# Justin Jorgensen

Current title: Manager of Infrastructure & Operations
Organization: Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG)
Location: Los Angeles / Southern California, US
Website: https://jjorgensen.tech
Email: contact@jjorgensen.tech
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinjorgensen
GitHub: https://github.com/justinjorgensen

This file is the machine-readable resume mirror for https://jjorgensen.tech.

Last updated: 2026-07-24

## Summary

Infrastructure and operations leader with 25+ years in IT across government, financial services, construction, education, and legal environments. Builds and stabilizes business-critical infrastructure (disaster recovery, hybrid cloud, identity and security, change governance) in regulated, 24x7 settings. Translates technical risk into business decisions, leads calmly through incidents, and delivers durable systems on constrained budgets. Currently Manager of Infrastructure & Operations at a regional government agency; open to Director-level infrastructure and operations roles in mid-market, government/public-sector, and financial-services organizations.

Signature strengths: disaster recovery design and live execution, hybrid on-prem/cloud (Azure, AWS), identity and Zero Trust (Entra ID, PIM, Conditional Access, Intune), change and risk governance, incident leadership, team building and mentorship, vendor/MSP management, M&A integration.

## Core skills

- Infrastructure and virtualization: VMware, Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure, Hyper-V, Veeam replication/backup, Windows Server, Active Directory, RDS/VDI
- Cloud and hybrid: Microsoft Azure (migration, hybrid, O365), AWS (EC2, Lambda, S3, EventBridge, CloudWatch/CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Storage Lens), data-center to cloud consolidation, IaaS/SaaS
- Networking: Palo Alto firewalls, Cisco L2/L3 switching, VLAN segmentation, GlobalProtect, WAN/LAN, multi-site connectivity
- Security and identity: Entra ID, MFA, Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Conditional Access, Microsoft Intune (MDM), CrowdStrike EDR, Tenable, Rapid7, Proofpoint, Zero Trust, RBAC, defense-in-depth
- Disaster recovery and resilience: DR strategy, RTO/RPO design, live failover execution, business-continuity planning, annual DR testing
- Governance and operations: ITIL, Change Advisory Board (CAB) and change management, risk management, peer-review policy, ITSM (ServiceNow, Ivanti), incident response, SLA management, observability (Dynatrace, PRTG, Rapid7)
- Leadership: team building and mentorship, MSP/vendor management, offshore coordination, executive communication, M&A technology integration, budget advocacy, strategic planning

## Experience

### Manager of Infrastructure & Operations, Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG)

Sector: Government / public sector
Location: Southern California
Dates: 2024-04 to Present

Leads IT infrastructure and operations for a regional government agency supporting engineers, scientists, and planners who run production-critical GIS, traffic, and environmental modeling systems. Owns availability, resiliency, and operational discipline across hybrid on-prem and cloud infrastructure and multiple data centers; senior technical authority for architecture, escalations, and recovery events. Manages a hybrid team of senior systems/network engineers, internal help desk leadership, and a third-party MSP (Tier 1/2).

Selected outcomes:
- Leading SCAG's first full-production disaster recovery test (~70 VMs across two data centers in Las Vegas and Oregon), expanding beyond prior financial-system-only exercises and validating a sub-4-hour RTO against a 24-hour organizational requirement.
- Executed a live, phased DR failover of core production infrastructure (directory/authentication, certificate authority, messaging, file, endpoint, security, and backup systems), identifying and resolving issues in real time without rollback.
- Maintains 99.9% uptime SLAs through proactive monitoring, disciplined incident response, and controlled change execution.
- Operates and enforces formal change management through a ServiceNow-based CAB, adding mandatory cross-team peer review, rollback planning, blackout windows, and structured communication.
- Implemented Privileged Identity Management (PIM) where none existed, eliminating standing administrative privileges with time-bound, justified, audited elevation, and drove organization-wide MFA to 100% coverage.
- Introduced Conditional Access and Microsoft Intune endpoint management as greenfield deployments, integrated for device-based Zero Trust access.
- Built an in-house serverless AWS monitoring dashboard in about two weeks, replacing a roughly $60K vendor quote; migrated modeling compute (Z1D to R6A) for simultaneous cost reduction and performance improvement.
- During the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage, held mass communication for about 90 minutes to verify scope and accuracy, preventing a panic or security-breach narrative across a constituency of 6 counties and 191 cities.
- Maintains a defense-in-depth posture: network segmentation, least-privilege access, and continuous monitoring across identity, network, endpoint, and email.

### Director of Infrastructure, New American Funding (NAF)

Sector: Financial services (mortgage lending)
Location: Tustin, CA (hybrid)
Dates: 2022-08 to 2024-03

Directed Network, Systems, and Database operations across a hybrid on-prem/Azure architecture (VMware on Nutanix HCI), supporting application, network, server, VDI, data-center, SaaS, and IaaS services and a DevOps team.

Selected outcomes:
- Directed a 13-14 person infrastructure organization (plus offshore Tier 3) supporting 4,800+ employees and a $71B+ loan-servicing portfolio across 24x7 nationwide mortgage operations.
- Sustained 99.9%+ availability SLAs with formal monthly executive reporting; implemented PRTG (Community Edition) to close a network-monitoring gap at zero tooling cost.
- Led the transition toward a primarily Azure-based infrastructure (O365 plus Azure services); migrated 100% of the Tustin data center (40+ servers) to Azure while maintaining SLA commitments.
- Enforced disciplined after-hours change windows (6 PM to 3 AM PST) with mandatory peer review and documented rollback plans.
- During a 4+ hour vendor outage of the primary zero-trust access platform, activated GlobalProtect as interim access, restoring connectivity without weakening the zero-trust posture.
- Under pressure to rush a "simple" production index change, redefined emergency change control to require a 90-minute validation window; used Dynatrace to prove the change would lock a 300+ transactions/minute table for about 12 minutes, averting a full outage of loan submissions, document generation, and compliance.
- Overrode automated disciplinary tooling to protect an engineer who followed process, fixing the systemic documentation gap rather than assigning blame.

### Director of Information Technology, Murray Company

Sector: Construction / mechanical contracting
Location: Rancho Dominguez, CA (on-site)
Dates: 2015-10 to 2022-08

Owned the full IT department for a 1,000-1,200 user construction firm, aligning IT with business objectives, directing all operational activities, and partnering with department decision-makers on cost-effective technology solutions. Reported to the CFO.

Selected outcomes:
- Led a 7-year, ground-up IT modernization, from no working backups, dead storage arrays, and misconfigured firewalls to a standardized, secured, cloud-enabled environment.
- Built disaster recovery from zero to a 45-minute RTO/RPO across two data centers (Switch, Las Vegas and IO, Arizona) on Nutanix HCI, with annual DR testing.
- Stabilized a functionally unmanaged inherited environment within 12 months (perimeter security, backups, identity, full endpoint-fleet replacement, and a formal help desk/ticketing system) while transparently disclosing and phasing the backup-risk gap rather than hiding it.
- Modernized the stack: Office 365 plus Proofpoint, Egnyte cloud file systems, Ivanti standardized imaging/ITSM, Palo Alto firewalls, endpoint protection.
- Moved GPU/AutoCAD power users from desktops to laptops and Nutanix VDI before COVID, enabling a seamless remote-work transition when the pandemic forced it.
- Integrated three acquisitions into a single standardized technology stack.
- Grew the IT team from 3 to 7-8, personally mentoring staff into senior roles; the team remained intact years after departure.
- Reversed an outsourced Tier-1 support engagement a year early when it clashed with field culture, prioritizing user trust over sunk cost.

## Earlier experience

- Senior Network Administrator, Tax Credit Co., Los Angeles, 2014-06 to 2015-08. Overhauled the IT environment for a 130-user company; designed and delivered a durable Hyper-V Core high-availability SQL Server cluster that remained stable in production for years.
- Systems Administrator, Total Education Solutions, Los Angeles, 2013-01 to 2014-06. Managed a complete Cisco network and Active Directory for 600 users across 13 sites (45+ Cisco devices); led an inter-forest AD migration benefiting 400+ users; maintained 35 physical and 60 virtual servers; migrated servers to Hyper-V Server 2012 and voicemail from Unity to Exchange.
- Windows Administrator, weGrow Store, SF Bay Area, 2009-08 to 2012-11. Administered LAN and critical business systems for 300 users; converted a peer-to-peer network to Windows Active Directory; took over a project seven months behind and delivered it on schedule.
- Windows Administrator, Hart Holdings, Los Angeles, 2006-10 to 2009-04. Saved $122,000 through standardization of applications, desktops, and networking; achieved 99% uptime via disaster and fault-tolerant planning; created the company's first reliable centralized backup system; authored all IT policies.
- Telecommunications Analyst / Network Administrator, Hythiam, Inc., Los Angeles, 2005-04 to 2006-10. Managed a 30+ server Microsoft environment; improved server utilization about 70% by consolidating the data center on VMware; migrated Exchange 2000 to 2003; designed and implemented a DR solution for all production servers.
- Network Administrator, Quinn Emanuel, Los Angeles, 2004-10 to 2005-04. Administered all technical functions for a 200-user law office; built an ASP/SQL 2000 web interface for IT asset management.
- Desktop Support Consultant, Team Nutrilite, Los Angeles, 2004-04 to 2004-10. Tier II support; migrated systems to Active Directory; coordinated a refresh of 200 desktops/laptops.
- Patch Management Architect (Consultant), Cardinal Health, Los Angeles, 2003-09 to 2004-04. Managed software patch deployment for 800 remote users across 200 imaging centers; redesigned the patch scheme to resolve bandwidth issues.

## Career highlights

- Sub-4-hour RTO validated in SCAG's first full-production DR test (~70 VMs).
- 99.9%+ uptime sustained across 24x7 mortgage operations ($71B+ portfolio).
- 45-minute RTO/RPO built from zero at a construction firm on Nutanix HCI.
- About $60K saved by building an AWS monitoring dashboard in-house in about two weeks.
- Outage averted by enforcing disciplined emergency change control under pressure.
- 100% MFA plus PIM deployed where no privileged-access governance existed.
- A 20+ year through-line of DR, virtualization, and cost discipline, from a $122K standardization saving and a 70% utilization gain early on to enterprise DR today.

## Writing

Article series: The Debrief, https://jjorgensen.tech/debrief/

- AWS Wanted $60,000. We Built It for Pennies. https://jjorgensen.tech/writing/aws-wanted-60k/
- We Had Disaster Recovery on Paper. I Wanted to Know It Was Real. https://jjorgensen.tech/writing/disaster-recovery/
- AI Output Is Cheap. Proof Is Expensive. https://jjorgensen.tech/writing/proof-is-expensive/
- Nobody Would Have Blamed Us for Waiting. https://jjorgensen.tech/writing/the-decision-nobody-saw/
- The Tail Doesn't Wag the Dog. https://jjorgensen.tech/writing/the-tail-doesnt-wag-the-dog/

## Keywords

IT infrastructure, infrastructure and operations leadership, disaster recovery, RTO, RPO, hybrid cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS, identity and access management, Zero Trust, Entra ID, PIM, Conditional Access, Intune, change management, CAB, ITIL, incident response, VMware, Nutanix, virtualization, uptime SLA, government IT, financial services IT, AI enablement, technology transformation, Los Angeles

## Canonical links

- Homepage and resume: https://jjorgensen.tech
- Machine-readable resume (this file): https://jjorgensen.tech/resume.md
- The Debrief: https://jjorgensen.tech/debrief/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinjorgensen