MARK FLAIM
Leland,NC
Summary
Dynamic Senior Consultant with extensive experience at Ironside, specializing in AWS Managed Services and automation. Achieved a 50% reduction in provisioning time through Terraform and CloudFormation. Expert in VPC, IAM, and security governance, while fostering collaboration across teams to deliver scalable, high-availability solutions.
Overview
13
13
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Senior Consultant
Ironside
Boston, MA
10.2018 - 08.2024
- Optimized CI/CD pipelines for AWS AI and Data Analytics solutions, leveraging services such as SageMaker (AI Ops), Redshift, QuickSight (BI Ops), DynamoDB, RDS, Athena, and Glue to enable data-driven decision-making and machine learning applications.
- Implemented Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using CloudFormation and Terraform, driving automation, repeatability, and scalability of AWS infrastructure deployments.
- Developed governance and automation frameworks utilizing AWS Control Tower, Service Catalog, AWS Config, and Security Hub, ensuring compliance, security, and operational efficiency across customer environments.
- Deployed and managed AWS networking infrastructure, including VPC design, routing, gateways, load balancing, and subnet configurations, enhancing security and performance for cloud-based solutions.
- Engineered IAM and Service Control Policy (SCP) solutions to address complex security and access requirements, including third-party integrations, ensuring robust AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) practices.
- Architected and established AWS account hierarchies for internal and external cloud estates, contributing to FinOps initiatives by validating cost allocation, optimizing resource usage, and managing customer credit distributions.
- Set up AWS budgets for all AWS accounts, along with SNS notifications.
- Scheduled automatic exports of the cost and usage reports to S3 buckets.
- Defined tables in Athena to point to the cost and usage report within S3 buckets.
- Set up dashboards to showcase data generated from Athena queries.
- Utilized AWS Compute Optimizer to reduce costs on EC2 and Lambda.
- Automated Windows and Red Hat server provisioning using CloudFormation/Terraform, reducing setup time by 50%.
- Created bash scripts to automate backups and log rotation for RedHat EC2 instances.
- Implemented patch management and vulnerability scanning using AWS Systems Manager and AWS Inspector for all Red Hat and Windows servers.
- Implemented and configured AWS GuardDuty across multiple AWS accounts to provide continuous threat detection and alerting.
- Designed and implemented AWS Secrets Manager to securely store and rotate application credentials, API keys, and database passwords, eliminating hardcoded secrets in code repositories.
- Implemented and managed AWS Organizations to consolidate multiple AWS accounts under a centralized management structure.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant
Sierra-Cedar
11.2014 - 03.2018
- Upgraded and enhanced EPM environments leading to improved performance and system stability.
- Automated environment provisioning and migrations reducing operational workload.
- Delivered critical system upgrades across Linux and Windows infrastructures.
- Analyzed client infrastructure needs to recommend tailored solutions.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant
Linium LLC
03.2011 - 06.2014
- Managed and optimized multi-environment clusters for enterprise reporting applications.
- Implemented high-availability configurations improving system uptime and reliability.
- Delivered major platform upgrades from legacy versions with zero business disruption.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to design scalable systems.
Education
Bachelor of Science - Business Administration & Information Technology
Colorado Technical University
Skills
- VPC
- Route 53
- S3
- EC2
- ELB
- Lambda
- Organizations
- Control Tower
- Terraform
- CloudFormation
- CI/CD
- Systems Manager
- SCPs
- IAM
- GuardDuty
- Secrets Manager
- Inspector
- AWS Config
- Security Hub
- Redshift
- DynamoDB
- RDS
- Glue
- Athena
- QuickSight
- CloudWatch
- Datadog
- Windows Server 2018-2022
- Linux (RedHat 7-9)
- SQL Server
- Oracle
Websites
Certification
- AWS Solutions Architect - Associate
- AWS Certified Developer - Associate
Timeline
Senior Consultant
Ironside
10.2018 - 08.2024
Senior Infrastructure Consultant
Sierra-Cedar
11.2014 - 03.2018
Senior Infrastructure Consultant
Linium LLC
03.2011 - 06.2014
Bachelor of Science - Business Administration & Information Technology
Colorado Technical University