Independent consulting practice
Security that ships with the software, not after it.
I help cloud-first engineering organizations build secure-by-default delivery — threat modeling, DevSecOps pipelines, and automated compliance evidence — without slowing the teams down.
Claremont, NC · Remote across the US
- 20+
- Years in engineering leadership
- 10
- Current AWS certifications
- 3
- AWS professional & specialty certs
- 1
- Issued US patent
Services
Six ways engagements usually start
Secure SDLC architecture
A development lifecycle where the secure path is the fast path, so teams follow it because it's easier — not because it's mandated.
- Threat modeling practice teams actually run
- Secure coding standards and review gates
- Automated security testing in the build
- Reference architectures and golden paths
DevSecOps & pipeline integration
Security controls embedded directly in CI/CD, tuned so the signal is real and the noise doesn't train people to click past it.
- CI/CD security integration end to end
- Policy-as-code enforcement
- SBOM generation and management
- Secrets lifecycle and rotation
Cloud & platform security
AWS architecture reviewed and hardened against how it will actually be operated, not against a checklist.
- AWS security architecture review
- API and perimeter security
- Container hardening
- Infrastructure-as-code security
Compliance evidence automation
Audit evidence collected as a by-product of delivery, so compliance stops being a quarterly fire drill.
- Automated evidence collection
- Executive dashboards and reporting
- Vulnerability management SLAs
- OKRs for security posture
Developer enablement
Toolchains and training that make the security team a multiplier rather than a queue engineering waits in.
- Secure-by-default toolchains
- Golden paths for common patterns
- OWASP and secure coding training
- Internal platform product ownership
Fractional leadership
Hands-on technical leadership for organizations that need the judgment of a principal engineer without a full-time hire.
- Vulnerability management and risk reduction
- Incident response readiness
- Executive-level technical reporting
- Cross-functional program leadership
Approach
How I work
Most security programs fail on adoption, not on design. The controls are correct, the documentation exists, and engineering routes around all of it because the secure path costs them a week. I start from what delivery already looks like and make the safe route the cheap one.
That means working inside your pipelines and your architecture rather than alongside them — and leaving behind reference implementations, not slide decks. The measure of an engagement is whether the practice survives after I've gone.
Track record
Selected experience
Two decades across cloud platforms, data infrastructure, and secure delivery — from petabyte-scale ingest at Oracle to solutions architecture at AWS.
2023–2025
Extacom LtdCo-Founder & Partner
Founded an SDVOSB for federal contracts; negotiated two SBA Mentor-Protégé agreements and achieved AWS Partner status.
2021–2024
NCS PearsonPrincipal Cloud Engineer
Architected and institutionalized secure SDLC practice across a ~50-engineer platform organization.
2020–2021
SambaSafetyPrincipal Site Reliability Engineer
SME to executive technology leadership on reliability, cost optimization, and platform strategy.
2019–2020
CSGSoftware Architect
Led the cross-functional refactor toward microservices and containers with end-to-end automation.
2018–2019
Amazon Web ServicesSolutions Architect
Worldwide Public Sector K-12 EdTech; machine learning specialist and architecture reviewer.
2015–2017
OracleConsulting Member of Technical Staff
Oracle Data Cloud — canonical data models for a petabyte-scale ingest and processing platform.
Credentials
Ten current AWS certifications, a patent, and two degrees
Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
- AWS Certified Security – Specialty
- AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate
- AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
- AWS Certified AI Practitioner
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Education
- Executive Education, Organizational Leadership — University of Denver
- M.S. Computer Information Systems, Beta Gamma Sigma — Missouri State University
- B.S. Computer Information Systems, Finley Fellow — University of Northern Colorado
Patent
Methods and Systems for Network-Based Analysis, Intervention, and AnonymizationUS 10,366,251 B2