Grady Peterson
✉ grady@gradyp.com
🌐 www.gradyp.com
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IT Systems Engineering Leader
Enterprise Architecture | Digital Transformations | Cloud Strategy | Process Optimization
Professional Summary
Infrastructure Architect / Systems Strategist 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 multi-year modernization initiatives across several organizations, replacing legacy VMware/SAN environments with scalable Nutanix hyperconverged clusters. Improved performance, simplified lifecycle management, and strengthened disaster recovery capabilities.
- Cloud & Hybrid Architecture. Designed and delivered hybrid-cloud architectures integrating AWS (EKS, Fargate) with on-prem systems via SD-WAN and zero-trust foundations, enabling secure workload portability and cloud-aligned modernization.
- Mergers & Acquisitions Integration. Drove technical integration during major acquisitions, including serving as the sole senior engineer responsible for aligning TigerRisk infrastructures with Howden’s global environment. Led domain integrations, datacenter transitions, and infrastructure standardization across diverse legacy stacks.
- Backup & Disaster Recovery. Transformed fragile backups into resilient, cloud-based systems. Designed and deployed petabyte-scale S3 DR platforms with automated failover, and led successful full recovery after a catastrophic backup system failure.
- Remote Workforce & Virtualization. Built and supported enterprise VDI platforms—up to 1,100+ concurrent users—ensuring secure access and high performance for clinical, corporate, and distributed teams.
- Security & Compliance. Championed security initiatives including AD hardening, MFA enforcement, and least-privilege frameworks. Drove PCI, HIPAA, and internal compliance efforts while reducing operational risk.
Career Experience
Senior Infrastructure Engineer | Howden RE | April 2024 – Present
Global reinsurance provider | Global Infrastructure Engineering
- Serve as the senior U.S. infrastructure engineer, owning core platform stability, modernization, and integration efforts while collaborating closely with global teams in a follow-the-sun model.
- Lead the technical integration of TigerRisk into Howden’s global infrastructure, including domain consolidation, standards alignment, and migration planning across cloud and on‑prem systems.
- Partner with global engineering, networking, and security teams to shape architectural direction, ensure operational consistency, and uplift legacy environments into unified global platforms.
- Provide senior-level guidance, documentation standards, and process structure to improve team communication, onboarding, and knowledge distribution across regions.
- Exercise broad autonomy in U.S. infrastructure decisions within global change control, ensuring reliability, security, and alignment with enterprise governance.
Infrastructure Architect | Western National | April 2023 – November 2024
Property & casualty insurance carrier | Infrastructure & Cloud Architecture
- Worked with platform and app teams on a hybrid on-prem/AWS setup, supporting migration of ~100 API and integration services.
- Led the hands-on move of key services to AWS EKS and Fargate ensuring adherance to the companies’ migration plan.
- Defined migration rules so teams could decide whether a service should move to EKS, Fargate, or stay on-prem.
- Acted as technical lead for containerization and integration work, coordinating SD-WAN, firewall, and WAF changes for new cloud services.
- Helped raise the bar for solution design by standardizing diagrams, named owners (SRMs), support steps, and one-page overviews for each system.
- Co-designed a Confluence knowledge base with clear company/department home pages and a standard document set for each system.
IT System Engineer Lead / Acting Infrastructure Manager | Infinite Campus | February 2020 – April 2023
National K–12 EdTech provider | Infrastructure Engineering & Operations Leadership
- Drove the strategic migration from VMware/Cisco blades + SAN to a Nutanix hyperconverged platform supporting ~4,000 VMs across two active/active datacenters. Reduced operational complexity, improved resilience, and consolidated multi-vendor spend into a flexible, expandable solution.
- Architected and deployed Nutanix Objects as the company’s first internal S3 system, later evolving into a petabyte-scale, multi-region platform for backup and customer data retention.
- Operated as interim Infrastructure Manager for nine months, managing an 8-person team, coordinating roadmaps, leading incident response, and building hiring plans aligned to long-term capability needs.
- Influenced enterprise-wide technical standards on the Architecture Board, shaping policy for cloud workloads, DR posture, on-prem hardware lifecycles, and infrastructure service models.
- Successfully recovered critical customer backup systems after a catastrophic hardware event, leading a multi-week restoration effort and building the business case that finally secured the transition to S3-based storage.
Senior Technology Engineer | Twin Cities Orthopedics (Revo Health) | August 2016 – February 2020
Orthopedic healthcare provider | Systems & Virtualization Engineering
- Led a data center migration, utilizing VMware SRM to achieve seamless failover and disaster recovery testing.
- Designed and implemented a VMware Horizon VDI solution for 1,100+ users, ensuring secure public access.
- Implemented a Dell-based data protection system, ensuring compliance with HIPAA security 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
National televised retail network | Systems & Virtualization Engineering
- Designed and deployed a remote data center, owning the infrastructure and 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: Azure/Entra, 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), MacOS