Jim Tennant

IT Operations Engineer with 8 years of experience managing full-stack infrastructure, cloud operations, and identity systems in fast-paced environments. Experienced as sole IT contact for a remote enterprise office, collaborating with distributed teams across multiple sites. Proven track record delivering infrastructure projects, improving security posture, and building systems and processes from the ground up.

Outside of work, I enjoy writing and playing music, tinkering with my homelab, and working on my coding skills. I have a wife and three kids that I love deeply, and I am the lead pastor of a medium-sized church in Southeast Michigan.

Career

Currently IT Operations Engineer at Applied Intuition, serving as on-site IT lead for the Ann Arbor office and contributing to a globally distributed engineering organization. Previously held infrastructure and systems roles at Worksighted, and Gold Star Mortgage. Check out my LinkedIn for the full story.

Highlights

  • Managed IT Operations for the Ann Arbor office, including day-to-day break fix as well as engineering and implementing future solutions
  • Managed full-stack infrastructure including FortiNet, Palo Alto, and Meraki, Dell PowerEdge servers (ESXI cluster hosting vSphere), UPS, Veeam backup server, CI/CD servers (Jenkins), HP Nimble (iSCSI storage), Windows File Servers, and Synology NAS
  • Spearheaded Jira Service Management as the enterprise ticketing platform, establishing workflows, service standards, and a formal change management process that didn’t exist prior
  • Led company-wide change initiatives, including improving wifi connectivity and network performance
  • Deployed Nessus vulnerability management to improve security posture and support SOC2 audit readiness
  • Architecting a unified device lifecycle and patch management program integrating Okta, JumpCloud, Kandji, Kolide XAM, and Oomnitza

Education and Certifications

  • A.A.S., Network Systems Administration – DeVry University
  • CompTIA A+
  • CompTIA Network+
  • CompTIA Security+
  • CompTIA CySA+ – In Progress