Open to Director / VP opportunities

Andrew LaGrone

Operations Leader · Org Builder · Change Agent

IT operations and infrastructure leader with 20+ years of experience driving enterprise platform operations, cloud transformation, and observability initiatives. Proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams, modernizing incident response, and standardizing tools and processes to align engineering with business outcomes. Expertise in cloud-native operations, DevOps, automation, and large-scale service delivery.

20+
Years Leading Ops
4
NOCs Built or Rebuilt
3
Acquisitions Integrated
25
People Led Globally
Senior Manager, Technical Operations 2023–Present
Berkadia · Salt Lake City, UT
  • Lead platform operations across three teams — 25 people, US and India
  • Negotiated 50% reduction in monitoring tool costs through vendor consolidation
  • Designing org restructure to unify Platform Reliability, Observability, and Change Management under a single leadership model
  • Modernized incident response integrating DevOps principles with cross-functional engagement
Org DesignObservabilityIncident ResponseChange MgmtVendor Consolidation
IT Operations Director 2020–2023
ViaPath Technologies · Salt Lake City, UT
  • Built company’s first NOC from zero — 2,000+ customer sites, 24/7 global coverage
  • Scaled four teams simultaneously: SRE, Observability, NOC, and Helpdesk across North America and Australia
  • Replaced offshore Singapore support model with in-house operation — improved responsiveness and cost efficiency
  • Led integration of GTL and Telmate ops during acquisition — consolidated tooling, eliminated redundancy
  • Directed multimillion-dollar annual budgets across four global teams
SREAWSAppDynamicsNew RelicSumoLogicServiceNowAcquisition Integration
IT Operations Manager 2014–2020
Global Tel*Link · Salt Lake City, UT
  • Managed IT operations for large-scale correctional telecom infrastructure
  • Built monitoring standards and vendor governance that scaled through the Director tenure
  • Led tool and team integration through GTL’s acquisition of Telmate
SolarWindsPowerShellSNMPProcess DesignVendor Mgmt
Senior Sales Engineer 2009–2014
Loop1 Systems · Austin, TX
  • Delivered enterprise SolarWinds implementations for major accounts
  • Built custom SQL Server solutions and Orion SDK integrations
SolarWindsSQL ServerOrion SDKPre-sales
Channel Account Manager 2007–2008
SolarWinds · Austin, TX
  • Federal and channel partnerships — 170% quota attainment
Federal SalesChannel Partnerships
Observability & Monitoring
SolarWindsAppDynamicsNew RelicDataDogSumoLogicGrafana
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWSAzureSRENOC OperationsITIL
Automation
PowerShellREST APIsPerlSQLOrion SDK
Leadership & Operations
Org DesignChange ManagementIncident CommandServiceNowBudget OwnershipVendor Mgmt
Approach
Read the org before changing it
Relationships, incentives, informal power structures. Transformation that ignores org dynamics fails before it starts.
People
Coach through the change
Teams don’t just implement new processes — they need to understand why. The translation layer between strategy and daily reality is where most change initiatives break down.
Influence
Build laterally
Durable change happens when peer teams see you as an ally. The most important relationships aren’t up the chain — they’re sideways.
Berkadia org restructure
Designing a unified Platform Reliability org — consolidating scope, clarifying ownership, building the case for Director-level elevation.
Next move
Targeting Director and VP-level roles in ops leadership and platform reliability. Most interested in companies navigating real change, not just steady state.
AI, ops, and the human question
AI is the most significant operational shift I’ve seen in 20 years. The leaders who get it right will be the ones asking the right questions: how do we drive real efficiencies, leverage human creativity and judgment, and build organizations that partner with AI to actually do good? Still working on the answers — but asking the questions is where it starts.
Outside work
Mountain biking the Wasatch, skiing, planning a CDT section hike, and maintaining a 1970s family cabin in southern Colorado.
↗  LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/andrewlagrone