Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Timeline
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James Thelen

Redmond,WA

Summary

Quality-focused Principal Consultant successful at managing customer expectations and delivering exceptional results built on extensive industry knowledge and both hands-on and leadership skills.

Overview

26
26
years of professional experience

Work History

Associate Architect

Virtusa
02.2016 - 07.2023
  • Worked in IT for major fast-food corporation helping migrate entire data center from Dallas to Philadelphia
  • Helped upgrade and stabilized infrastructure to System Center 2012 (SCCM)
  • Worked closely with business partners to establish greater than 98% health of system center clients across 190,000 agents
  • Drove business improvements utilizing new features of System Center 2012 platform
  • Became lead engineer over all of support operations
  • For last 5 years worked remotely for major insurance company based in New York
  • Helped drive expansion of manageability solutions including Tanium and SCCM
  • Upgraded both Tanium and SCCM to latest versions based on release cycle
  • Migrated workloads from SCCM to Tanium including application deployment packages
  • Created and ran POC for Tanium Threat Response
  • Provided Tier 3 support for both Tanium and SCCM
  • Worked on the Architecture team providing critical data analysis and automation scripting to facilitate business process
  • Helped drive movement to MDM and modern management utilizing Azure, MECM, Autopilot and Intune.

Enterprise Solution Architect

Netrix LLC
10.2013 - 09.2015
  • Helped Netrix LLC develop a holistic System Center solution practice
  • Helped develop the System Center strategy for 2014 and 2015
  • Deployed multiple complex architectures that involved full SC integration
  • Developed custom solutions under NDA that involved SC form and class extensions, custom dashboards and reporting and enterprise automation/integration.

Principal Consultant

Acceleres
10.2012 - 10.2013
  • Provided Architecture, Solution Delivery and Consulting services for medium-sized businesses and enterprise level customers
  • Primarily focused on IT services such as monitoring, configuration management and data center automation
  • Provided training services for Avanade and MS Involve among others for System Center Orchestrator, Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V, Hyper-V Network Virtualization, Virtual Machine Manager and Powershell in Windows Server 2012.

Principal Solutions Architect

Microsoft Corporation
06.2011 - 02.2012
  • Developed fully qualified SOA based architecture for an enterprise automation platform capable of enabling automated provisioning and deployment, security management, incident and problem management and application workflow automation
  • Published gap analysis and recommendations for automation architecture based on internal and industry research
  • Gap analysis recommendations were based on best of breed technologies for a given architectural component which included both Microsoft and 3rd party technologies
  • Developed 3 year manageability roadmap for Microsoft IT for senior IT leadership approval to enable successful adoption and transition to cloud-based SAAS architecture for all of Microsoft IT current infrastructure
  • Developed holistic strategy to ensure manageability integration with emerging cloud and Azure adoption within Microsoft IT including tactical and long term execution plans.

Director of IT

Microsoft Corporation
12.2007 - 05.2011
  • Managed team of system engineers responsible for delivering datacenter manageability tools based on System Center to MSIT
  • Drove enterprise architecture for entire manageability offering in Microsoft IT
  • Responsible for managing Microsoft IT relationship with System Center product group through VP QBR’s, First and Best programs and IT Showcase engagements
  • Helped lead large scale IT effort to get entire infrastructure patch compliant within 95% of datacenter assets
  • Worked on MS wide manageability v-team responsible for establishing core strategies, performing mind share and aligning product asks based on business needs.

Senior Windows Strategist

Opsware, Inc.
05.2007 - 11.2007
  • Implemented server automation solutions at a number of large enterprises to enable customers to fully automate server provision, patching, software delivery and auditing
  • Worked closely with VP of Development to make architectural and strategic changes to product suite in order to better address industry needs in datacenter automation, specifically around Windows product strategy.

System Engineering Manager

Microsoft Corporation
08.2004 - 04.2007
  • Established 3 – 4 year manageability and monitoring strategy utilizing System Center suite of products to enable MSN to grow to nearly 250,000 servers globally by creating automation in the areas of Deployment, Provisioning, Incident Management, Problem Management, Capacity Planning, Configuration Management and Change Management
  • Drove Windows Enterprise Management Division product strategy to meet the needs of large scale Windows customers which has created increased scalability (nearly double) of products like Microsoft Operations Manager
  • Implemented solutions responsible for monitoring and managing over 30,000 Windows servers that provide MSN services globally to our customers which allows MSN to maintain nearly 99% availability across its services
  • Created integration technologies that help MSN business lines to both become profitable and make informed business decisions relating to infrastructure, instrumentation, capacity planning, peering, change management and process engineering.

Senior System Engineer

Microsoft Corporation
10.1998 - 08.2004
  • Implemented and supported newly established monitoring and incident management systems for MSN
  • Helped operations establish monitoring standards, worked with Product Groups on instrumentation best practices and helped establish and refine Service Operations Center incident management processes.

Support Engineer

Elecom Corporation
06.1997 - 11.1998
  • Provided technical support for all customers of a start up company specializing in e-commerce procurement software
  • Implemented corporate IT systems such as email, RAS, network as well as internet web presence infrastructure.

Education

B.S Computer Information Systems -

Devry University
Addison, IL

Skills

  • Senior Solution Architect with extensive experience in implementing large scale, complex business solutions with a primary focus on IT Workflow, Monitoring and Manageability products
  • Microsoft Windows Manageability
  • System Center Operations Manager
  • System Center Configuration Manager
  • System Center Orchestrator
  • Microsoft Server Technologies
  • Server 2012 R2 (including Hyper-V)
  • Server 2016 (including Hyper-V)
  • Server 2019 (including Hyper-V)
  • Active Directory
  • Exchange
  • Sharepoint
  • Tanium
  • Microsoft SQL 2012, 2016, 2019
  • Windows Powershell
  • Linux (Ubuntu, RHEL)(not strong)
  • Network Monitoring and management
  • Data Warehousing
  • ITIL/MOF/ITLC/SDLC Principles
  • R&D Prototyping

Timeline

Associate Architect

Virtusa
02.2016 - 07.2023

Enterprise Solution Architect

Netrix LLC
10.2013 - 09.2015

Principal Consultant

Acceleres
10.2012 - 10.2013

Principal Solutions Architect

Microsoft Corporation
06.2011 - 02.2012

Director of IT

Microsoft Corporation
12.2007 - 05.2011

Senior Windows Strategist

Opsware, Inc.
05.2007 - 11.2007

System Engineering Manager

Microsoft Corporation
08.2004 - 04.2007

Senior System Engineer

Microsoft Corporation
10.1998 - 08.2004

Support Engineer

Elecom Corporation
06.1997 - 11.1998

B.S Computer Information Systems -

Devry University
James Thelen