linkedin.com/in/jamesflatterySummary
US Navy veteran and platform engineer with a decade spanning defense systems administration, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure. Took over and governed a three-layer modular Terraform platform (Core, Stack, Deploy) spanning 70+ repositories on AWS, making conformance to its design automatic. Security-minded by background and instinct, with a bias toward simple, reusable, single-source solutions: reducing duplication and attack surface so infrastructure is easier to secure, reason about, and maintain.
Experience
Infrastructure Automation Lead — Maryland Benefits (DoIT)
Jun 2025 – Jun 2026
- Led the Automation & QA team owning the Enterprise Terraform platform, a three-layer modular IaC ecosystem (Core, Stack, Deploy) spanning 70+ repositories across AWS environments.
- Built and owned the Jenkins pipeline that applied the platform's Terraform to production under an assumed role, with application teams self-serving the large majority of production runs through it.
- Reviewed and approved other teams' Terraform before merge, and set the standards the platform modules enforced, including layer boundaries, version pinning, and provider constraints.
- Transformed a single-purpose chatbot stack into a generic, reusable IaC framework on Amazon Bedrock, OpenSearch Serverless RAG, and AWS Lex, enabling rapid provisioning of AI-powered chatbots across multiple use cases.
- Rebuilt the Jenkins shared pipeline library, consolidating two near-duplicate Core and Stack pipelines into a single type-aware base pipeline with centralized tooling, static analysis, automated versioning and releases, and fleet-wide validation — including diagnosing and resolving a critical pipeline-blocking failure that had broken every job using the shared library.
- Refactored core Terraform modules and stack configurations to be region-agnostic, enabling multi-region deployment capability, and diagnosed and resolved 67 destructive resource-replacement issues via targeted state migration with zero downtime.
- Designed a grandfather-clause passthrough pattern preventing destructive recreation during major module upgrades.
- Built fleet management and audit tooling against the Bitbucket REST API to detect and remediate configuration drift across the module fleet; extended tfsec and TFLint scanning beyond Core modules and added Trivy and Gitleaks.
- Coordinated weekly technical syncs with HashiCorp/IBM partner engineers on Terraform Enterprise administration and module hardening, and migrated developer tooling dependencies from public GitHub to an internal Nexus artifact repository, hardening the software supply chain across the developer fleet.
Senior Systems Analyst — GovSec LLC (contractor at Maryland Benefits)
Nov 2022 – Jun 2025
- Drove early infrastructure-as-code adoption, developing a custom Docker image with Terraform and Jenkins to replace outdated static images and remediate associated security risks.
- Led cross-functional delivery of an internal software license management application, streamlining renewals and eliminating service outages caused by expiring licenses.
- Directed consolidation of fragmented infrastructure documentation into a centralized platform with approval workflows, and operationalized a formal change and release management framework.
- Contributed to the launch of the Maryland Benefits One Application, streamlining access to benefits services for hundreds of thousands of residents.
Cyber Security Engineer — Leidos
Aug 2017 – Mar 2018
- Conducted security architecture reviews, compliance assessments, and gap analyses aligned with NIST SP 800-53, FedRAMP, and healthcare regulatory requirements.
- Led cross-functional teams designing and implementing security architectures, driving identified gaps to remediation.
Systems Administrator — Leidos
Aug 2016 – Aug 2017
- Administered Oracle identity and access management infrastructure in AWS GovCloud supporting 24/7 operations for a federal enterprise SSO platform.
- Monitored system health with Zabbix, SoapUI, and Linux tooling, and managed the full incident lifecycle through BMC Remedy ITSM.
Earlier Experience
Web Application Developer / Senior Field Technician — Lockheed Martin
Oct 2014 – Aug 2016
- Built a web application consolidating Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship work items and associated award fees into a single tracking system, with custom modal forms, client-side validation, and database-level permissions.
- Automated business workflows for work assignment, calculations, and email notifications, replacing manual processes.
- Installed, tested, repaired, and upgraded electronic equipment and systems, including engineering modifications, and trained 20 personnel to support transfer of ownership to the customer.
Reservist, IT / Web Application Development — US Air Force Reserve
Apr 2013 – Apr 2016
- Built a web application with unit leadership that consolidated reservist promotion, qualification, recall contact, and productivity tracking into a single source of truth, replacing fragmented tracking across the unit.
- Trained area supervisors to run the system themselves without ongoing IT support.
AEGIS BMD Computer System Technician / Technical Lead — US Navy
Sep 2006 – Sep 2012
- Maintained shipboard combat system computer networks across multiple warships, spanning Unix and Windows systems, remote terminals, and data recording and storage equipment, progressing from maintenance technician to technical lead.
- As Technical Lead aboard USS Vella Gulf, trained and mentored four junior sailors, planned and delegated maintenance of mission-critical equipment, and wrote a tactical data recording policy that exceeded the fleet standard.
- Served concurrently as terminal area security officer: controlled system access based on need-to-know and clearance, reported security violations to the information systems security officer, and led security awareness training.
- As Network Administrator aboard USS Stout, managed 80+ domain user accounts and resolved 115 trouble calls.
Technical Skills
Infrastructure as Code: Terraform (modular Core/Stack/Deploy architecture), HCL, Terraform Enterprise, grandfather-clause migration patterns
AWS: VPC, IAM, RDS, Aurora, DocumentDB, S3, KMS, DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, Bedrock, OpenSearch, Lex, ECS
CI/CD & Automation: Jenkins administration, Shared Library, Jenkinsfile, Groovy, Ansible, Nexus, Docker, pre-commit frameworks
Quality & Security: Trivy, TFSec, TFLint, Gitleaks, four-phase peer review methodology, least-privilege access governance
Languages & Tooling: Python, Bash, Groovy, HCL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git/Bitbucket, WSL 2, Jira, Google Workspace
AI-Assisted Development: Claude, Gemini, Amazon Bedrock RAG workflows
Education
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science — George Mason University, Fairfax, VA · magna cum laude
2019 – 2021
Associate of Science, General Studies — Northern Virginia Community College
2017 – 2019
Certifications
CompTIA CySA+ (Cybersecurity Analyst)