Valejo (Jo) Johnson

About Me

Senior Systems Development Engineer with a proven record of transforming cloud operations at scale — from cutting SAP EC2 patching windows by 85% at Amazon to driving six-figure cost savings and accelerating compliance in finance and entertainment. Blending a distinguished military background with deep DevOps expertise, I design resilient, automated AWS infrastructures across GovCloud and Commercial regions. My career spans building fault-tolerant orchestration frameworks, standardizing Terraform/CDK modules, securing workloads with DevSecOps best practices, and leading teams through automation that shortens delivery cycles, strengthens reliability, and empowers engineers to move faster with confidence.

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Career & Education Timeline

Work Experience

Amazon (Project Kuiper) – Systems Development Engineer (10/2024 – Present)

Reduced SAP EC2 patching runtime by ~85% (3–4 hrs → <20 mins) by engineering a Bash + AWS SSM orchestration framework with preflight checks, automated snapshots, patch execution, and post-patch validation across 100+ hosts.
Built a region-aware, fault-tolerant patching system with rollback protection, maintenance-safe SAP service stop/start sequencing, and compliance reporting—improving reliability and audit readiness in AWS GovCloud & Commercial accounts.
Designed a universal SSM polling engine to dynamically track patch, scan, and reboot status across multi-region fleets, eliminating manual follow-ups and shortening maintenance windows.
Automated SAP clustered DB/app server operations, ensuring ordered stop/start sequences to reduce downtime and human error.
Added safety & observability features including RPMDB corruption detection/remediation, CloudWatch transcript logging, and interactive vs. hands-off patching modes with reboot confirmation prompts.
Developed and maintained Lambda-based automation pipelines for patching, scanning, and monitoring workflows.
Created reusable AWS CDK stacks and constructs to provision standardized infrastructure in GovCloud.
Built CloudWatch dashboards and alarms for real-time operational visibility across ERP/MES environments.
Authored detailed runbooks, diagrams, and onboarding guides to upskill engineers on complex automation workflows.
Partnered cross-functionally to triage on-call incidents, support internal tickets, and embed compliance early in design cycles.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS AWS Systems Manager AWS Patch Manager CloudWatch EKS IAM GovCloud CDK CloudFormation Lambda Python Bash TypeScript GitHub EC2 Snapshots Scripting Code Review Automation

Federal Reserve Bank – Sr. AWS Infrastructure Engineer (02/2024 – 10/2024)

Reduced GovCloud client onboarding time from weeks to days by building Terraform modules and SSM automation playbooks that standardized controls across dozens of accounts.
Automated IAM, S3, and SecurityHub event handling with Python Lambda pipelines, improving incident response speed and reducing manual toil.
Implemented account-wide patch compliance controls with auditable reporting to meet internal security benchmarks.
Published secure-by-default IAM policies and CloudFormation templates to accelerate compliant service adoption.
Produced enablement assets (how-to guides, Loom videos) that helped teams onboard 2× faster to platform standards.
Contributed to architecture review boards, embedding security and compliance early in solution design.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS Terraform SSM Python Lambda CloudFormation IAM SecurityHub GovCloud

Caesars Entertainment – DevOps Engineer (04/2021 – 02/2024)

Architected and scaled EKS workloads with Terraform + GitLab CI/CD, achieving high availability (99.99% targets) for customer-facing systems.
Unified observability with Grafana, Prometheus, and CloudWatch, lowering MTTD by ~40% and improving on-call response.
Drove six-figure annual cost savings via right-sizing, scheduled shutdowns, and Reserved Instances.
Standardized golden AMIs and OS baselines, reducing vulnerability patch lag and deployment variance across environments.
Delivered internal GitOps/IaC workshops that upskilled teams and reduced configuration drift.

Key Skills & Tools:

EKS Terraform GitLab CI/CD CloudWatch Grafana Prometheus AMI GitOps

WB Games – DevSecOps Engineer (10/2020 – 04/2021)

Built hardened AMIs and GuardDuty/Inspector triage pipelines, reducing critical security findings across AWS accounts.
Embedded Snyk, Checkov, and Trivy into CI/CD to shift security left and block vulnerabilities pre-production.
Standardized KMS and SCP guardrails to enforce consistent data protection and least-privilege access.
Ran threat modeling and tabletop exercises, directly improving risk posture and audit readiness.
Partnered with developers to implement OPA policies and pragmatic least-privilege practices.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS GuardDuty Inspector Snyk KMS SCP DevSecOps

Hulu – Sr. AWS Infrastructure Engineer (08/2019 – 10/2020)

Delivered reusable Terraform modules (VPC, IAM, RDS, ECS), accelerating infrastructure provisioning by ~60%.
Standardized CI/CD with GitHub Actions + Jenkins, cutting deployment errors and improving release cadence.
Automated DR snapshot rotation, reducing RTO from hours to minutes for key services.
Implemented budget alerts and cost forecasts with finance, driving ~10% annual cloud savings.
Centralized logging (Fluentd → Kinesis → Elasticsearch), improving root cause analysis speed and on-call efficiency.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS Terraform GitHub Actions Jenkins VPC ECS Kinesis Elasticsearch

TaskUs – IT Site Manager / Sr. AWS Cloud Engineer (01/2018 – 08/2019)

Designed site-level AWS infrastructure with automated backups and SNS alerts, improving recovery readiness and stakeholder visibility.
Automated onboarding workflows and workstation deployment via PowerShell and Bash, reducing time-to-productivity for new hires.
Maintained Wi-Fi, firewalls, and VoIP with centralized logging to improve troubleshooting speed and uptime.
Performed Well-Architected reviews and remediation plans to uplift reliability for production workloads.
Managed vendor relationships and licensing (GSuite, Atlassian, Okta), optimizing costs and user access governance.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS PowerShell Bash SNS GSuite Atlassian Okta VoIP Firewalls

Magic Leap – Systems Engineer (08/2016 – 01/2018)

Created system hardening scripts and automated Linux patch deployment, reducing configuration drift and vulnerability exposure.
Deployed CloudWatch Logs with unified dashboards, improving operational visibility for production apps.
Collaborated with security/compliance on HIPAA and SOX readiness, aligning infrastructure to regulatory controls.
Managed Azure and AWS resource groups for R&D and production workloads with cost and access governance.
Implemented backup/restore procedures for VMware and physical hosts, strengthening recovery posture.
Developed Python automation for audits and API-based integrations to remove manual steps.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS Azure Python CloudWatch Logs VMware Linux HIPAA SOX

Great Healthworks – Systems Engineer (03/2014 – 08/2016)

Deployed and maintained 150+ LAMP servers on AWS EC2 with custom AMIs, improving repeatability and time-to-deploy.
Built internal tools for inventory tracking, update rollouts, and user management to reduce manual ops.
Designed PCI-DSS-aligned systems with encrypted S3 storage and segmented networks to protect cardholder data.
Led training sessions on IT operations, security awareness, and automation best practices.
Scaled MySQL and PHP apps with dev teams, improving performance and reliability.
Owned incident response and recovery with documented playbooks for high-priority systems.

Key Skills & Tools:

AWS EC2 LAMP MySQL PHP S3 PCI-DSS Linux Bash

US Army – IT Support Specialist (02/2003 – 07/2013)

Served as Tier 2/3 escalation for software, network, and hardware issues across global sites.
Managed Active Directory, DHCP/DNS, and WSUS for 1,000+ users and systems with high availability.
Led multi-site IT teams, training junior staff and standardizing SOPs for patching and hardening.
Built and maintained secure communications environments supporting overseas missions.
Recognized for leadership and innovation in resource-constrained deployments.

Key Skills & Tools:

Active Directory DHCP DNS WSUS Windows Linux SOPs Security

Skills & Tools

Education

2017

Keller Graduate School of Management
M.S. Information Systems Management, 2017
(Graduated in 2017 — practically the stone ages in tech years 🪨💻)

2016

DeVry University
B.S. Computer Information Systems, 2016
(Graduated in 2016 — back when “cloud” was still mostly marketing ☁️😉)

Courses & Certifications

Terraform with AWS, API Gateway Deep Dive, YAML Essentials, Jenkins, Chef, Bash, GoLang, PowerBI, Machine Learning with Python, Security+, Ethical Hacking, Linux Admin, Cisco Networking/Security, CloudFormation, and more.