 - 09.2015
- Led the DevOps team, coordinating efforts and negotiating requirements with the Director and cross-functional scrum teams.
- Directed development of automation tools for testing and deployment of a highly available digital ad service.
- Improved productivity, feature completion rates, and release speed through efficient CI/CD practices.
- Delivered reliable self-service tools that enhanced visibility and empowered development teams.
DevOps Engineer
Library of Congress
05.2012 - 10.2013
- Work with teammates to manage day-to-day operations of development environment used to create software to manage the Library's massive collection of digital content
- Use Chef cookbooks to manage Linux infrastructure consisting of Ubuntu and Red Hat distributions.
- Write custom Chef cookbooks and community cookbooks to manage infrastructure and releasing some custom cookbooks to the community as open source
- Manage small set of custom designed physical hardware devices to operate as KVM servers
- Implemented and manage new KVM Virtualization infrastructure running on both Red Hat and Ubuntu
- Compared and tested virtualization platforms including VMWare, RHEV, RHEL + KVM, Ubuntu + KVM, and DevStack OpenStack
- Create custom applications to make life easier for developers. Most written in Python using Django. Also create Chef cookbooks to handle deploying applications in an idempotent manner
- Work with teammates to solve any technical issues and create team policies to ensure compliance with government regulations and best practices
- Use git as version control system
- 1 year 6 months
Systems Administrator
Driven, Inc
08.2011 - 04.2012
- Aided with junior team member development by mentoring and directing
- Assisted with management of all company computing resources both Windows and Linux. Examples below.
- Configured and manage high performance switches including LAGs and VLANs
- Support office and data center housed hardware
- Manage iSCSI SAN infrastructure by creating new volumes, connecting servers, and benchmarking
- Created new production Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 virtualization infrastructure using KVM
- Created and manage 70+ Windows Virtual Machines
- Support existing VMWare ESXi infrastructure
- Implemented new VDI (Verde) to deliver the company service to customers
- Setup monitoring/management systems such as Nagios, Cacti, Munin, and Splunk
- Coded and engineered custom solutions such as a web interface used to create user accounts for jailed SFTP service for client uploads
- Implementing new asterisk based phone system using Trixbox
- Assist with management of Windows 2003/2008 Server Active Directory Domains and Exchange
- Created encrypted VPN link between the main office and the data center
- Creating documentation of server setup within company wiki
- 9 months
Systems Engineer
Cooper Notification
04.2009 - 08.2011
- Managed and maintained life saving emergency mass notification systems
- Provided day to day technical support for customers such as SSL certificate management, data imports, IP changes, customer network troubleshooting, etc.
- Managed hosted infrastructure of highly available emergency notification systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2
- Planed new office infrastructure to support customer and development needs
- Designed and implemented new custom iSCSI storage solution for a VMWare ESX based VM development/office infrastructure
- Evaluated Xen 3.0.3 (included with RHEL 5) and VMWare ESXi in the development infrastructure for potential use in the production infrastructure
- Documented all infrastructure changes in the company wiki
- Designed and implemented a Nagios monitoring solution installed on CentOS 5.4 (Red Hat 5.4 clone) to ensure high availability for emergency notification systems
- Installed and configured office door access system
- Member of the team tasked by the CTO to create a proof of concept of an integrated notification system using all Cooper Notification products utilizing Ubuntu 10.04, CentOS 5, and RHEL 5
- Traveled to various customer locations for deployments, upgrades, and support
- 2 years 5 months
Systems Administrator
Symplicity Corporation
02.2008 - 03.2009
- Administered highly available CentOS 5 (Red Hat 5 clone) based distributed Linux cluster containing 115 servers housed in a remote data center
- Managed SAN and cluster file system
- Installed and managed several MySQL database servers
- Racked/Installed over half of Symplicity's servers housed in the data center
- Managed in office/development Xen 3.0.3 (virtualized) environment
- Performed all necessary software updates and upgrades
- Managed Symplicity software package upgrades via RPM
- Developed, deployed and supported OpenVPN solution for remote users adapted for VOIP communications
- Administered and supported Asterisk phone system
- Used above Asterisk server to create and manage call center where approximately half of the phone agents worked remotely
- Documented standard company practices and policies in a wiki
- Provided technical telephone support for Symplicity clients
- Provided technical assistance to local and remote employees via instant message, email, and telephone
- Represented Symplicity while communicating with third party vendors
- Provided 24/7 on call support
- 1 year 2 months
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
01.2007
Skills
Certification
Private Pilot Certificate
Timeline
Cloud Architect - CareJourney by Arcadia
03.2023 - 09.2025
Senior Cloud Engineer - Carejourney by Arcadia
09.2021 - 02.2023
Cloud and DevOps Engineering Leader - Datometry
01.2016 - 06.2021
DevOps Team Lead - Millennial Media
10.2013 - 09.2015
DevOps Engineer - Library of Congress
05.2012 - 10.2013
Systems Administrator - Driven, Inc
08.2011 - 04.2012
Systems Engineer - Cooper Notification
04.2009 - 08.2011
Systems Administrator - Symplicity Corporation
02.2008 - 03.2009
University of Tennessee, Knoxville - Bachelor of Science, Computer Science