Max Euston

Strategic Technology Leader

Senior technology expert specializing in robust infrastructure design, highly resilient operations, and automation processes. Adept at creating, expanding, and rebuilding technology organizations to address business requirements in a global economy while maintaining a dynamic balance between growth, cost control, and stability.

• Broad and deep experience across Architecture/Engineering/Operation towers in Plan/Build/Run organizational structures, while recognizing the benefits and limitations of such models.
• Innately comfortable evangelizing as a change agent (from evolutionary through disruptive).
• Proven ability to calmly manage highly complex, multifaceted, fast-paced and high-pressure environments.
• Motivate and lead by example. Inspire, foster and reward quality. Promote an environment that fosters a search for “the elegant solution” and “best of breed” results, while recognizing pragmatic waypoints to support that goal.
• Honesty/Transparency/Integrity/Mutual Respect. Recognize and nurture individual drivers and diverse perspectives. Generate long-lasting growth and success on a secure foundation.
• Effective mediator and polished presenter. Able to promote productive discussions between the broadest technical and business audiences.
• Subject matter expert in numerous fields. Able to analyze and discuss from detail to “big picture”.
• Extensive experience in diverse areas of technology and business from Entrepreneurial to Global.

Professional Experience

Leadership

• Lead functions for multi-year automation and efficiency projects with >$10M CapEx/OpEx budgets.
• Built and nurtured continuous partnerships at multiple levels, throughout the organization and across the globe.
• Directed line management of 6 global infrastructure operations teams (50 total staff) of DBAs, Web Admins, and MS-Windows/Unix/Linux SAs

Global Monitoring Restructure and Integration

• Conceptualized and managed design of a system to consolidate capabilities from multiple isolated automation/monitoring projects into a single enterprise-wide adaptable model.
• Architected a new pattern for process and connection level metrics, which provides APM-type capabilities for processes of all types (not just JVM- or .Net- based applications).
• Marketed this distributed system that supports live, historic, health, configuration, trending, and capacity functions.

Efficiencies/Stability/Security

• Centralized inventory management to support LCM, automation, and transparent billing.
• Initiated and managed operational audit tooling to uncover compliance breaches by database and service calls across production/non-production borders.
• Completely managed the migration of the primary global SMS notification system from SMPP to HTTP and SSL.
• Project management and tracking of the global replacement of all SHA-1 certificates and use of legacy CAs.

Growth

• Grew E-Commerce Systems from a manually managed, 10-server department that provided a patchwork set of services into a “best of breed” group used by all business units as their primary service provider.
• Expanded supported environments from Production/Staging to include QA/Integration/Development/Test. This allows business units to discover hidden dependencies (in nonstandard configurations) much earlier in the SDLC, which simultaneously reduces errors, cost, and time to market. All environments support self-service functionality for immediate turnaround.

Cost Savings

• Realized significant growth (>30%/year) in productivity while concurrently reducing cost through standardization, automation, and efficient allocation of resources. This occurred during drastic corporate cutbacks (>25% staff reductions through divestitures/outsourcing/off-shoring) in preparation for conversion from a mutual to a stock company.
• Divested functions that were duplicated in other groups (e.g. e-mail/DNS/network/extranet/proxy/firewall)
• Implemented an ISO-approved PKI (private CA) for X.509 (SSL) certificates to support encrypted server-server communication and preproduction application testing. This reduced the need for commercial certificate licenses by >1500 annually, saving $2M over 5 years.

Operational Automation

• Lead designer of E-Commerce Global Internet Infrastructure, handling investment, retirement, financial, and PCI transactions in addition to standard business services.
• Designed and implemented multiple systems and processes that allow for a more cost-effective utilization of: Operations (Tier-1); offshore (Tier-2); and Engineering (Tier-3) resources. Original servers were manually managed and very labor intensive, requiring high-level engineers for daily operational issues.
• Designed and implemented a global monitoring/alerting infrastructure to support appliance-type devices in addition to standard servers. Expanded the design to support a system of ‘triggers’ for automated response to predefined exceptional conditions.
• Created a packaging/versioning/build process that replaced manual updates with a fully automated, multisite deployment/validation system that handles all aspects of server/application configuration.

Interpersonal Skills

• Technical lead for 20 architecture/engineering/operational staff (domestic and international) supporting the global e-commerce environment. The use of a forthright management style with a substantial technical background was used to build trusted and respectful relationships.
• Built strong inter-departmental alliances at multiple levels (upward, downward and lateral). Able to “get things done” effectively and efficiently while maintaining standards-compliant processes and aggressive SLAs. Key player in standards development where direct responsibility exists, and also where it doesn't.
• The business-partner feedback to this style has been overwhelmingly positive due to a calculated relationship model. Employees are supported/rewarded/recognized for outstanding customer (internal) support. Positioning of Corporate Technology's offerings as a service (instead of a product) has benefited both client (business unit) and vendor (corporate).
• With an ability to “pick apart” vendor products and services at the lowest technical level, there is little value left for marketing. This has resulted in contract modifications from moderate (e.g. removal of per-CPU licensing) to severe (e.g. total removal of charges).

• Technical control of Information Processing Department (Import Duty Drawback).
• Designed company network and all Internet connectivity/web presence.
• Security architecture for external/DMZ/internal/back-office systems.
• Performance optimization/redesign of data processing functions.
• Mentored/trained technical staff in evolving system architecture.