Devernet Hosting

Derek Devernoe

Executive Leader, Cloud & DevSecOps | Driving Innovation in AI Platform Engineering & Security | Transforming Global Infrastructure for Scale, Speed & Spend

Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford Area
571 followers  500+ connections

The Cloud Professionals

About

Technology executive, enterprise architect, and engineering leader with nearly three decades of experience helping organizations modernize how they build, secure, and operate technology.

I specialize in leading large-scale cloud transformation, Platform Engineering, AI adoption, DevSecOps, and engineering modernization initiatives that improve developer productivity, operational resilience, and business outcomes.

Throughout my career, I’ve combined executive leadership with deep technical expertise—building high-performing engineering organizations while remaining hands-on in architecture, cloud strategy, automation, and emerging technologies. I believe the best technology leaders understand both the boardroom and the command line.

Today my work focuses on helping organizations adopt enterprise AI responsibly while modernizing software delivery through AWS, Amazon Bedrock, GitHub Copilot, Platform Engineering, trunk-based development, semantic versioning, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, and cloud-native engineering practices.

My background spans executive technology strategy, enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, cybersecurity, developer experience, FinOps, Site Reliability Engineering, compliance, and software engineering across startups, mid-market organizations, and Fortune 500 enterprises.

Areas of expertise include:

• Executive Technology Leadership (CTO, Chief Architect, Engineering Leadership)
• Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI Strategy
• Platform Engineering & Developer Experience (DevEx)
• Enterprise Cloud Architecture (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
• Amazon Bedrock & AI-Enabled Software Development
• DevSecOps, CI/CD & Modern Software Delivery
• Cloud Security, Governance & Compliance
• Kubernetes, Containers & Platform Automation
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation)
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Observability & Operational Excellence
• FinOps & Cloud Cost Optimization
• Engineering Organization Design, Mentorship & Technical Leadership

I enjoy building engineering organizations that move quickly, automate relentlessly, embrace AI thoughtfully, and deliver secure, scalable platforms that enable businesses to innovate with confidence.

Experience

  • The Cloud Professionals
    • Chief Technology Officer
      May 2018 – Present Narrows, VA

      As Founder and Chief Technology Officer of The Cloud Professionals, I lead technology strategy, cloud transformation initiatives, and AI adoption for organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises.

      I work closely with executive leadership to align technology investments with business objectives while building secure, scalable, cloud-native platforms that accelerate innovation and reduce operational risk.

      Our practice specializes in enterprise cloud architecture, artificial intelligence, platform engineering, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, application modernization, and managed cloud services across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.

      Beyond technology strategy, I lead engineering standards, architectural governance, technical mentoring, and customer engagement while helping organizations modernize software delivery and adopt emerging AI capabilities responsibly.

      The Cloud Professionals serves clients without dedicated IT organizations while also partnering with enterprise engineering teams on cloud modernization, platform engineering, AI enablement, and large-scale digital transformation initiatives.

      I believe technology leadership requires staying technically current, which is why I continue to serve as a hands-on architect while guiding long-term technology strategy for our clients.Show less 
    • Chief Architect
      May 2018 – Present Virginia, United States

      Serve as lead architect and technical authority for enterprise cloud modernization, AI adoption, and platform engineering initiatives.

      Current enterprise engagements include helping modernize engineering practices and AI adoption for Thrivent Financial, with a focus on AWS, Amazon Bedrock, GitHub Copilot Enterprise, and next-generation software delivery practices.

      Recent initiatives include:
      • Enterprise AI strategy and generative AI enablement
      • Amazon Bedrock solution architecture
      • GitHub Copilot Enterprise adoption and agentic AI-assisted software development
      • Platform Engineering and Developer Experience (DevEx)
      • Trunk-Based Development implementation
      • Semantic Versioning and automated release management
      • CI/CD modernization and deployment automation
      • Ephemeral AWS development and testing environments
      • Infrastructure as Code using cloud-native tooling and Terraform
      • Automated testing and cloud-native engineering practices

      An early adopter of enterprise AI technologies, I earned the AWS Certified AI Practitioner certification in 2024 and continue to help organizations integrate AI into engineering workflows, cloud operations, and software delivery.

      My work spans enterprise architecture, distributed systems, cloud security, DevSecOps, software engineering, and large-scale AWS environments, with an emphasis on building secure, scalable platforms that enable engineering teams to deliver software faster and with greater confidence.Show less 
  • Senior Engineering Manager, Cloud
    One Concern. Jul 2022 – Jun 2025 Menlo Park, CA

    • Leader of high-performing DevOps, QA and Security teams, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
    • Provided hands-on technical and people leadership, mentoring and developing team members, ensuring their growth and success.
    • Led by example, creating a positive and productive work environment.
    • Coordinated shift scheduling, ensuring 24/7 coverage and efficient handovers.
    • Partnered with leadership on strategic direction and implementation of new technologies.
    Technical:
    • Developed and implemented a comprehensive cloud strategy aligned with company goals.
    • Oversaw the design, deployment, and management of cloud infrastructure across GCP, PaaS and SaaS platforms.
    • Optimized cloud spending, reduced waste, and ensured adherence to security and compliance standards.
    • Implemented DevOps best practices, including automation, CI/CD, and monitoring.
    • Managed application deployments using Helm charts and Kubernetes.
    • Architected and optimized infrastructure using Pulumi, Ansible, and other relevant tools.
    • Implemented FinOps strategies for cost-efficient cloud operations.
    • Tracked infrastructure health, performance, and availability using Datadog.
    • Utilized Jellyfish to monitor and report on DORA metrics.
    • Troubleshot and resolved operational challenges to meet service level objectives.
    • Developed and maintained supporting infrastructure, tooling and documentation.
    • Led the on-call rotation, ensuring effective incident handling.
    • Collaborated with cross-functional teams to align cloud infrastructure with company objectives.
    Achievements:
    • Reduced monthly cloud costs by 82%.
    • Exceeded industry benchmarks for delivery and incident metrics.
    • Established a robust security program for SOC2 and ISO27001 certifications.
    • Delivered over $3M in annual cost savings.
    • Increased team accountability and efficiency.Show less 
  • Manager – Operations Engineering (DevOps)
    N-able Mar 2021 – Jul 2022 Morrisville, North Carolina, United States

    N-Able, a SolarWinds MSP spin-off:

    As Head of AWS Global DevOps, I led a distributed team of engineers worldwide, supporting millions of endpoints across 30 MSP products.

    Key Responsibilities:

    • Led a global operations team with members in the USA and Europe.
    • Exceeded 99.95% SLAs through effective leadership and operational excellence.
    • Led the adoption of Kubernetes and managed related services.
    • Developed and implemented DevOps best practices to enhance efficiency and reliability.
    • Served as incident commander and on-call escalation point.
    • 24/7 L2/3 support for thousands of nodes in 6 AWS regions.
    • Managed on-call rotations and owned multiple critical systems.
    • Supported a diverse technology stack, including legacy and modern applications.
    • Heavily involved in security, operations architecture, and standards.
    • Contributed to ISO27001 and GDPR compliance.
    • Provided technical hands-on support for AWS, Active Directory, Terraform, and various AWS services including EKS, ECS, Lambda, RDS, Elasticache, IAM, Organizations, Route53, S3, Pub/Sub, Cloudwatch, Billing, Crowdstrike, Elasticsearch, Loggly, Pingdom, Snowflake, and more.
    • Mentored team members and fostered career growth through regular 1:1s and mentorship.
    • Led presentations on system usage and metrics for AWS-based applications.
    • Served as codeowner and administrator for multiple git repos, actively participating in code and administrative review processes.Show less 
  • SolarWinds MSP
    • Manager – Operations Engineering (DevOps)
      Feb 2020 – Aug 2021 Morrisville, North Carolina, United States

      Leading the Global DevOps AWS Team, supporting diverse international collaborative development and operations of the MSP business.

      MSP Split from Solarwinds in H2 2021 and now is rebranded N-Able – continuation of this position into separated business unit at N-Able.
    • Senior Operations Engineer (DevOps)
      Jul 2019 – Feb 2020 Morrisville, NC

      Senior DevOps Engineer tasked with assisting the development of a customized Kubernetes platform running on EKS, as well as CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins. Migrated applications to the platform, performed training, and supported on-call.

      Technologies include:
      AWS (IAM, EC2, EKS, S3, RDS, Route53, CloudWatch, Systems Manager, VPC’s etc)
      Kubernetes
      Jenkins
      Terraform
      Shell Scripting
      much more
  • Senior Developer/DevOps Engineer
    Blue Cross NC Oct 2018 – Jun 2019  Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

    Working on contract as a DevOps Engineer/Cloud Architect and member of the Enterprise Architecture team.

    Evolve and mature DevOps processes and cloud architecture, ensuring HIPAA Compliance and improving agility. Work with multiple teams to align roadmaps, develop standards and move closer to a scaled agile model to empower developers.

    Supporting development initiatives for Java and Node.js in AWS and OpenShift. Improve IAM design, audit access level roles and policies, testing for compliance. Work with the pipeline and infrastructure teams to improve automation of the CICD pipeline, improve logging, metrics, alerting and reporting capabilities. Manage Github Enterprise repositories, approve promotions in Jenkins, Enterprise Architecture peer review for new projects. Assist development teams with Dockerfiles, CloudFormation templates, containerizing applications, and troubleshooting. Train teams on aws architecture and capabilities, logging and metrics technologies.

    Maintain cloud architecture wikis on Confluence and SharePoint, develop scripts for testing integrations for HIPAA compliance, rotate IAM keys. Manage Clusters, AutoScaling policies, alarms and alerting. Improve Tagging for cost itemization and reporting.

    Explore new capabilities with emerging technologies like Openshift and service mesh.

    Technologies include:
    Amazon Web Services – many services including S3, Route53, IAM, EC2, ECS, ECR, ELB/ALB, RDS, RedShift, Cognito, CloudFormation, CloudTrail, Lambda, CLI/API automation, scripting & much more.
    OpenShift on Premises and in AWS (future GCP)
    Docker, Kubernetes
    Elasticsearch, FluentD, Kibana (EFK), Beats. Computer Associates APM
    Jenkins, Ansible, Terraform, RedHat CloudForms, Git, istio
    Python, Powershell, Ruby
    MongoDB, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Oracle, DB2
    RightScale
    Jira, ServiceNow, Rational Team Concert
    RedHat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux & Windows
    Hyper-V, VirtualBox, Minikube, Vagrant
    Apache, nginx, Websphere Liberty, Node.jsShow less 
  • Senior DevOps Engineer
    udu, Inc. Apr 2018 – Dec 2018 Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

    Family decision to move from Florida to NC – I joined a startup for the first time.
    I was responsible for cloud operations in support of the development team, building a custom AI search application for mobile and desktop.
    Technologies include:
    Linux
    Elasticsearch
    MongoDB
    MySQL
    nginx
    kubernetes
    Node.js
    phantomjs
    wordpress
    salesforce
    More…
    all running on native Google Cloud Platform, with some AWS infrastructure.
  • Director of Information Technology
    Data Partners Inc. Jun 2011 – May 2018 Fort Myers, FL

    100% Hands on role – Responsible for all aspects of IT, and the management of IS technical services, in a 24/7 data processing and analytic business.

    Built on a hybrid on-premises N+1 data center + AWS Infrastructure, and creative integration of differing technologies using automation. Data Partners delivers marketing results to our many major brand name clients through a large data warehouses of industry standard, custom proprietary, and continually web sourced databases quickly, and reliably.

    Projects include:

    Integrating scaleable AWS infrastructure expanding processing capabilities, saving thousands in on-premises hardware and reduced deployment time.

    Integrate VM’s running on blades using Hyper-V, VMWare, and Amazon EC2 instances.

    Integrating Linux for web servers, intranet, and sftp servers, saving thousands.

    Upgrade servers and domain from Windows 2003 Enterprise to 2012 Standard R2 Active Directory.

    Upgrade from Exchange 2003 Enterprise to 2010 Standard, and then to 2013 Standard and adding SSL, Outlook Web and ActiveSync.

    Upgrade connectivity from T1 to 200Mbit fiber and 50M cable redundancy, while reducing cost.

    Implement new security policies, and network architecture utilizing SonicWall and Barracuda appliance based firewall solutions to thwart threats and cut spam by over 95%.

    Implement WordPress server VM’s for website and intranet solutions on open source saving thousands, while simplifying marketing content creation.

    Continual development lifecycle of an automated self-healing multi proxy solution on AWS EC2, for database building.

    Major Technologies:

    Amazon Web Services
    VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox
    Windows servers, workstations and Active Directory
    Microsoft SQL, MySQL, NoSQL servers and databases
    Microsoft Exchange servers
    Linux servers
    SonicWall, Barracuda, Symantec security platforms
    Apache and IIS running WordPress, SharePoint and ASP.net websites
    Alteryx with R for ETL, Data Blending, Data Analysis
    ITIL v3 best practices

    Show less 
  • Principal Systems Engineer
    Wayne Automatic Fire Sprinklers Inc Aug 2002 – Jun 2011 Ocoee, FL

    Responsible for the architecture, implementation, and support of all IT platforms and a medium size MPLS network across multiple physical locations, connecting a large staff of field service employees in the Life Safety industry.

    Projects Include:

    Scaled IT systems architecture for growth from 200 employees + 5 branches to 600+ and 8 locations, and then scaled reductions back to 400 employees.

    Upgrade from VPN hub and spoke to MPLS WAN network topology increasing overall company productivity and the reliability of the corporate network.

    Engineer and build a Colocation and an on-premises N+1 data center with a FM200 fire system.

    Replacement of disconnected standalone Nortel PBX systems to VOIP via a custom Asterisk solution to an integrated AllWorx platform, saving thousands.

    Replacement of CRM and ERP systems from Microsoft Dynamics SL to a custom integrated Solutions360 app, increasing visibility, accountability and productivity.

    Upgrades from NT4 to Windows Server 2003 Active Directory, and then to 2008 Active Directory.

    Upgrades of Exchange Servers from 5.5 Enterprise to 2003 Standard to 2007 Standard.

    Implementation of ModusGate to replace SpamAssassin/SquidGuard/IPTables config resulting in a SPAM reduction of over 85%.

    Implement a field connected workforce using ActiveSync and SQLce on windows mobile devices before smartphones.

    Complete replacement life cycle of all software, network, phone, PC and server hardware for the entire company, 2-3 times.

    Implement redundant IT infrastructure for the WayneNet FCC Licensed fire alarm wireless mesh network.

    Major Technologies:

    Windows servers and workstations NT4-2008 R2 Server, Windows 7
    Linux servers
    Microsoft SQL Servers 7-2008
    Exchange Server 5.5 – 2007
    IIS ActiveSync Server, applications and mobile devices
    Citrix XEN Server
    Sonicwall, IPTables, Cisco PIIX
    Mcafee EPO
    Nortel, Asterisk, Allworx phone systems
    Oracle VirtualBox
    Major AutoCAD deployment
    Paperless document solution
    MPLS mesh networkingShow less 
  • AccuData America
    • IT Manager
      Jun 2000 – Aug 2002 Cape Coral, Florida, United States

      As IT Manager I managed a staff up to 7, including Network Admins, a DBA, and an internal and external customer help desk, in a Windows environment for this medium sized database marketing firm.

      I attained a trust level so high that the owner selected me to mentor his son on IT roles, as well as pick him up to bring to work, or drop him off.

      Projects Include:

      Upgrade the domain from Windows NT4 to Server 2000 with Active Directory.

      Migrate email from Post.Office POP/SMTP to Exchange Server 2000 for over 200 mailboxes, with minimal downtime and 0 email loss.

      Transition database servers from SQL 6.5 to SQL 2000, including provisioning and setup of much faster hardware.

      Implementation of T1’s using BGP and a microwave wireless backup internet connection, from ISDN lines.

      Upgrade from 10 Base-T hubs to 100MBit switched network, greatly improving performance.

      Punch-down and cabling for telephone and network connectivity across multiple separate buildings.

      Implementation of a help desk to service internal and external customers, improving the overall IT decision making and customer service experience.

      Implement Xerox DocuShare paperless solution with network HP Digital Senders, helping save money on printing and storage costs, and improving customer data organization.Show less 
    • Systems Engineer
      Apr 1998 – Jun 2000 Cape Coral, FL

      Started as a part-time job concurrent to my position at Sony, I was offered a full-time position as the Network Administrator within 3 months. This job was the cornerstone of my IT career, gathering critical knowledge and skills that served as the baseline skills of my ascent in the IT world. During this time, I was responsible for the entirety of their IT and IS infrastructure growth from just over 100 employees in 2 buildings, to over 220 in 5 buildings.

      Major Technologies:

      Windows NT4-Server 2000
      Exchange Server 5-2000
      SQL Server 6.5-2000
      Xerox DocuShare paperless solution
      Cisco routers
      Toshiba PBX
  • Technical Support
    Sony Electronics Feb 1997 – Aug 1998 Fort Myers, Florida Area

    Starting as a Telephone Technical Support representative for Sony VAIO computers, I was promoted to the email support group and Tier 2 Escalations, which eventually became the 3rd level support.

    Noted for actually fixing the problem rather than focusing on the call statistic pay based incentives, often given irate customers and in turn making them happy, I was often requested by name on future incidents. I also was able to assist with clearing a 6 month email support back-log, helping create a problem tree repository of canned responses used as the basis for email support responses, while managing rightly irate customer expectations on recalled back-ordered items such as DVD drives.Show less 
  • Instructor
    Walt Disney World Contemporary Jun 1994 – Feb 1997 Lake Buena Vista, FL

    Here I learned excellent customer service, corporate culture, and team building skills that have blossomed into further successes in my IT career. I was recognized for excellence and promoted to senior level positions of increasing responsibility quickly, ahead of more senior cast members.

    Major Roles Held:
    Lead (Coordinator) – Manage staff of up to 25, and was on call medical first responder for the resort.
    Instructor – Trained and re-certified hundreds of Lifeguards from all…Show more 

Licenses & Certifications