Theron Thompson

NOC Manager with 20+ years of progressive network operations experience and 8+ years leading network engineers and contract resources in primarily Cisco environments. Pairs people leadership with hands-on technical leadership across complex troubleshooting, major incident management, root cause analysis, design and change review, and operational readiness. Currently responsible for network service performance, resilience, monitoring, and lifecycle management for a 165+ site healthcare network covering office, data center, colocation and hosted environments, Meraki wireless, VPN and remote access, Teams and Webex voice, and disaster recovery connectivity, sustaining 99.95% availability during concurrent firewall, core, and voice refresh programs.

Manages carrier, hosting provider, Security, and Identity dependencies including NAC and multifactor authentication; applies ITIL incident, problem, and change management under CAB governance; maintains diagrams, standards, and configuration records in the ServiceNow CMDB. Working knowledge of Zero Trust, SASE, and infrastructure as code.

Implementation Manager - Ethos Veterinary Health - Remote

(2025-09)

Network infrastructure delivery lead and Cisco Meraki SME for a 165+ site veterinary hospital network with 24x7 clinical operations. Reports to IT leadership on service performance, risk, and refresh priorities.

• Accountable for daily network health and service quality across hospital sites, hosted data centers, wireless, remote access, voice, and DR links. Standardized Meraki MS/MR and Catalyst 9300X configurations across 165+ sites and held 99.95% availability with refresh work in flight.
• Lead a cross-functional group of 10+ engineers, field technicians, and contract resources. Set priorities, assign and track work, coach engineers hands-on, and take the difficult operational problems and service calls personally rather than handing them down. Own the capital and operational budget and multi-year roadmap covering capacity, lifecycle, technical debt, and refresh priorities.
• Serve as final escalation authority for Emergency CAB. Lead major network incidents, coordinate restoration with carriers and vendors, communicate service risk and business impact to leadership in plain terms, and see root cause analysis and corrective actions through to closure.
• Run three concurrent programs (Edge Firewall Refresh, Voice Transformation across 20+ sites, IT/Core Network Refresh), including WAN circuit procurement. Every change is reviewed, tested, approved, and confirmed production-ready before cutover, with monitoring, documentation, rollback, and ownership verified.
• Hold the hosting provider (iland) accountable for network results in its data centers: watch performance, drive escalations, confirm readiness before cutovers, and push fixes through the provider's own team. Define what good service looks like, how support is requested, and who gets called when it fails for 5+ carriers and vendors.
• Partner with Cybersecurity and Identity on Cisco ISE network access control, segmentation, and multifactor authentication dependencies for VPN and remote access. Currently delivering a tri-datacenter ISE deployment for policy-based access enforcement.
• Handle the network side of Microsoft 365, Teams, Webex Calling, conference rooms, and clinical applications while the platform teams keep administrative ownership. Delivered a zero-downtime voice migration for 132 phones in Nashville; manage F5 BIG-IP load balancing for clinical traffic.

Lead Cloud Network Security Engineer - Aquinas Consulting - Remote

(2023-10 - 2025-04)

Team lead and senior on-call escalation authority for a Fortune 500 hospitality company's 24x7 network operations across 200+ sites; primarily Cisco with Palo Alto firewalls and hybrid cloud connectivity.

• Directed 6 engineers across late-shift operations and owned P1/P2 incidents affecting WAN/LAN, remote access VPN, hybrid cloud, SDDC platforms, and branch sites. Cut MTTR through structured post-incident reviews, runbooks, and defined escalation paths. Reported KPI and SLA compliance to leadership.
• Led the Cisco ISE migration to AWS with Forescout-integrated posture assessment and policy-based segmentation, working alongside Security and Identity teams. Deployed Aruba ClearPass for role-based access and rolled out Prisma Access ZTNA for the remote workforce.
• Designed and operated AWS/Azure hybrid connectivity (ExpressRoute, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, VPC peering) with strict ingress/egress controls. Automated configuration deployment and compliance checks with Terraform and Ansible in CI/CD pipelines, which took 60% off deployment timelines. Managed InfoBlox IPAM, DNS, and DHCP capacity planning across all 200+ sites.

Lead Network Infrastructure Consultant - Leidos - Remote

(2019-11 - 2023-07)

Engineering team lead for a large multi-site healthcare client (HIPAA); reported to the hospital's VP of IT on infrastructure performance, security posture, and project status.

• Directed the team through Cisco ISE and Forescout NAC implementation and an MPLS-to-SD-WAN migration across data center and campus LAN. Tuned Palo Alto ingress/egress rules and zero-trust segmentation; built Azure/AWS hybrid connectivity via ExpressRoute and Direct Connect.
• Improved monitoring coverage and alert thresholds in SolarWinds and Splunk to establish usable performance baselines and cut alert noise for the on-call rotation.
• Ran daily standups, task assignment, and milestone tracking for a distributed team. Conducted post-incident reviews and SLA compliance analysis in ITSM tooling and kept configuration records current across the four-year engagement.

Network Engineer Team Lead - BeyondTrust - Atlanta, GA

(2018-11 - 2019-08)

• Designed the unified global network after an acquisition (FortiGate firewalls, SD-WAN, segmented multi-region WAN). Supervised a distributed team with 24/7 NOC coverage and on-call escalation; tracked MTTR and first-contact resolution and reported progress to executive management.

Sr Network Engineer / Lead IT PM - SunTrust (now Truist) - Atlanta, GA

(2017-05 - 2018-09)

• Led enterprise network projects on Cisco Catalyst and Nexus infrastructure and Palo Alto NGFW in a regulated banking environment, balancing multiple workstreams without degrading operational support. Improved video conferencing reliability by 60% through QoS design and change-controlled rollout.

Senior Network Engineer - Atlanta Braves

(2016-01 - 2017-12)

Senior Network Engineer - InterContinental Hotels Group

(2016-01 - 2016-12)

Senior Network Engineer - Mblox / Sinch

(2014-01 - 2015-12)

Senior Network Engineer - Adcap / ConvergeOne, Edward-Elmhurst Health, and URS / AECOM

(2012-01 - 2014-12)

Systems Control / Network Infrastructure - U.S. Air Force

(2001-01 - 2006-12)

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) - Computer Networking - Regis University (2003-01 - 2006-12)