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 June 2026

Cloud engineering executive and architect with 15+ years driving 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. I've directed global engineering teams, migrated entire product suites to Azure on AKS, won landmark enterprise deals, and still ship production systems myself — most recently a live operations platform over a rolling 5M+ events.

// What I'm strong at

Cloud & Infrastructure Azure, Azure Local / Stack HCI, AKS / Kubernetes, AWS, networking (VNet, ExpressRoute, WAF), Key Vault, identity (Entra / B2C)

Engineering TypeScript, React, Node.js, Python, PowerShell, .NET, SQL Server, Prisma

DevOps & Reliability Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Terraform, Docker, monitoring (Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, App Insights), DR / failover

AI & Automation AI assistant for cross-log root-cause analysis (TanStack AI), agentic tooling, AI-assisted scripting, governed automation runners

Security & Governance SOC / PCI audits, Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike, WIZ, Rapid7, FinOps / cost optimization

Leadership Cloud strategy & roadmaps, global team building, executive alignment, mentoring, change management

// Experience

Cloud Architecture Consultant

Gwinnett County Public Schools · Suwanee, GA

●Oct 2024 – Present

• Architect Azure Local / Azure Stack HCI infrastructure across five environments (production, UAT, QA, dev, sandbox).
• Designed and built a full-stack operations platform solo — PowerShell collectors, real-time WMI fault listeners, Windows Event Forwarding (rolling 5M+ events), Azure Monitor, SQL Server materialization (100+ views), typed APIs, and React dashboards — on an evidence-first model that keeps report-backed data separate from live signals.
• Added a governed automation runner (The Forge) that executes audited PowerShell from the browser with SQL-backed job queues and a full audit trail; the platform tracks 152 clusters, 202 nodes, and 1,309 VMs.
• Built an AI assistant into the platform (TanStack AI) that investigates across every data source and log to reach root cause in minutes, and gives the team coding support to generate operational scripts on the fly.
• Built a console tool in about a day that enforced ordered pre/post steps and full audit logging — one operator completed 96 site redeployments in ~10 days.

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 with Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Managed Instances, and Data Lake, enabling 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 an API platform on Azure API Management using a microservice architecture.
• 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.

Senior Cloud Escalation Engineer, Public Sector

Microsoft · Atlanta, GA

Sep 2014 – Apr 2016

• Led the StorSimple and Customer Immersion Experience teams for Azure Public Sector, advising customers on architecture, migration, and complex troubleshooting.
• Worked across both the development and infrastructure sides of Azure from day one and maintained close feedback loops with Azure product teams.
• Participated in private previews of new Azure services and channeled public-sector customer requirements back into product planning.

Earlier 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)

// Technologies & tools

Cloud & platformsMicrosoft Azure, Azure Local / Stack HCI, AWS, Google Cloud, AKS / Kubernetes, Hyper-V

Compute & integrationApp Services, Azure Functions, Logic Apps, API Management, Service Bus, Event Grid, Container Registries

DataSQL Server, Azure SQL / Managed Instances, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Data Lake, Data Factory, Power BI, Prisma

DevOps & IaCAzure DevOps, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Terraform, ARM / Bicep, Docker, Git

Networking & identityVNets, ExpressRoute, Front Door, Load Balancers, NSGs, DNS, Microsoft Entra / Azure AD / B2C, Key Vault

Observability & securityAzure Monitor / Log Analytics, App Insights, Dynatrace, Defender, CrowdStrike, WIZ, Rapid7, WAF, DDoS Protection

LanguagesTypeScript, JavaScript, Python, PowerShell, C# / .NET, Java, SQL, Node.js, React

AI & data scienceTanStack AI, LLM-assisted root-cause analysis, agentic tooling, MCP, PyTorch, machine learning

Productivity & opsMicrosoft 365 / SharePoint, System Center (SCCM / SCOM), Active Directory, Intune, ServiceNow / Cherwell, Jira