Operations Lead & Builder

Jacob
Sumsion

Builds functions that don't exist yet. Stood up a help desk for American Airlines, the automation engineering function at NICE inContact, customer success at a Series B, and now SBF operations across 1M+ servers at Meta — including GPU AI training and inference clusters. Side projects keep coming: 20+ shipped — AI agent safety, SRE training simulators, security labs, ops tooling — most demoable from this site. Decorated Army veteran; held TS/SCI clearance during service. Eight active certifications across cloud, security, and Linux. The pattern: ambiguous problems land on my desk, I staff them, train them, and ship the tools that lock the solution in.

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psychology

Professional Ethos

I keep ending up in places where the thing I need doesn't exist yet, so I build it. Automation functions, support operations, engineering teams. Then I make sure they run without me. That's the Army in me.

Operational Discipline
Infrastructure Resilience
Continuous Learning
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What I Build

handyman Tools

Automation pipelines, CLI utilities, internal dashboards, monitoring integrations. 20+ projects shipped.

account_tree Systems

Automation functions, support operations, observability stacks, CI/CD pipelines. Built from the ground up in every role.

groups Teams

Hired, trained, and coached across four organizations. Built an iOS training app and ran weekly sessions. The people I train go on to train others.

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Technical Stack

Operations & Fleet Mgmt95%
Linux & Systems Admin95%
Automation & Scripting (Python, Bash)90%
CI/CD & Observability80%
Security Operations80%
Python Bash TypeScript Linux Docker Networking Hardware AWS Azure GCP Splunk Prometheus / Grafana CI/CD Pipelines Automation Operations Management Incident Response Customer Success Training & Onboarding Agent Governance
timeline

The Journey

SBF Team Lead

Meta Data Center (via Milestone Inc.) | Eagle Mountain, UT

Jan 2024 — PRESENT

Built two SBF teams from hiring through coaching. Created an iOS training app for technicians. Led SBF operations across 1M+ servers including GPU-accelerated AI training and inference infrastructure. I'm the escalation point for incidents and complex troubleshooting. I also write RCAs, run weekly training sessions, and do 1-on-1 coaching.

Contract Developer

Synthesis | Remote

2024 — 2025

Built TypeScript automations for an AI-driven education platform. Hands-on with Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and rapid iteration workflows.

Manager, Technical Support & Customer Success

Stellar Cyber, Inc. | San Jose, CA

Jun 2022 — Apr 2023

Built customer success and support functions from the ground up for a Series B startup. Integrated Gainsight, Zendesk, and Jira. Operated on an Open XDR platform (NG-SIEM, SOAR, NDR): configured detection rules, automated responses, and triaged infrastructure alerts. Daily Kubernetes and Linux troubleshooting. Trained enterprise teams on alert tuning, incident response automation, and platform observability.

Success Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

Fortanix (Contract) | Remote

2021 — 2022

Guided enterprise customers through cloud infrastructure onboarding for encryption and key management across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Hands-on IAM configuration, secrets management, and production troubleshooting in cross-cloud environments.

Commercial Tools Engineer, NOC

NICE inContact | Draper, UT

Mar 2019 — May 2022

Created the automation engineer function from the ground up: built the pipeline from user story to delivery, eliminating hundreds of hours of manual operations tasks. Trained internal NOC teams on Splunk, BMC, and Rundeck for monitoring, observability, and automated incident response. Coordinated response to high-priority production outages.

Network Protection Engineer

Symantec (Blue Coat) | Draper, UT

Feb 2018 — Mar 2019

Supported enterprise customers configuring network proxy systems, including firewall rules, packet capture analysis, and network troubleshooting.

Help Desk Manager

CSS Corp (American Airlines Contract) | Remote

2015 — 2016

Hired to stand up a remote help desk for American Airlines internal operations. Recruited and trained 5 support agents. Built phone, chat, and email support for airline personnel and equipment from the ground up.

Counterintelligence Special Agent (35L) & Armored Crewman (19K)

United States Army | Multiple Duty Stations

Mar 2008 — Dec 2014

Held TS/SCI clearance. Implemented security solutions to prevent insider attack and loss of classified information. Trained personnel on threat identification and operational security in deployed environments (Afghanistan, Iraq). Led small teams in austere conditions requiring rapid problem-solving, meticulous documentation, and clear communication under pressure. Decorated for leadership and analytical ability.

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Certifications

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CompTIA Security+

Jan 2019

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CompTIA Network+

Mar 2019

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AWS Solutions Architect

Sep 2023

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ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity

Jun 2023

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PCEP — Python Certified

Mar 2021

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Linux Essentials (LPI)

Jan 2022

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Azure AZ-900 Fundamentals

Nov 2020

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Azure DP-900 Data Fundamentals

Aug 2023

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Decorated Veteran & Honorable Discharge

U.S. Army Service

school

Education

Network Systems Administration

DeVry University

Dean's List

Pre-Medicine (A.A.S.)

Brigham Young University-Idaho

Graduated with Honors

Japanese Language

Conversational proficiency · 300+ kanji

2 Years In-Country · Military Operations

Featured Project

Agentic SOC Proof of Concept

View All Projects arrow_forward
SOC

A multi-agent system simulating three-phase attack chains against GKE/ML infrastructure. Five AI agents handle detection through compliance verification. Achieved 47-second MTTR.

#LangGraph #Security #AI
Jacob Sumsion