Jackson Smith

Oh look, it's Jackson

About me

Hi, I’m Jackson! I’m a Software Engineer with over a decade of experience in building and operating systems that streamline processes and ensure smooth operations. My expertise lies in infrastructure and reliability engineering, encompassing hybrid cloud, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, and high-availability architecture. Throughout my career, I’ve collaborated with Agile delivery teams and actively participated in SAFe program increments. Recently, I transitioned into software development, where I’ve been responsible for building automated workflows and productivity tools.

I have a proven track record of eliminating single points of failure, reducing vulnerabilities by 70%, and delivering $400K+ in cost savings through automation. I bring an operator’s instinct to software development: I care about correctness, testability, and systems that don’t page someone at 3am.

Outside of work, I enjoy skiing, cooking, yoga, and Pilates.

Key Projects & Initiatives

High Availability Architecture: Eliminated single point of failure for core SQL infrastructure by architecting three-node availability group cluster, achieving 99.99% uptime and improved disaster recovery posture with sub-15-minute RTO.
Legacy Infrastructure Modernization: Led strategic refactoring of critical systems (internal DNS, certificate lifecycle, syslog normalization) reducing operational escalations by 50% over 12 months through systematic reliability improvements and automation.
Security Engineering: Partnered with InfoSec as a trusted technical contributor across Zero Trust network deployment (Zscaler), certificate authority migration (Entrust → DigiCert with Azure KeyVault automation), PKI lifecycle management, and major security incident response — bringing infrastructure depth to security initiatives where most engineers contribute only peripherally.

IT Software Engineer | Public Consulting Group; Remote – March 2026-Present

Testing & Code Quality

Established foundational Pester unit test suite and reusable shared test infrastructure for an existing codebase, creating automated quality gates where none previously existed.
Configured CI pipeline executing Pester tests on push and pull request events, enforcing code quality standards across the development workflow from day one.

Platform Reliability & Modernization

Centralized shared mail delivery using Microsoft Graph API with Graph-first routing behavior, modernizing email delivery away from legacy protocol dependencies.
Implemented targeted input validation and hardening on critical workflows, reducing attack surface and improving operational resilience of production systems.

Architecture & Modernization Strategy

Conducted architectural assessment of existing codebase, identifying strengths, gaps, and a prioritized improvement roadmap — balancing modernization velocity against production risk.
Executing phased modularization strategy: extracting notification and directory lookup logic from monolithic orchestration scripts before touching destructive workflows, ensuring each extraction is independently unit-testable and carries no production side effects.
Identified and fixed latent production bug (single-quote filter defect in directory service lookup) discovered during refactoring.

Documentation

Authored focused documentation for shared function helpers and the test system, improving developer onboarding and long-term maintainability.

Operations Engineer | Lincoln Investment; Remote – April 2022-January 2026

Platform Reliability & Scalability

Architected and operate hybrid-cloud platform serving 300+ offices nationwide across Azure and multi-datacenter VMware environment, ensuring 99.9% availability for business-critical services.
Eliminated technical debt through strategic virtualization platform evolution (vSphere 6.5 → 8.0.3), improving resource efficiency by 30% and enabling automated failover capabilities across datastore clusters.
Leading enterprise storage modernization initiative, replacing aging Dell PowerMax SANs with high-performance Nimble/Pure solutions to support 5-year Azure migration roadmap and double available capacity.

Automation & Operational Excellence

Implemented automated patching pipeline for Linux and Windows servers using Satellite and SCCM, reducing monthly vulnerability exposure by 70% and eliminating $400K in annual outsourcing costs.
Designed enterprise observability platform using New Relic and Zabbix with SLI/SLO-based alerting, reducing unplanned downtime by 35% through proactive performance monitoring and capacity planning.
Accelerated development velocity by leveraging AI-assisted tooling (GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) for rapid prototyping of automation scripts and instrumenting applications with OpenTelemetry for enhanced observability.
Collaborated with senior developers on pruning hundreds of terabytes of legacy data, proposing and implementing a parallelized PowerShell solution using ForEach-Object -Parallel that reduced deletion time from days to hours, significantly improving operational efficiency and resource utilization.
Designed and led the implementation of organization-wide documentation standards, handover requirements, and maintenance processes, coordinating with engineering, operations, and platform teams to ensure consistency then centralized all system documentation in a single Confluence space.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Application Support

Partnered with development teams to troubleshoot production issues in Java applications, providing platform-level expertise on authentication failures, XML configuration errors, and middleware connectivity problems that reduced mean-time-to-resolution by 40%.
Served as infrastructure liaison during critical incidents, analyzing application logs, reviewing production code, and identifying root causes related to network connectivity, certificate validation, and environment-specific configurations.
Partnered with InfoSec team on security initiatives including Zscaler Zero Trust deployment (network integration, certificate configuration, application testing) and all major security incidents, contributing operational expertise and ensuring rapid containment, mitigation, and post-incident analysis across critical services.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Architected and deployed modern hybrid-cloud backup solution (NetBackup on Flex Appliance with Azure archive tier), achieving zero-downtime migration while improving RTO from 24 hours to 4 hours and enhancing operational visibility.
Led biannual disaster recovery validation for core line-of-business applications, ensuring backup integrity and recovery procedures meet business SLAs.
Orchestrated certificate authority migration from Entrust to DigiCert in under 6 months, integrating with Azure KeyVault for automated certificate lifecycle management and seamless operational handoff.

Strategic Initiatives & Risk Mitigation

Championed early adoption of Server 2022 and RHEL 8/9, proactively migrating workloads 18 months ahead of EOL deadlines (Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, CentOS), eliminating compliance risks and modernizing security posture.
Elevated Active Directory Domain Functional Level from 2008 to 2016, unlocking modern security features and improving authentication reliability across enterprise.
Architected and managed federated identity infrastructure connecting Lincoln’s Active Directory with 20+ external Microsoft 365/Entra ID tenants for financial advisor offices nationwide. Designed automated provisioning workflow creating mail-enabled users in federated tenants with license assignment via OneLogin, enabling secure cross-organization collaboration while maintaining centralized identity management.
Delivered clean handoff of user account automation via OneLogin/ADP then Okta/DayForce as well as SAML integration for application access for seamless employee lifecycle management by Digital Workspace team.

Network Analyst | Chester County Library System; Remote – February 2019-April 2022

Infrastructure Automation & Efficiency

Eliminated manual provisioning bottlenecks by rebuilding hardware deployment pipeline using PowerShell and PowerCLI, reducing provisioning time from 4 hours to 15 minutes and saving 12 person-months annually.
Modernized network infrastructure across 18 public libraries by replacing legacy Cisco wireless controller with cloud-managed Meraki platform, reducing support overhead by 60% and cutting licensing costs by 40%.
Empowered librarians to own content updates via basic HTML and CSS training, reducing website update request time from 3-5 days to same day delivery.

Proactive Modernization & Business Continuity

Led early adoption of Windows 11 and Server 2019, migrating infrastructure 24 months ahead of Windows 10/Server 2012 R2 EOL, building automated deployment tooling using PowerShell and MDT to ensure zero-touch provisioning.
Served as technical lead for County Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning, architecting high-availability solutions including VPN failover, ISP redundancy, and remote work enablement that ensured seamless operations during 2020 pandemic transition.
Mentored two junior system administrators.

Service Analyst | County of Chester; West Chester, PA – October 2016-February 2019

Delivered technical support for 2,500+ users across hybrid VMware/Windows/Linux environment while maintaining 95%+ CSAT scores through consistent communication and rapid resolution.
Acted as technical advisor to County Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity committees, providing expertise on high-availability architecture, network redundancy strategies, and ISP failover configurations to ensure operational resilience.

IT Consultant | Robert Half Technology; Philadelphia, PA – Feb 2016-Oct 2016

Executed cloud migration projects for multi-site clients, successfully transitioning from on-premise Active Directory/Exchange to Azure AD and Microsoft 365 with zero data loss.
Maintained 99.9% uptime across diverse Windows and Linux server environments through proactive configuration management and optimized patching workflows.
Coordinated infrastructure deployments with vendor partners, ensuring structured cabling and equipment installations met performance and compliance standards.

Technician | County of Chester; West Chester, PA – April 2015-April 2016

Provided Level 2 technical support to 900+ users across county agencies, developing PowerShell automation scripts and documentation that reduced ticket escalations by 25%.

Certificates

Google IT Support Professional Certificate

Projects

Home Projects

Local LLM Infrastructure & Fine-Tuning: Built local AI experimentation environment running Mistral 8x7b and 8x22b models via Ollama. Fine-tuned custom Mixtral 8x7b model using official training guides, gaining hands-on experience with model architecture, quantization, and GPU resource optimization.
Rocket.Chat Cloud Deployment: Deployed and managed Rocket.Chat in the public cloud on a Debian cluster (Node.js, MongoDB, NGINX) with automated SSL/TLS certificate lifecycle via Certbot/Let’s Encrypt. Provisioned with Ruby/Shell (Chef) and monitored via Prometheus + Grafana.

Technical Skills

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS, Azure
VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, VirtualBox

Automation & Infrastructure as Code

Ansible, Terraform
PowerShell, Bash, Ruby, Python, HCL
Chef (familiar with Puppet and Salt)

Configuration Management

SCCM, Satellite

Monitoring & Observability

New Relic, Zabbix
Prometheus, Grafana
OpenTelemetry
rsyslog, Logstash (ELK Stack)

AI-Assisted Development

GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT (Production)
Ollama (local LLM deployment)
Mixtral/Mistral (model fine-tuning and experimentation)

Application Support

Java application troubleshooting
XML configuration
Application server middleware

Containerization

Docker

Databases

Microsoft SQL Server
PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB
MongoDB, Cassandra

Networking & Security

Cisco, Meraki
DNS, PKI/Certificate Management
SSL/TLS Automation (Certbot, Let's Encrypt, ACME Protocol)
OpenVPN, AnyConnect, GlobalProtect, Zscaler

Web Services & Load Balancers

NGINX, HAProxy
Apache httpd, IIS

Backup Solutions

Veritas NetBackup
Veritas HubStor (NetBackup SaaS Protection)
Dell Avamar, Dell NetWorker
Veeam

Directory Services & IAM

Active Directory
389 Directory Service, Samba
OneLogin, Okta

Email & Messaging Platforms

Microsoft Exchange (On-Premises & Online)
Microsoft 365 & Teams Administration
Google Workspace Administration  
Slack Administration (SAML/SSO Integration)
Cisco Unified Communications
Email Authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM)
SMTP Protocol & Relay Configuration (SendGrid, Mailgun, IIS)
Compliance & eDiscovery (Purview, Smarsh)

Operating Systems

Linux: Debian, CentOS, RHEL
Unix: macOS, OpenBSD, FreeBSD
Windows: NT 3.1-11, Server 2003-2025

Version Control & Development Tools

Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket
VS Code, Vim
Vagrant, VirtualBox
strace/truss, Valgrind
PowerCLI, MDT

Package Managers

apt, dpkg, pkg, yum
chocolatey, nuget, winget (Windows)

Collaboration Tools

Jira, Confluence
Slack, Rocket.Chat, Microsoft Teams

Education

B.A., Political Science

West Chester University, 2013