📞 (952) 334-5523
✉ grady@gradyp.com
🌐 www.gradyp.com
📍 Maple Grove, MN
Enterprise Architecture | Digital Transformations | Cloud Strategy | Process Optimization | Team Leadership
Experienced IT leader with over two decades of expertise in infrastructure architecture, digital transformation, and cloud strategy. Demonstrated success in driving multi-million-dollar projects, achieving over $2M in cost savings, and implementing scalable, cloud-based solutions. Adept at leading high-performance teams and delivering strategic, impactful technological innovations that align with business objectives.
Led Hyperconverged Infrastructure Initiative
Re-architected infrastructure at Infinite Campus, consolidating storage, compute, and licensing into a streamlined hyperconverged platform, resulting in $2M in annual savings and positioning the company as Nutanix’s largest Midwestern customer.
Cloud Migration Leadership
Directed the migration to AWS EKS and Fargate at Western National. Successfully defined roles and responsibilities between the network and platform teams, with the network team managing AWS networking and the platform team managing EKS. Architected a unified system for both on-prem and cloud environments, ensuring seamless operations across platforms.
Critical Backup System Recovery & Platform Modernization
Led the recovery of an antiquated backup system that had become a single point of failure. Restored the system, recovering 30 million backup files, despite no vendor support. Transitioned the company to a more efficient S3-based platform, modernizing storage practices and enabling future cloud adoption.
Team Retention & Growth During COVID
Served as acting manager during a critical transition at Infinite Campus, taking over team leadership following the departure of the previous manager. Established communication with other teams, uncovered infrastructure deficiencies, and implemented a kanban-style workflow. Joined the architecture committee as the infrastructure advisor and maintained 100% retention, growing the team by 30%.
Cost Optimization Through Load Balancing Infrastructure Replacement
Presented a cost-benefit analysis for replacing the company’s F5 load balancing infrastructure, demonstrating that the company’s needs could be met with an open-source HAProxy-based solution. The proposal was accepted, resulting in significant cost savings while maintaining the required functionality and performance.
Western National | Edina, MN | 2023 - Present
Designed and implemented a comprehensive Hybrid Layered Architecture to streamline infrastructure processes and modernize cloud environments. Spearheaded the organization’s migration to AWS EKS and Fargate, driving scalable solutions and improving disaster recovery readiness.
Infinite Campus | Blaine, MN | 2020 - 2023
Led the modernization of the company’s infrastructure through the adoption of hyperconverged platforms and Kubernetes, significantly improving scalability and reducing overall operating costs.
Twin Cities Orthopedics | Golden Valley, MN | 2016 - 2020
Led major infrastructure initiatives, including a data center migration, the deployment of a new hyperconverged infrastructure, and the design and maintenance of a VMware Horizon VDI solution. Additionally, implemented a new Dell-based virtual backup system to ensure HIPAA compliance.
ShopNBC (Evine Live) | Eden Prairie, MN | 2012 - 2016
Served as a senior engineer on critical infrastructure projects, including PCI compliance, remote data center builds, and virtualization. Played a key role in modernizing the company’s security infrastructure, as well as designing and deploying solutions for remote and distributed operations.
Available upon request.