Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Languages
Timeline
Generic

Nikhil Ramesh

Cumming

Summary

Highly accomplished and results-driven IT leader with over 15 years of progressive experience spearheading enterprise application operations and SRE practices. Proven expertise in building and empowering high-performing technical teams, driving efficient incident and problem management processes, and implementing impactful continuous improvement initiatives within complex, high-availability environments. Adept at cultivating strong partnerships with business and technology stakeholders, ensuring seamless service delivery, and aligning IT strategies with critical business objectives across the Finance & Supply Chain, Telecommunications, and Media & Entertainment sectors. Demonstrated success in leveraging Agile, Scrum, and Kanban methodologies to manage multifaceted projects and consistently deliver measurable results.

Overview

15
15
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Manager, Enterprise Applications

Cox Enterprises
03.2023 - Current
  • Lead and mentor an SRE team responsible for the mission-critical Financial & Supply Chain enterprise application suite, ensuring 24/7 operational stability and seamless support for ITSM, Supply Chain, and Finance business units.
  • Provide expert Tier 2 and 3 support for a diverse portfolio of enterprise applications, consistently exceeding customer service targets and efficiently resolving complex technical challenges.
  • Spearheaded and streamlined incident management protocols, effectively coordinating cross-functional teams to rapidly troubleshoot, resolve, and communicate impact during critical incidents.
  • Established and meticulously tracked key performance indicators (KPIs) to provide data-driven insights into team performance and application health, proactively identifying areas for optimization.
  • Delivered impactful monthly operational reviews to stakeholders, clearly articulating performance metrics, highlighting key achievements, and fostering a culture of transparency and trust.
  • Championed and implemented an SRE problem management workflow, significantly improving prioritization, accountability, and transparency in addressing recurring operational issues.
  • Designed, implemented, and successfully executed a robust Hypercare framework for critical production upgrades (EBS Patch & Linux Upgrade, EBS HA Go-Live, Vertex Upgrade), ensuring flawless transitions and exceeding client expectations.
  • Optimized technological New Product Introduction (NPI) launch processes for strategic Mobile partners like Apple and Samsung, resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction.
  • Cultivated and managed strong relationships with key software vendors, ensuring optimal service delivery and alignment with business requirements.
  • Collaborated with business stakeholders to define and implement clear RACI definitions for critical Mobile business processes, enhancing accountability and streamlining decision-making.
  • Instrumented and continuously improved comprehensive monitoring solutions, proactively identifying and resolving potential application failures, particularly within critical wireless services, leveraging integrated runbooks to significantly reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR).
  • Significantly enhanced the Change/Release Management process through improved communication protocols, stakeholder validation, and meticulous coordination, minimizing disruption and ensuring successful deployments.

Lead DevOps Engineer

Cox Communications Inc
12.2018 - 03.2023
  • Led critical platform improvement and standardization initiatives, including the successful migration of legacy virtual machines to a containerized Kubernetes environment and the seamless upgrade and migration of the Elastic Search application.
  • Provided primary operational support and ensured the stability and optimal performance of critical middleware applications.
  • Served as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for key Assisted Sales applications (ICE, Elastic Search, PLM, CDMS & RSS), providing in-depth technical guidance and support.
  • Conducted thorough analysis of platform statistics, providing actionable tuning recommendations that resulted in significant performance improvements.
  • Directed troubleshooting efforts, performed comprehensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA), and implemented proactive preventative measures to minimize the recurrence of incidents.
  • Developed and maintained a comprehensive suite of standardized operating procedures, streamlining middleware operations and introducing PagerDuty to significantly reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) for critical alerts.
  • Effectively managed a team of consultants, providing mentorship, overseeing hiring and training processes, and fostering their professional growth.

Team Lead/Technology Consultant

Accenture LLP
07.2010 - 11.2018
  • Cox Communications (2010-07 to 2018-11): Integral member of the Tier 3 & 4 infrastructure team, driving process improvement initiatives, establishing a comprehensive knowledge repository, implementing a full-fledged patching cycle for over 550 servers, and successfully shifting basic troubleshooting tasks to the Tier 2 team. Led the implementation of Ansible for automation.
  • The Walt Disney Water Parks and Resort (2014-12 to 2016-03): Built and mentored a high-performing team to ensure seamless application operations during critical IDC hours, effectively coordinated maintenance and release activities, resolved critical incidents, and strategically planned for process improvements.
  • AT&T (2010-07 to 2014-12): Provided comprehensive application and infrastructure support for critical DSL (Broadband Operations) applications, managed project lifecycles and change requests, implemented monitoring automation solutions, and developed a robust User Access Management (UAM) framework for IT compliance. Served as the primary DR Liaison for 78 critical DSL Applications.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Visvesvaraya Technological University
06.2010

Skills

  • Enterprise Application & SRE Leadership: Tier 1-3 Production Support, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management, Operational Reporting, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Principles
  • Team Building & Management: Technical Team Leadership, Performance Management, Mentoring & Coaching, Vendor Relationship Management, Cross-functional Collaboration, Talent Development
  • Continuous Improvement & Optimization: Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Definition & Monitoring, Process Optimization, Automation Strategies, Hypercare Framework Design & Implementation, Efficiency Enhancement
  • Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): Maintenance, Upgrades, Patching, Performance Monitoring & Tuning, Deprecation Planning
  • Agile & Project Management: Agile (Scrum, Kanban), Waterfall Methodologies, JIRA, Confluence
  • Technical Proficiency: Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Oracle Integration Cloud, ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Splunk, AppDynamics, New Relic, Dynatrace, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Weblogic, Websphere, Tomcat, Apache, Jboss, UNIX/Linux (Sun Solaris, AIX, Red Hat), CI/CD Pipelines (Ansible, Git, Flex Deploy, GitHub Actions)
  • Communication & Interpersonal Effectiveness: Executive-Level Presentation Skills, Clear and Concise Verbal & Written Communication, Stakeholder Management, Collaborative Approach

Certification

  • Oracle Cloud Data Management 2023 Certified Foundations Associate
  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2023 AI Certified Foundations Associate
  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2023 Certified Foundations Associate
  • Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
  • ICAgile Certification
  • Splunk Certified Power User
  • ITIL v3 Foundation
  • Six Sigma Trained – Yellow, Green & Black Belt

Languages

English
Native or Bilingual
Hindi
Native or Bilingual
Kannada
Native or Bilingual

Timeline

Manager, Enterprise Applications

Cox Enterprises
03.2023 - Current

Lead DevOps Engineer

Cox Communications Inc
12.2018 - 03.2023

Team Lead/Technology Consultant

Accenture LLP
07.2010 - 11.2018

Bachelor of Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Visvesvaraya Technological University

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Nikhil Ramesh