Grady Peterson
📞 (952)-334-5523
✉ grady@gradyp.com
🌐 www.gradyp.com
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IT Systems Engineering Leader
Enterprise Architecture | Digital Transformations | Cloud Strategy | Process Optimization
Professional Summary
Senior Infrastructure Engineer with expertise in cloud, virtualization, security, and automation. Specializes in high-availability systems, hyperconverged environments, and large-scale migrations. Proven ability to design resilient, secure, and cost-effective infrastructure solutions that align with business goals.
Key Achievements
- Infrastructure Modernization – Led the transition to Nutanix, consolidating compute and storage into a scalable, highly available, region-separated cluster. Migrated from VMware ESXi to AHV, improving performance and disaster recovery.
- Cloud & Hybrid Architecture – Designed a secure hybrid infrastructure integrating AWS EKS, Fargate, with traditional on-prem infrastructure via SD-WAN, following zero-trust security principals for seamless workload portability.
- Mergers & Acquisitions – Played a key role in IT strategy during organizational restructuring and acquisitions. Led the datacenter migration from on-premise to a colocated facility to support business expansion.
- Backup & Disaster Recovery – Identified and mitigated a critical failure in legacy backups. Led the design and execution of a scalable S3-based solution with automated disaster recovery, transforming a near-catastrophe into a resilient, highly available system.
- Remote Workforce & Virtualization – Engineered multiple VDI platforms, including one for 1,100+ concurrent users, optimizing performance and security for remote access.
- Security & Compliance – Led Active Directory hardening and PCI compliance initiatives. Successfully enforced MFA, and least privilege policies, achieving extremely successful results and significantly reducing security risks.
Career Experience
Infrastructure Architect | Western National | April 2023 – November 2024
- Designed and implemented a Hybrid Layered Architecture, modernizing cloud infrastructure and streamlining operations.
- Led the migration to AWS EKS and Fargate, enhancing scalability, security, and disaster recovery.
- Developed a team-driven migration strategy, aligning cloud adoption with application complexity and team readiness.
- Led cross-functional teams focused on containerization, integration and security improvements, including SD-WAN and firewall/WAF management.
- Drove business maturity initiatives by improving documentation standards, strengthening team performance, and defining key operational processes.
- Architected and led the implementation of a streamlined document generation solution, reducing processing time from several hours to minutes.
IT System Engineer Lead | Infinite Campus | February 2020 – April 2023
- Led the deployment and management of 4,000+ Nutanix-based VMs, optimizing compute/storage performance across Windows/Linux workloads.
- Developed an Ansible-based automation framework to replace legacy VMware vRealize Automation (VRA), enabling efficient provisioning and configuration management.
- Spearheaded the Hadoop-to-S3 backup migration, enabling cost-effective, cloud-scalable storage for long-term customer data retention.
Senior Technology Engineer | Twin Cities Orthopedics (Revo Health) | Aug. 2016 – Feb. 2020
- Led a data center migration, utilizing VMware SRM and storage replication to achieve seamless failover and disaster recovery testing.
- Designed, implemented, and optimized a VMware Horizon VDI solution for 1,100+ users, ensuring secure and high-performance remote access.
- Implemented a Dell-based data protection system, ensuring compliance with HIPAA security and backup regulations.
- Worked with VMware consultants to validate infrastructure performance and successfully lobbied for compute and storage upgrades based on workload requirements.
Senior Engineer | ShopNBC (Evine Live) | March 2012 – August 2016
- Designed and deployed a remote data center, handling networking, compute, storage, and virtualization architecture from the ground up.
- Key engineer for Enhanced Security Admin Environment project, implementing privileged access management and tiered AD security to pass PCI compliance audits.
- Managed a 200+ user VMware Horizon deployment, ensuring secure access for remote call center employees.
Technical Competencies
- Cloud & Virtualization: AWS (EKS, Fargate), VMware (ESXi, Horizon, NSX), Nutanix
- Infrastructure & Automation: Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD
- Compliance & Security: HIPAA, PCI, IAM/MFA, Least Privilege Access Controls
- Networking & Security: Cisco Networking (Routing, Switching, VPN), Checkpoint WAF/Firewall, IAM/MFA, Zero Trust
- Storage & Backup: Dell EMC, Nutanix Files & S3, VMware SRM, Disaster Recovery Planning
- Operating Systems: Windows Server, Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat)