Damon Gross

Background

Principal Solutions Architect and enterprise infrastructure strategist with 20+ years of experience designing and delivering cloud, security, virtualization, and operational modernization solutions for enterprise organizations. Proven success partnering with executive leadership, technical teams, and OEM partners to drive large-scale transformation initiatives, improve operational resilience, and support multimillion-dollar technology engagements. Recognized for strong customer advocacy, technical leadership, and the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business-aligned outcomes. Authored numerous industry blog posts, spoken at industry events, and lead numerous technology research reviews with industry partners (Gartner, Forrester Group) on product functionality review, product positioning, and industry analysis.

Professional Experience

Client Solutions Architect - AHEAD                           July 2019 - November 2025

- Drove multimillion-dollar enterprise infrastructure, cloud, observability and security engagements by designing and delivering on customer-aligned modernization strategies for large companies in the Wisconsin and surrounding geo.
- Led cross-functional engineering initiatives to standardize enterprise observability, security, and ITOM service offerings across the organization.
- Led enterprise datacenter consolidation, cloud migration, observability, and security modernization initiatives
- Improved operational efficiency, resilience, and platform visibility across customer environments
- Achieved 206% against margin goal for the most recent two years.

Principal Sales Engineer - Logrhythm                           January 2015 - July 2019

- Effectively articulated technology and product positioning to a variety of audiences including C-Level Executives and advanced technical personnel to align security platform capabilities with business objectives.
- Led technical demonstrations, proof-of-concept engagements, and RFP/RFI responses for enterprise security customers – with a win rate above average for my peers.
- Led numerous technology research reviews with industry partners (Gartner, Forrester Group) on product functionality review, product positioning, and industry analysis – resulting in numerous awards for LogRhythm.
- Earned 2017 Global Sales Engineer MVP and multiple Sales Engineer All-Star awards.

Lead Systems Engineer - D+H US / Mortgagebot, LLC                   January 2011 - January 2015

- Spearheaded the Mortgagebot infrastructure platform modernization vision, including addressing needs for scalability, reliability, security and incident management.
- Managed a team of 7 senior systems administrators supporting SaaS infrastructure operations while achieving a two year uptime of 99.999% for our customers.
- Successfully completed numerous large datacenter consolidation and refresh projects – resulting from M&A activity. Reduced the global footprint of the SaaS platform by over 50%, while improving performance, reliability, and disaster recovery.
- Introduced new infrastructure design concepts to support the growing SaaS business line: standardized build pipelines, automation, and security and performance monitoring stacks designed to ensure uptime, performance, and security.

Systems Administrator - Educators Credit Union                      January 2006 - January 2011

- Administered and modernized enterprise banking, lending, directory, messaging, monitoring, and storage platforms.
- Virtualized approximately 70 percent of server infrastructure onto Microsoft Hyper-V, and reduced the credit unions server footprint by 60% while improving system utilization and uptime significantly.
- Introduced the first IT security framework to the credit union, focused on SIEM deployment, network security upgrades, and the initiation of an incident response team – significantly reducing the risk and exposure of the credit union.

Core Competencies

- Enterprise Architecture
- Cloud Transformation
- Security Operations
- Infrastructure Modernization
- Disaster Recovery & BCP
- Observability Modernization
- Executive Communication
- Technical Pre-Sales
- Team Leadership
- IT Operations

Certifications

- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
- AWS Certified AI Practitioner
- AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
- Google Cloud Certified Engineer

Education

Bachelor of Science - Management Computer Systems
University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

Technical Skills

Cloud: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform
Virtualization: VMware, Hyper-V, Kubernetes
Observability: Dynatrace, LogicMonitor, Splunk, ServiceNow
Security: SIEM, Incident Response, Identity & Access Management, Zero Trust
Automation: Infrastructure as Code, PowerShell, Terraform, Ansible
Methodologies: ITIL, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, Cyber Preparedness, Cloud Migration, DevOps

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