Adam Smith

Senior engineering leader with 15+ years of experience across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, and enterprise infrastructure environments. Deep expertise in hyperscale storage, AI infrastructure reliability, distributed systems operations, incident response, platform recovery, deployment automation, and operational excellence. Currently leading high-severity investigations and cross-organizational reliability improvements for Microsoft Azure hyperscale storage and AI infrastructure.

Proven ability to coordinate engineering, operations, platform, partner, and vendor teams to resolve complex production issues, reduce investigation time, improve recovery workflows, and drive durable platform-level corrective actions.

Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead, Hyperscale Storage & AI Infrastructure at Microsoft (2025-03 – Present)

Lead high-severity investigations, platform reliability improvements, and cross-organizational execution for Azure hyperscale storage and AI infrastructure. Work across engineering, operations, and partner teams to improve incident response, reduce investigation time, strengthen recovery workflows, and drive platform-level fixes for large-scale cloud environments.

• Built reusable Jupyter-based triage workflows that improved first-minute diagnosis for CPU saturation, thread-pool saturation, and dump-analysis scenarios.
• Identified and drove resolution of throttling misclassification issues, improving telemetry accuracy and customer-facing error behavior.
• Closed Sev-linked engineering cases tied to strategic AI customers by leading root-cause investigations and coordinating corrective actions.
• Standardized incident workflows and troubleshooting paths to reduce context switching and improve repeatability during live incidents.

Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead, Azure Hyperscale Storage & Fleet Reliability at Microsoft (2017-10 – 2025-03)

Led cross-functional reliability, recovery, deployment automation, and platform quality initiatives across Azure hyperscale storage infrastructure, spanning node recovery, deployment workflows, diagnostics, vendor enablement, incident prevention, and partner engineering coordination.

• Automated deployment and configuration workflows, reducing multi-stage operational effort from days to hours.
• Identified and escalated critical platform and recovery bugs across internal platform and buildout teams, improving disaster readiness and node recoverability.
• Led troubleshooting and recovery efforts for xPF and related storage environments, preventing production risk and unblocking dependent teams.
• Created recurring cross-team operating mechanisms including syncs, office hours, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
• Trained internal and vendor teams on recovery workflows, troubleshooting, and operational procedures.
• Built documentation, wiki content, and process guides that accelerated onboarding and improved execution consistency.
• Promoted from Microsoft Level 61 to Level 64, reflecting expanded scope across technical leadership, incident management, and cross-organizational execution.

Cloud Engineer, Amazon S3 Border Networking at Amazon Web Services (2016-09 – 2017-10)

Led operational excellence and service reliability initiatives for Amazon S3 Border Networking, improving troubleshooting processes, incident response, tooling, and change execution across a large-scale storage platform.

• Standardized troubleshooting processes for S3 Border Networking services.
• Participated in on-call rotations for high-impact Sev 2 and Sev 3 incidents.
• Built internal tools to accelerate diagnosis, reduce time to resolution, and improve supportability.
• Authored technical tutorials, runbooks, and operational best practices.
• Promoted from L4 to L5, reflecting increased ownership and broader operational impact.

Technical Operations Engineer, Corporate IT at Google (2015-01 – 2016-09)

Delivered technical operations, enterprise infrastructure support, and automation improvements in a global environment.

• Completed international support rotations in Google NYC and Google European Headquarters in Dublin.
• Automated recurring workflows using Bash scripting for macOS and Linux.
• Served as project lead for automation and operational efficiency initiatives.
• Developed self-service documentation and knowledge base content for global support teams.
• Proposed and led hostname-change automation projected to save approximately 87.5 support hours per month.

Global Helpdesk Support Analyst II at IKEA IT (2011-08 – 2015-01)

IT Helpdesk Analyst, University of Pennsylvania Dental School at MISI Company (2011-06 – 2011-08)

System Administrator / Helpdesk Support at 1st Care Consulting (2010-02 – 2011-03)

Helpdesk / Onsite Support at Advanced Information Technology (2009-08 – 2010-02)

Master of Science in Data Analytics & Cyber Security – Colorado State University Global

Bachelor of Science in Information Technology – Colorado State University Global