Steven Hayes

Director, Cloud & DevOps Engineering · Cloud Architect · Strategic IT leader — strategy through hands-on delivery

Suwanee, GA 30024·linkedin.com/in/stevenahayes·stevenhayes.com

Download PDF Updated September 2026

Cloud engineering executive and architect with 15+ years leading enterprise digital transformations to Microsoft Azure. Uniquely qualified to lead and modernize both infrastructure and development — I started in servers and infrastructure and grew into real development depth, so I can set multi-year cloud strategy at the CIO level and stay hands-on through the build. That range lets me translate between executive, product, infrastructure, and development teams and keep them aligned on one roadmap. I've directed global engineering teams, migrated entire product suites to Azure on AKS, helped land landmark enterprise deals, and still ship production systems myself — most recently an AI-assisted operations platform over a rolling window of ~17M events.

// What I'm strong at

Cloud & InfrastructureAzure, Azure Local / Stack HCI, hybrid cloud, AKS / Kubernetes, AWS, networking (VNet, ExpressRoute, WAF), Key Vault, identity (Entra / B2C)
Leadership & StrategyMulti-year cloud strategy, enterprise architecture, executive alignment, global team building, budget & FinOps, mentoring, change management
AI & AutomationAI assistant for cross-log root-cause analysis (TanStack AI / OpenRouter), Azure Document Intelligence, OCR, agentic tooling, AI-assisted scripting, governed automation runners
DevOps & ReliabilityAzure DevOps, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Terraform, Docker, Playwright / Vitest, monitoring (Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, App Insights), DR / failover
EngineeringTypeScript, React, Next.js, TanStack, Node.js, Python, PowerShell, .NET, SQL Server, Prisma, Zod, Tailwind
Security & GovernanceSOC / PCI audit success, Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike, WIZ, Rapid7, RBAC, audit trails, isolated environments

// Experience

Cloud Architecture Consultant

Gwinnett County Public Schools · Suwanee, GA

●Oct 2024 – Present
  • Own the Azure Local / Azure Stack HCI architecture across five environments (prod, UAT, QA, dev, sandbox) — brought back by a former employer to guide hybrid-cloud modernization and operational readiness.
  • Drove a fleet-wide redeployment program: built a PowerShell console in about a day, then hardened it, to keep the runbook in order and log commands by site — one operator completed 96 site redeployments in two weeks.
  • Designed and built the district’s operations platform solo — PowerShell collectors, real-time WMI fault listeners, Windows Event Forwarding (rolling ~17M events), Azure Monitor and Azure APIs, SQL Server 2025 materialization (130+ views, 230+ stored procedures), typed APIs, and React dashboards — now the daily operating surface for 152 clusters and 1,100+ production VMs.
  • Replaced RDP sessions and tribal knowledge with governed automation (The Forge): 45 allowlisted, hash-pinned PowerShell commands run from the browser across five environments, claimed exactly once from SQL-backed queues, with a full audit trail.
  • Embedded an AI assistant (TanStack AI / OpenRouter, 38 typed tools, sandboxed Code Mode) that investigates alerts, faults, and events and cites its evidence — no model-written SQL, no secrets in context; passed 30/30 live evals.

Director of Cloud Engineering & DevOps

Agilysys · Alpharetta, GA

May 2019 – Feb 2024
  • Created and executed a 5-year cloud transformation strategy; migrated 100% of products to Azure on AKS — securing leadership buy-in and helping land a landmark Marriott enterprise deal by scaling the platform.
  • Built and led a cross-functional team of 15+ engineers across the US and India; cut operational costs 30% and deployment time ~70% with GitHub / Azure DevOps CI/CD (approval gates and rollback).
  • Transformed deployment from a manual process consuming 80% of four engineers’ time into a fully automated pipeline, freeing the team for strategic work and improving release reliability.
  • Architected a resilient production environment with regional failover and a documented, biannually tested DR plan, guaranteeing high availability and strict SLA adherence.
  • Stood up integrated monitoring (Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, Application Insights) as a single pane of glass, and a cost-analysis system with per-product tagging that raised cloud resource utilization 25%.
  • Achieved 100% SOC and PCI audit success; hardened isolated environments with Key Vault, WAFs, CrowdStrike, WIZ, Defender, and Rapid7.
  • Engineered a resilient service architecture across Java, Spring Boot, Node, and .NET Core with MongoDB, SQL, Elasticsearch, and SignalR; ran incident response through OpsGenie with Statuspage.io health communication.

Cloud & Enterprise Architecture Manager

Acuity Brands · Conyers, GA

Apr 2016 – May 2019
  • Built the Enterprise Architecture function under the CIO, leading a 15-member team of architects/engineers plus an offshore group across infrastructure, data, networking, DevOps, and development.
  • Migrated 72 applications and corporate infrastructure to Azure (IaaS/PaaS, AKS) and moved data centers off QTS — completed below budget and ahead of schedule, avoiding a renewal and saving ~$500K/year (40% lower operational costs).
  • Created a company-wide "bounty program" paying developers to modernize legacy apps on their own time — accelerated technical-debt reduction ~50% and earned the only top IT performance rating given in 15 years.
  • Modernized the data estate (Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Managed Instances, Data Lake) for stronger analytics and Power BI reporting.
  • Modernized identity (Azure B2C / AD SSO across 72 apps) and migrated Team Foundation Server to Azure DevOps with Git, improving security and developer velocity.
  • Migrated 5,500+ SharePoint sites to Microsoft 365 and designed a microservices API platform on Azure API Management.
  • Stood up a NOC with modern monitoring (Log Analytics, PagerDuty, Statuspage.io), deployed SCCM bare-metal imaging across 25+ offices, and rolled out Microsoft 365 E3.
EarlierSenior Cloud Escalation Engineer, Public Sector, Microsoft (2014 – 2016) · Founder & CEO, Political Tracker Inc. (2013 – 2015) · Cloud Solution Architect, Georgia Dept. of Revenue (2014) · Enterprise System Administrator / PM, Gwinnett County Public Schools (2011 – 2014) · System Administrator, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers (2010 – 2011) · Technical Manager, NCR Corporation (2008 – 2010) · Technical Consultant, AT&T (2007 – 2008)

// Selected projects

// Certifications

PMPMCSA: Cloud PlatformMCITP: Enterprise AdministratorMCSA: Windows ServerMCTS: SharePoint / Exchange ServerCompTIA A+ / Network+ / Server+ / Security+

// Speaking & media

  • Microsoft Ignite
  • TechExtravaganza — Azure architecture keynote
  • Microsoft MSDN Channel 9
  • SQL Always On webinar with Microsoft

// Technologies & tools

Cloud & AzureMicrosoft Azure, Azure Local / Stack HCI, AKS / Kubernetes, AWS, Google Cloud, App Services, Azure Functions, Logic Apps, API Management, Service Bus, Event Grid, Blob / Queue / Table Storage, Key Vault
Data & analyticsSQL Server 2025 / 2022, Azure SQL / Managed Instances, stored procedures, SQL views, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, Data Lake, Data Factory, Power BI, Prisma, pyodbc, SQLite
DevOps & qualityAzure DevOps, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Terraform, ARM / Bicep, Docker, Git, Playwright, Vitest, pytest, mypy, Ruff, uv, Oxlint
Networking & securityVNets, ExpressRoute, Front Door, Load Balancers, NSGs, DNS, Entra / Azure AD / B2C, Better Auth, SAS URLs, WAF, DDoS Protection, CSP, RBAC
Observability & incidentAzure Monitor / Log Analytics, App Insights, Dynatrace, Sentry, Defender, CrowdStrike, WIZ, Rapid7, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, Statuspage.io
Languages & frameworksTypeScript, JavaScript, Python, PowerShell, C# / .NET, Java, SQL, Node.js, React, Next.js, TanStack, Effect, Tailwind, shadcn/Radix UI, Zod, Recharts, Motion, Spring Boot, SignalR
AI, docs & MLTanStack AI, OpenRouter, MCP, Azure Document Intelligence, OCR, PyTorch, CUDA, pyiqa, no-reference image-quality assessment (TOPIQ / MUSIQ), machine learning
Media, mapping & workflowsFFmpeg / ffprobe, PyAV, OpenCV, MediaInfo, ExifTool, EXIF/color handling, VFR-safe frame export, KMZ / KML, Google Maps, WMI, Windows Event Forwarding, ACH / bank reconciliation, POs, invoicing, payroll reserve, audit trails
Productivity & opsMicrosoft 365 / SharePoint, System Center (SCCM / SCOM), Active Directory, Intune, ServiceNow / Cherwell, Jira, Team Foundation Server / TFS, ExcelJS
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