Open To Work
Killip Swart
Seattle,WA
Overview
27
27
years of professional experience
Work History
Enterprise Support Manager
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Seattle, USA
12.2021 - Current
- Led a team of 15 Technical Account Managers (TAMs) supporting a portfolio of enterprise Security and Observability customers, including Fortune 500 organizations such as Palo Alto Networks and Okta.
- Managed and developed a team of 15 TAMs responsible for customer technical engagement and operational support.
- Ensure delivery of enterprise support services for mission-critical workloads.
- Drove performance in incident response, escalation handling, and customer engagement quality to enhance service delivery.
- Oversee support for security, identity, and observability platforms operating in high-availability production environments.
- Support customers with global infrastructure and strict security, compliance, and uptime requirements.
- Act as senior escalation point for outages, infrastructure issues, and security-related events.
- Owned end-to-end escalation management for high-severity incidents to minimize impact on customer production systems.
- Led post-incident reviews and implemented improvements to reduce recurrence.
- Guided TAM team in delivering proactive operational support through architecture reviews and performance optimization to meet customer needs.
- Coordinate across AWS Support, Engineering, and Account teams to ensure timely resolution.
- Standardize incident management and escalation workflows across the team.
- Improve operational visibility through tracking of incident trends and escalation patterns.
- Optimize team workload distribution to improve efficiency and responsiveness.
- Coach team on technical troubleshooting, communication, and proactive risk management.
- Lead hiring, onboarding, and development of team members.
- Ensure alignment of AWS services with customer technical and business requirements.
- Partner with account teams to improve customer satisfaction, retention, and service adoption.
Manager, Solutions Architects (Partner SA Manager)
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Seattle, USA
12.2019 - 11.2021
- Managed team delivering technical coverage for US West customers, enabling enterprise and high-growth organizations to achieve their cloud objectives.
- Led a team of Solutions Architects supporting US West enterprise customers, responsible for cloud architecture guidance and technical strategy.
- Delivered technical guidance to help customers implement scalable, secure, and well-architected AWS solutions.
- Partnered with Sales and Account teams to align technical solutions with business goals.
- Guided customers in designing and implementing cloud-native architectures across networking, security, DevOps, and data platforms, ensuring alignment with best practices.
- Supported pre- and post-sales engagements, enhancing customer onboarding and fostering long-term adoption of AWS solutions.
- Scaled Solutions Architect team from 5 to 16 engineers, improving coverage and capability.
- Built onboarding and enablement programs to improve technical consistency and performance.
- Mentored architects on best practices in solution design and customer engagement.
- Worked with Support, Product, and Engineering teams to align customer needs with AWS capabilities.
- Improved coordination across internal teams supporting customer workloads.
Senior Operations Manager
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Seattle, USA
11.2015 - 12.2019
- Led global cloud operations and support teams across multiple AWS service domains, driving service reliability, incident response, and operational scalability for enterprise customer environments.
- Managed distributed teams across 7 international sites, enhancing support for large-scale AWS environments.
- Oversaw operational performance metrics in availability, case management, and service delivery, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
- Led response for high-severity incidents and large-scale service events.
- Directed major initiatives including: EC2 long instance ID migration, ElastiCache security update impacting 18K+ customers with minimal escalation impact, Redshift SSL deployment across 25K+ clusters with zero major incidents.
- Reduced case volumes by 15% through process optimization and performance management.
- Served as Global Profile Owner (Linux) and interim owner, improving service accountability and support models.
- Improved service performance (CCR increased from 4.5 → 4.6) through targeted improvements.
- Led launch and scaling of Analytics support profile, including hiring and onboarding strategies.
- Coordinated enterprise-scale programs requiring cross-team execution and customer impact mitigation.
- Built and developed high-performing teams across Linux and Analytics profiles.
- Mentored engineers and managers, resulting in multiple promotions and leadership growth.
- Partnered with AWS service teams (EC2, Redshift, ElastiCache, Kinesis, ElasticSearch) to improve service reliability.
- Delivered executive-level operational reviews and deep dives, providing insights that informed strategic decision-making for senior leadership.
Operations Manager
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Cape Town, South Africa
04.2014 - 10.2015
- Led cloud support operations during rapid AWS growth, focusing on SLA performance, team scaling, and operational consistency.
- Managed support teams handling enterprise workloads across AWS services.
- Increased team productivity and enhanced live contact SLA performance through targeted process improvements.
- Improved system reliability by 20% and customer satisfaction by 15%.
- Facilitated resolution of high-priority customer issues by acting as escalation point.
- Led resolution of complex infrastructure and service-related problems.
- Engaged directly with team members to address backlog and provide support.
- Led hiring efforts through sourcing, screening, and onboarding engineers.
- Mentored team members resulting in internal promotions and improved performance.
- Successfully improved low-performing engineers into high-performing contributors.
- Created Operations Manager onboarding wiki to streamline new hire ramp time.
- Standardized workflows and improved operational consistency.
- Launched Engineer Exchange Program with Dublin to foster cross-site collaboration and knowledge sharing.
- Owned and transitioned global services (App Services, SES) across regions.
- Coordinated with global teams to ensure service continuity and improvement.
Cloud Support Engineer
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Cape Town, South Africa
04.2013 - 04.2014
- Provided technical support for AWS infrastructure, enhancing reliability of compute, networking, and storage services.
- Diagnosed and resolved complex issues impacting service availability.
- Trained and onboarded 30+ engineers, improving team capability.
- Implemented enhancements to internal tools and support processes, streamlining workflows for engineering team.
Technical Director
AIT Group
Pretoria, South Africa
01.2005 - 03.2013
- Led IT operations, infrastructure strategy, and technical teams supporting enterprise hosting, VoIP, and data center environments.
- Directed end-to-end IT operations, including data center infrastructure, hosting platforms, and VoIP systems.
- Managed uptime, availability, and performance of mission-critical production environments to ensure continuous service delivery.
- Oversaw infrastructure monitoring, incident response, and operational stability across all systems.
- Designed and implemented network and infrastructure architectures supporting enterprise clients.
- Led deployment of scalable solutions across Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft environments to enhance operational capabilities.
- Built and maintained secure, high-availability systems aligned to customer and business requirements.
- Led security strategy and risk assessments across infrastructure and network environments.
- Implemented firewall and network security solutions, ensuring protection of internal and customer systems.
- Partnered with stakeholders to mitigate infrastructure and operational risks.
- Managed and developed technical teams, including support engineers and senior technical staff.
- Provided escalation support and technical guidance for complex customer issues.
- Collaborated with sales and external partners to design and deliver customer solutions.
- Conducted infrastructure analysis and performance reporting to identify improvement opportunities.
- Implemented operational improvements to boost system reliability and elevate service quality.
Technical Manager
Thurston Computers
Pretoria, South Africa
02.2003 - 12.2004
- Managed IT infrastructure deployments, network architecture, and technical operations for enterprise and SMB clients, enhancing system performance and reliability.
- Led implementation and management of backbone infrastructure and enterprise networks.
- Designed and deployed solutions across Open Source (RedHat, FreeBSD) and Microsoft environments (Active Directory, Exchange).
- Acted as Network Architect, leading design and rollout of infrastructure solutions for clients.
- Executed end-to-end project delivery from design through deployment and support, ensuring alignment with client objectives.
- Led operations on projects, ensuring adherence to quality standards and fulfillment of customer expectations.
- Acted as primary liaison with clients, ensuring successful implementation and high customer satisfaction.
Linux Support Manager
DataPro Services (PTY) LTD
Johannesburg, South Africa
03.1999 - 01.2003
- Led Linux infrastructure, security services, and technical support operations, building and managing a dedicated security division.
- Managed Linux server environments and enterprise infrastructure to support seamless operations for internal and external clients.
- Maintained and supported production systems ensuring uptime and stability.
- Managed internal and customer-facing support services, ensuring timely issue resolution.
- Provided support across WAN/LAN networks, routing, and server systems.
- Built and led a security division, delivering firewall and network security solutions.
- Implemented and supported: Checkpoint Firewall-1, Cisco Pix firewalls, Raptor and Lucent firewall systems.
- Provided consulting on network and internet security architecture, ensuring robust protection for client systems.
- Delivered consulting services and technical guidance to clients and sales teams.
- Developed new product offerings and technical solutions that expanded company service capabilities and enhanced client satisfaction.
- Contributed to business growth through technical innovation and service delivery improvements.
Education
Small Business Management -
University of Port Elizabeth
Port Elizabeth, South AfricaSkills
- IT Operations Management
- Service Delivery
- Incident & Escalation Management
- Cloud Operations (AWS)
- Security & Compliance
- Infrastructure Support
- System monitoring
- Process Improvement
- Team Leadership
- Agile / Scrum
Education And Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- Agile Leader Certification – Six Sigma Global Institute (SSGI)
- Advanced Linux & TCP/IP Certification
- Small Business Management – University of Port Elizabeth
Work Preference
Job Search Status
Open to workWork Type
Full TimeLocation Preference
On-SiteRemoteHybridSalary Range
$170000/yr - $200000/yrTimeline
Enterprise Support Manager
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
12.2021 - Current
Manager, Solutions Architects (Partner SA Manager)
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
12.2019 - 11.2021
Senior Operations Manager
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
11.2015 - 12.2019
Operations Manager
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
04.2014 - 10.2015
Cloud Support Engineer
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
04.2013 - 04.2014
Technical Director
AIT Group
01.2005 - 03.2013
Technical Manager
Thurston Computers
02.2003 - 12.2004
Linux Support Manager
DataPro Services (PTY) LTD
03.1999 - 01.2003
Small Business Management -
University of Port Elizabeth