Donald Johnson

Architected and built HIPAA-compliant, SOC2-certified AWS infrastructure to securely store and process millions of healthcare records for leading healthcare companies. As one of the first engineers on staff, I led the design and implementation of the entire AWS infrastructure from the ground up. Key achievements include:

• AWS Account Management: Set up and managed AWS Organizations and Control Tower for hundreds of internal and client-facing accounts.
• Networking Architecture: Engineered VPCs, Transit Gateways, Network Firewalls, Route 53, Site-to-Site and Client VPNs, PrivateLink, DNATs, SFTP, Security Groups, NACLs, IPAM, and Private Certificate Authority.
• Identity and Access Management: Designed IAM policies and Identity Center (SSO) to manage user and service identities.
• Security Operations: Implemented GuardDuty, Inspector, SecurityHub, Config, and Audit Manager with integrated monitoring and alerting via CloudWatch.
• Kubernetes Management: Deployed and managed EKS clusters, including custom cluster scaling methods, access control, storage solutions, and routine security upgrades.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Built CodePipeline and CodeBuild processes for deploying Terraform code, Helm charts, and containerized applications.
• Data Storage Solutions: Secured internal and client data using S3, EBS, DocumentDB, and DynamoDB.
• Data Encryption: Designed a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) encryption strategy with KMS, enabling clients to maintain data governance while securely storing, processing, and transferring sensitive data.

Collaborated closely with internal teams and clients to ensure all solutions met strict compliance and operational excellence standards, reflecting the critical nature of managing healthcare data for millions of individuals.

Provided AWS/DevOps consulting services to client teams, focusing on enabling efficient cloud adoption, cost optimization, and infrastructure management. Key responsibilities included:

• Conducted internal AWS instructional seminars to educate client teams on best practices and efficient use of cloud resources.
• Delivered cost optimization strategies to reduce AWS expenditure while maintaining performance and scalability.
• Designed and implemented AWS Organizations and Control Tower landing zones to streamline multi-account management.
• Leveraged Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools, including Terraform and Ansible, to implement scalable, secure, and automated solutions following modern DevOps practices.

Developed C++ applications to process and simulate narrative chains from social media networks, modeling the emergence of misinformation campaigns within these threads. Assisted in building and maintaining AWS infrastructure to provide a scalable and efficient platform for running these simulations.

Key contributions included:

• Implemented data processing algorithms to analyze and simulate social media dynamics.
• Collaborated in managing AWS resources to ensure seamless integration and optimal performance of simulation workflows.

This work advanced research in understanding and mitigating misinformation campaigns through innovative data modeling and simulation techniques.