Michael Simmons
Philadelphia,Pa
Summary
Results-driven Principal Engineer with expertise in cloud technologies and scalable solution design. Proven ability to enhance system performance and streamline processes through strategic collaboration. Recognized for exceptional troubleshooting skills and innovative problem-solving capabilities. Committed to delivering high-quality results in dynamic environments.
Overview
2026
2026
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Principal/Lead Cloud Engineer
SAIC
12.2023 - Current
- Design and implement scalable, secure, and resilient cloud architectures.
- Authored SOPs, runbooks, and operational documentation supporting secure, compliant cloud operations and incident response.
- Maintained auditable documentation aligned with FEDRAMP and STIG requirements to support operational continuity and knowledge transfer.
- Lead cloud migration initiatives, ensuring seamless and risk-free transition of applications from on-premises to cloud environments.
- Develop automation and orchestration strategies to improve efficiency and reliability of cloud deployments.
- Establish cloud governance, best practices, and security guidelines to maintain compliance with industry standards.
- Collaborate with IT and development teams to integrate cloud solutions with existing systems and software development processes.
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to cloud engineering teams.
- Stay abreast of new cloud technologies and trends, evaluating their applicability to our goals and objectives.
- Conduct performance analysis, capacity planning, and cost optimization to ensure efficient operation of cloud environments.
- Manage vendor relationships to leverage cloud services and support effectively.
- Architected current workflow to a GitOps based flow. Having a single source of truth using Terraform for IaC, and Kubernetes (EKS) for container orchestration.
- Help direct overall sprint planning, sprint review and overall retrospective. Also mentor, and train lower level engineers.
- Evaluates performance, including team feedback and provides input, guidance, and corrective actions.
- Understands, teaches, and/or sponsors the IT Engineering skills needed to support the development of high-quality code, components, systems, and solutions. Support team members with problem identification, root cause analysis, and decision-making.
- Architect Disaster Recovery for IT infrastructure between GovCloud environments.
- Establishes best practices and ensures team alignment through audit and review of work.
- Architecting log aggregation for project wide log remediation, and monitoring. This is done by using AWS SSM with S3 buckets using lambda functions to trigger when an event happens.
- Currently developing End-to-End kubernetes tests for CloudOne integration environments.
- Mentored junior engineers on cloud best practices, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
- Developed automated deployment processes using CI/CD pipelines for accelerated software delivery.
Sr. Cloud Engineer
Slalom Consulting/AmeriSource Bergen
- Hands on experience in Azure Development, worked on Azure web application, App services, Azure storage, Azure SQL.
- Database, Virtual machines, Fabric controller, Azure AD, Azure search, and notification hub.
- Designed, configured and deployed Microsoft Azure for a multitude of applications utilizing the Azure stack (Including Compute, Web & Mobile, Blobs, Resource Groups, Azure SQL, Cloud Services, and ARM), focusing on high - availability, fault tolerance, and auto-scaling.
- Used Terraform to create, deploy Azure APIs for developers.
- Designed and implemented scalable cloud architectures to enhance operational efficiency.
- Led cross-functional teams in migrating legacy systems to cloud platforms, ensuring seamless transitions.
Sr. Cloud Engineer
Slalom Consulting/Marriott
03.2022 - 11.2023
- Design modern enterprise cloud solutions and deliver across a variety of cloud infrastructure platforms and services.
- Add real business value – solve client problems with technology, and advise on best practices.
- Lead and work alongside teams.
- Deliver working solutions and cloud migrations in client environments.
- Research, listen, understand, recommend, solution, validate.
- Work together on agile, cross-functional teams with people across a variety of disciplines like Software Development, Data, CRM, Design and Product.
- Communicating with companies to determine their cloud service needs and answer any of their cloud-related questions.
- Researching cloud-based applications that companies might be interested in.
- Collaborating with cloud engineers, administrators, and IT teams to create cloud-based applications that satisfy a client’s needs.
- Creating cloud-based applications that clients might need, typically after helping clients ideate those applications.
- Integrating cloud-based applications into a client’s network after they have been created.
- Configuring client networks to handle any new cloud services.
- Training client employees on the correct use of any new cloud-based applications.
- Familiarizing client companies with any changes to their existing cloud-based applications.
- I’ve recently worked with AWS ec2 Amazon Linux, windows server, and NLB implementing EKS clusters. I’ve deployed multiple ingress controllers into AWS EKS kubernetes cluster in different environments (dev, pre-prod, and prod). Adding DNS, along with using Terraform to manage the infrastructure.
- I currently use EFS, and EBS for a centralized storage system between multiple AWS accounts for file sharing. We previously deployed EBS volumes, but the issues we ran into was scaling, which was why we chose EFS.
- I’ve used AWS system manager to replace the use of a bastion host. One of the main issues I found using a bastion host was the hardening aspect. Managed SSH keys, exposing the bastion host to target servers, etc…with AWS system manager that eliminated all of that.
- I currently have multiple monitoring services: CloudWatch, Splunk, Dynatrace. We have cloudwatch monitoring our entire infrastructure and that is also being piped through Splunk, and Dynatrace. We monitor our EKS cluster, ec2, docdb, ingress controller, etc…
Cloud Engineer (Contract)
MSCI
03.2022 - 09.2022
- Provide 1st and 2nd level technical support to business stakeholders, building strong relationships.
- Develop software engineering solutions on AWS to stability problems – including developing tools to enhance stability and monitoring.
- Conduct root cause analysis on incidents and ensure that the problem management process is fully followed through upon.
- Work with Cloud Engineering team to manage and support platform, downtime and testing.
- Execute and co-ordinate production deployments via DevOps processes.
- Be on call evenings and weekends to support business critical incidents as and when required.
- Coordinated in container migration from Rancher to Kubernetes.
- I’ve used Velero for DR. I spiked, and implemented this for our prod environment. It Mainly works off snapshots as a reason to restore resources in kubernetes clusters, also migrating resources, and persistent volumes to another Kubernetes cluster.
Cloud Engineer Consultant
Core4ce
11.2020 - 03.2022
- Assess the organization’s technology infrastructure, and explore options for moving to the cloud.
- Oversee the process, migration, and maintaining the new system.
- Manage computing, networking, and security services that all need to be configured properly. Configuration serves two key roles: To ensure that the right users have access to the right services (depending on their role within the company) and that the company doesn’t incur unexpected or unnecessary charges.
- Created and maintained runbooks for incident response, service recovery, and troubleshooting of cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes platforms.
- Developed step-by-step runbooks to support on-call engineers during outages and security events, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
- Implemented runbooks for common operational scenarios including service restarts, failover, backup restoration, and access remediation.
- Integrated runbooks into operational workflows to support 24/7 production support and SOC coordination.
SysAdmin/DevOps Engineer (Contract)
Exyn
06.2020 - 11.2020
- Participate in all aspects of the software development life cycle for AWS solutions, including planning, requirements, development, testing, and quality assurance.
- Troubleshoot incidents, identify root cause, fix and document problems, and implement preventive measures.
- Educate teams on the implementation of new cloud-based initiatives, providing associated training as required.
- Employ exceptional problem-solving skills, with the ability to see and solve issues before they affect business productivity.
- Improved code deployment efficiency by automating processes with CI/CD pipelines.
- Automated deployment processes to enhance efficiency and reduce downtime.
DevOps Engineer
PowerHRG
01.2018 - 06.2020
- Hybrid cloud environment.
- Liaise with vendors, customers, team members and other IT personnel for problem resolution using AWS S3/StorageGRID for object storage.
- Work with remote engineers using Docker to democratize monolithic applications.
- Currently using Ansible for network management, and Puppet for production servers.
- Currently working with AWS CloudFormation to use Infrastructure as Code to provision, write and execute code to define, deploy, and update our infrastructure.
- Current AWS working services are EC2, ALB, S3, IAM.
- Working with VMware , and K8s to manage and deploy applications.
- Participates in designing and development of software using agile development practices.
- Performed research and development tasks to design and implement new components.
- Currently participating in development sprints.
- Participate in daily morning stand up meetings.
- Working ELK stack to log server analytics.
- Use NewRelic, Grafana, and PagerDuty to manage and monitor all installed systems and infrastructure.
- Use Vagrant as a sandbox environment for testing automation scripts and configuration management modules for Puppet.
- Used TICK (Telegraf, InfluxDB, Chronograf, Kapacitor) stack for monitoring metric, and alerting for on-prem environments.
- Maintain and operate security, backup, and redundancy strategies for production and backup data centers.
- Currently using Terraform to build out AWS infrastructure (EC2, RDS, ELB ) on VMware servers which is managed through Puppet for automation.
- Collaborated with development teams to ensure seamless integration of applications and services.
- Implemented automation scripts to enhance deployment processes and reduce manual errors.
Simulation Data Analyst
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
06.2017 - 09.2018
- Interpret data, analyze results using statistical techniques and provide ongoing reports.
- Develop and implement databases, data collection systems, data analytics and other strategies that optimize statistical efficiency and quality.
- Acquire data from primary or secondary data sources and maintain databases/data systems.
- Identify, analyze, and interpret trends or patterns in complex data sets.
- Filter and “clean” data by reviewing computer reports, printouts, and performance indicators to locate and correct code problems.
- Work with management to prioritize business and information needs.
- Locate and define new process improvement opportunities.
- Use R, and Python to run data analysis.
Junior DevOps Engineer
Ress Scientific
10.2016 - 06.2017
- Actively manage, improve, and monitor cloud infrastructure on AWS,EC2, S3, and RDS, including backups, patches, and scaling.
- Reduced costs by ~$3,000 each month by eliminating unnecessary servers and consolidating databases.
- Built and deployed Docker containers to break up monolithic app into microservices, improving developer workflow, increasing scalability, and optimizing speed.
- Implemented VMWare, and Hyper V Visualization to consolidated servers Also worked with Citrix server, and client to allow access to client’s VM computing.
- Used Citrix Secure for VPN access.
CyberSecurity Engineer
Air Force
08.2008 - Current
- Provides voice, data and video services. Installs, upgrades, replaces, configures and maintains systems/circuits/IP-based intrusion detection systems that access military, Federal and commercial networks.
- Manages infrastructure devices and systems using the latest approved software tools.
- Deploys and operates expeditionary communications systems. Uses agile logistics support channels to sustain continuous network operations.
- Removes, repairs and replaces assemblies and subassemblies to optimally sustain voice, data and video networks.
- Establishes priorities, maintains, tests, troubleshoots, and repairs voice and network systems equipment and circuits utilizing tools and test equipment.
- Isolates malfunctions using diagnostic software, technical data, block diagrams, voltage and waveform measurements, and other tests requiring specialized test equipment.
- Monitors performance of systems and circuits.
- Coordinates with coalition forces, DoD agencies and other service providers to analyze and isolate performance faults and implement corrective actions.
- Checks equipment for serviceability and performs preventive maintenance. Isolates faults by coordinating with commercial service providers and depots to test system components and assemblies.
- Maintains and administers voice, network and circuit databases, records and forms.
- Interprets sketches and layout drawings for placement of distribution systems.
- Coordinates request for service orders. Reviews, recommends, and implements changes to communications-computer systems installations records (CSIR), technical data, engineering drawings, and equipment wiring diagrams.
- Updates and verifies entries on system, facility, maintenance, and inspection records.
- Initiates, tracks, and maintains shipping, receiving, supply, and equipment documents.
- Conducts periodic inspections of systems installations and repair activities.
- Interprets inspection reports and implements corrective actions, documents inspection and maintenance actions.
- Reviews and maintains operational measurement reports and analyzes network utilization.
- Ensures equipment and components meet installation practice technical order and accepted commercial installation specifications.
- Applies communications security programs to include physical, cryptographic, transmission, and emission security.
- Develops and ensures compliance with safety standards and instructions.
- Conducted vulnerability assessments to identify and mitigate cybersecurity risks.
- Developed and implemented security protocols to safeguard sensitive information.
Education
Associate of Applied Science - Engineering
Community College of The Air Force
Montgomery, ALSkills
- AWS
- Azure
- Bash
- Python
- Terraform
- Helm
- Kubernetes
- ELK
- EKS
- RDS
- S3
- EC2
- Splunk
- Dynatrace
- Jira
- Confluence
- Linux/RHEL
- Cloud Architecting Secret
- Clearance Jenkins CI/CD
- SQL/NoSQL Database
- GitOps Principals
- ArgoCD
- FEDRamp
- STIG Compliance GitLab
- CI/CD
- Cloud computing
- API development
- DevOps principles
- Infrastructure as Code
Certification
- AWS Cloud Practitioner
- CompTIA Security+
Timeline
Principal/Lead Cloud Engineer
SAIC
12.2023 - Current
Sr. Cloud Engineer
Slalom Consulting/Marriott
03.2022 - 11.2023
Cloud Engineer (Contract)
MSCI
03.2022 - 09.2022
Cloud Engineer Consultant
Core4ce
11.2020 - 03.2022
SysAdmin/DevOps Engineer (Contract)
Exyn
06.2020 - 11.2020
DevOps Engineer
PowerHRG
01.2018 - 06.2020
Simulation Data Analyst
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
06.2017 - 09.2018
Junior DevOps Engineer
Ress Scientific
10.2016 - 06.2017
CyberSecurity Engineer
Air Force
08.2008 - Current
Sr. Cloud Engineer
Slalom Consulting/AmeriSource Bergen
Associate of Applied Science - Engineering
Community College of The Air Force