Deon Grobler
Geelong,VIC
Summary
IT professional with over two decades of experience in IT infrastructure, operations, cloud computing, and security compliance, with a strong leadership background. Known for my ability to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance organisational efficiency. An encouraging and collaborative leader with a talent for building and maintaining relationships with diverse stakeholders. Proficient in leveraging independent decision-making skills and sound judgement to positively impact company success. Dedicated to continuous learning and process improvement, with a proven track record in managing large-scale infrastructure projects in the FinTech sector. My advantage is that I'm an IT all-rounder with a vast range of technical skills and experience and won multiple awards for innovation. I strive to be a great leader and continuously grow as a professional and a leader, knowing that you are never too old to learn. Fluent in both English and Afrikaans, and an advocate for working smarter, not harder.
Overview
25
25
years of professional experience
Work History
IT Operations and Change Manager
WEX
10.2022 - 08.2024
- Lead a global team, with team members located in Australia, US, India
- Responsible for all things Technology Operations and Support related, as well as overseeing IT Change Management
- Built strong relationships with stakeholders at all levels, promoting a collaborative approach to managing change projects
- Increased stakeholder satisfaction by effectively communicating changes, ensuring minimal disruption to daily operations
- Working closely with stakeholders on various project initiatives and day to day operations
- Oversaw change management efforts to support implementation of critical initiatives driving technology, process and culture changes.
- Facilitated workshops and training sessions to equip staff members with knowledge and tools necessary to successfully perform BAU activities
- Ensure Global IT Change Control procedures were adopted and followed, review and approval of any planned/unplanned major APAC changes
- Continuously working closely with the GRC manager, ensuring that systems and applications adhere to internal and external audit requirements including, quarterly, annually and adhoc evidence gathering
- Support the Batch Processing environment, which is a 24 x 7 operation
- Recruited, interviewed and hired employees
- Incident and problem management
- Access provisioning and credential management
- Support and administer Multiple PAAS and SAAS applications
- Standardizing BAU processes and automate repeatable tasks where possible
- Streamlining and ensuring allocation of work to appropriate teams
- Adoption and use of Confluence for knowledge management
- Technologies used: Control-M, Postilion, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, Okta, Netskope, Netsuite, Blackline, SUN Systems, 1Password.
Corporate Technology Team Lead
WEX
04.2021 - 10.2022
- Leading a team in Australia
- Managing and maintaining all things Corporate, essentially responsible for all matters, support, operations and infrastructure related existing between the end user and our production payments domain
- Responsible for all things workspace technology specific
- Responsible for the Corporate domain
- Designed documentation protocols and standard operating practices to unify technology management efforts across company
- Fostered strong relationship between my team and other managers to align efforts
- Offered technical leadership and mentoring of junior team members, fostering professional growth and development within the technology department
- Led technology governance efforts, planning upgrades, hardware refreshes and software updates.
- Empowered team members by delegating responsibilities appropriately while providing guidance when needed for success in their tasks.
- Coordinated troubleshooting efforts, efficiently resolving hardware and software issues to minimize downtime.
- Ensuring that we adhere to PCI DSS, SOC and SOX Audit requirements
- Developed and maintained strong client relationships to deliver exceptional customer service and problem resolution.
- Access provisioning and credential management
- Domain administration
- DNS Administration
- Support and administer Multiple PAAS and SAAS applications
- Atlassian Administration
- Technologies used: Microsoft Azure, Sendgrid, 1Password, Microsoft Dynamics, Office 365 Administration, Sumo Logic, Twilio, Windows Server, Linux.
Corporate Platform Engineering Teamlead
eNett International
04.2018 - 04.2021
- Leading a team located in Australia and the US
- Managing and maintaining all things Corporate, essentially responsible for all matters, support, operations and infrastructure related existing between the end user and our production payments domain
- Responsible for all Corporate Infrastructure and associated operational support existing between End User Support and the Production Payments domain
- Streamlined IT operations, consolidating systems for cost savings and increased efficiency
- Developed and maintained effective relationships with key stakeholders to better understand their needs and expectations
- Trained new team members by relaying information on company procedures and specifically teams roles and responsibilities
- Explored new tools and technologies that enhanced the capabilities of the team members while enabling seamless collaboration across departments
- Enhanced overall team performance by providing regular coaching, feedback, and skill development opportunities
- Support and administer Multiple PAAS and SAAS applications
- Responsible for administering and maintaining DR site
- Access provisioning and credential management
- Assisted in recruitment to build team of top performers
- IT change management
- DNS management
- Domain administration
- Office 365 administration
- Technologies used: Microsoft Azure, Multiple PAAS and SAAS applications.
Senior Systems Engineer
eNett International
04.2017 - 03.2018
- Managing and supporting the Production payments platform 24 x 7
- Responsible for the Corporate and Production domain
- Promoted to Senior Systems Engineer after 8 months
- Worked with stakeholders to determine implementation and integration of system-oriented projects
- Maintained stability, integrity and efficient operation of information systems supporting organizational functions
- Spearheaded migration to cloud-based services, ensuring seamless integration with existing systems.
- Optimized networked software and operating systems by applying updates and patches
- Support and maintain On-prem, cloud and DR site infrastructure
- Provided 2nd and 3rd level technical support and troubleshooting to internal and external clients
- Performed root cause analysis to provide resolutions for production issues
- Established maintenance schedules for regular system checkups, enhancing overall stability and reliability
- Optimized system performance by identifying and resolving complex technical issues
- Support and administer Multiple PAAS and SAAS applications
- Access provisioning and credentials management
- Technologies used: VMWare, Sendgrid, 1Password, Microsoft Dynamics, Office 365 Administration, Sumo Logic, Twilio.
Senior Systems Administrator
Premier Technologies
03.2016 - 02.2017
- Maintaining and supporting the Infrastructure and Applications used to deliver products and services to internal and external customers
- Managed +- 100 physical servers, predominantly Windows and around 80 Virtual Servers/Machines, which consisted of a 70/30 Split between Windows and Linux
- Ensure that Infrastructure and Application-related incidents, requests and changes are managed effectively to meet agreed internal and external SLAs
- Focus on end-to-end application and service delivery with a customer-centric view
- Perform multiple P2V (Physical to Virtual Migrations), migrate virtual machines to newly identified VMWare ESXi hosts
- Responsible for setting up and configuring multiple new VMWare ESXi hosts on DELL infrastructure (DELL PowerEdge R630)
- Collaboratively offer suggestions for and implement improvements to system and operational readiness and capability
- Support the Information Security Officer in maintaining and strengthening security and compliance measures
- Actively acquire and share knowledge with colleagues to facilitate cross-training, improvements and peer review
- Create and maintain appropriate levels of technical and procedural documentation
- Work in partnership with other departments as required ensuring correct exchange of knowledge
- Liaise with other internal teams, vendors, suppliers, partners and customers as required to ensure successful project delivery, incident management and/or issue resolution
- Management and implementation for all required changes, patches, maintenance, support and release upgrades through the Change Management process
- Proactively identify issues and areas for improvement in the areas of serviceability, availability, resiliency and automation
- Daily completion of timesheets for resource and financial management purposes
- Technologies used: Windows 7 & 10, Windows Server 2008/2012, VMWare, Vsphere, Vcenter, Linux/Centos, SQL Server 2008, WSUS, AVG, Symantec Backup Exec, SSL, Microsoft DFS, F5 Big IP Network load balancer configuration, administration, Fortinet FortiGate200D firewall administration, CISCO routers and switches, management and configuration, Google authenticator, Microsoft IIS, PCI DSS, Statuscake, PRTG Monitoring, DNS, Log file consolidation and storage via LogLogic and SyncBack, Active Directory and Group policy objects, Administration, Configuration and maintenance, Nessus scanning.
Systems Administrator
Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria
01.2016 - 03.2016
- Manage and administer Envista ARM application and associated servers, services and applications
- Ensure stable operation of environment
- SQL administration
- Manage Envista ARM application
- Monitor ADR's (Air Dust Monitor) and associated process of data correlation and centralization and reporting
- Implemented archiving strategy for historical FTP data
- Identified slow performing servers and motivated for recommended additional resources
- Identified shortage of network monitoring and alerting and proposed the necessary implementation to ensure end-to-end monitoring
- Technologies used: SQL 2012, Windows 2008, Envista ARM.
Senior Systems Administrator
IMG Sports Technology Group
06.2014 - 11.2015
- Responsible for managing all aspects from an infrastructure technology and systems perspective
- Perform technical research and development to enable ongoing innovation within the infrastructure environment
- Effective operation, provisioning, installation/configuration and maintenance of systems hardware and software and related infrastructure
- Serve as a technical expert in the area of system administration and therefore control all issues of a technical nature
- IMG Sports Technology Group's in-house modules/software includes: Event Management, Membership Management, Ticket sales, Online Shops, Online Auctions, Website Hosting
- Technologies used: Windows Server 2012, SQL2012, Office 365 Administration, Atlassian- Jira/Confluence Administration, FTP/S, IIS, Cloud DNS Management, SSL, Yellowfin, DotNetNuke, Load Testing-Jmeter, Disaster Recovery
- Hardware: HP Blade centre, laptops: HP, Dell, Lenovo.
Senior Technical Team Lead
First National Bank (Randburg, South Africa)
08.2008 - 01.2014
- Responsible for managing and maintaining the Enterprise RightFax and Teleform environments within the FNB Group
- Provided a solution/service to 5000+ users/clients, spread across the regions (nationwide)
- Responsible for the architectural design and overseeing improvements of the platforms
- Project management, delegation of work within my team, engaging clients and managing relationships
- Producing budget forecasts and cost savings measures
- Ensuring end to end monitoring was in place
- Technologies used: Windows Server 2008, SQL 2008, RightFax 10.5, Teleform, Microsoft Clustering, IIS, VMware, Nagios monitoring.
Senior Application Support Specialist
Peresys
01.2008 - 07.2008
- Responsible for providing technical support for an ever evolving company product called Hermes
- Installation and upgrades of Hermes and other back-end components
- Providing support and in-depth troubleshooting of Hermes and other back-end components
- Creation of databases, troubleshooting, maintenance and querying on SQL Server 2000 and 2005
- SQL Mirroring
- Creating, updating and administrating of application documentation
- Technologies used: Windows 2003, SQL 2005, In-house applications.
Senior Systems Engineer
First National Bank Home loans (Johannesburg, South Africa)
01.2002 - 12.2007
- Responsible for IT operations, maintenance and management of in-house systems, software and hardware
- Duties spanned server, network and storage management at an enterprise level
- Trouble-shooting, optimization and fault analysis for 100+ servers (located at head office and in the regions [nationwide])
- Windows environments and Windows Clustering
- In-house applications all running on SQL database back-end
- Creation of databases, troubleshooting, maintenance and querying on SQL Server
- WSUS administration, monitoring, configuration and capacity management
- Creation and implementation of standards, policies and procedures
- Managing, monitoring and troubleshooting of 3Com switches
- IT management and administration of diverse systems, networks and servers
- Security maintenance
- Disaster Recovery and High Availability
- Back-up's
- Print - and File Server Management
- Technologies used: Windows NT, Windows Server 2000 and 2003, SQL 2000 and 2005, RightFax 8.x and 9.x, Microsoft Clustering, WSUS, HP Openview, HP EVA (SAN, ISS, Veritas Backup Exec, MS Office, VMWare, FTP, DNS, Active Directory.
LAN Technician
PWG Computers (Kempton Park, South Africa)
07.1999 - 08.2001
- Hardware and Software and network support.
Education
CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management -
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Management Development Program (MDP)Management D -
USB – Exec Development
Stellenbosch, South AfricaQualified RightFax Engineer (Ver 9 - 10.5) - Opentext RightFax
VoxAmvia
Randburg, South AfricaMCSE -
Exec School For Computers
Edenvale, South AfricaSkills
- Team Leadership
- Multitasking
- IT Operations Management
- IT Infrastructure Management
- IT Security Compliance and Governance
- IT Change Management
- IT Cost Management
- Project Management
- Incident and Problem Management
- Customer and stakeholder management
- Business process improvement and documentation
- Technology Infrastructure, Support, Automation and Optimization
Accomplishments
- Implemented a company wide patch and vulnerability management solution, which adhered to audit requirements
- Implemented a infrastructure change management process, enhancing process efficiency and adherence to audit requirements
- Led the successful migration of on-premises infrastructure to Azure, ensuring seamless integration and compliance with security standards.
Citizenship
Australian Citizen
Languages
Afrikaans
Native or Bilingual
Timeline
IT Operations and Change Manager
WEX
10.2022 - 08.2024
Corporate Technology Team Lead
WEX
04.2021 - 10.2022
Corporate Platform Engineering Teamlead
eNett International
04.2018 - 04.2021
Senior Systems Engineer
eNett International
04.2017 - 03.2018
Senior Systems Administrator
Premier Technologies
03.2016 - 02.2017
Systems Administrator
Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria
01.2016 - 03.2016
Senior Systems Administrator
IMG Sports Technology Group
06.2014 - 11.2015
Senior Technical Team Lead
First National Bank (Randburg, South Africa)
08.2008 - 01.2014
Senior Application Support Specialist
Peresys
01.2008 - 07.2008
Senior Systems Engineer
First National Bank Home loans (Johannesburg, South Africa)
01.2002 - 12.2007
LAN Technician
PWG Computers (Kempton Park, South Africa)
07.1999 - 08.2001
CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management -
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Management Development Program (MDP)Management D -
USB – Exec Development
Qualified RightFax Engineer (Ver 9 - 10.5) - Opentext RightFax
VoxAmvia
MCSE -
Exec School For Computers
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