# From support to technology leadership

2009–present

I’ve designed infrastructure for customer-facing services and led incident response. Alongside the hands-on work, I built technical teams and developed leaders to take responsibility for their own areas.

- **[Building an operations organization](https://raidz.net/work/teams/)** — I built the operations function as the work expanded, then established specialist teams with leaders responsible for delivery.

- **[Product launches and ongoing operations](https://raidz.net/work/delivery/)** — I directed the infrastructure work for a cloud service’s launch and continue to oversee its operations.

- **[AI tools and integrations](https://raidz.net/work/applied-ai/)** — I created an AI toolkit and built the first version of an MCP integration. Teams now develop both further.

## How the work grew

- **2009** — I started in customer support, where I built servers, configured services, and solved customer problems.

- **Early growth** — I built and led technical operations alongside the support team as the work expanded.

- **2020** — The cloud service moved from beta to its production launch. I oversaw its infrastructure and directed capacity expansion as demand grew.

- **2024** — After years of department and cross-team leadership, I became VP of IT Operations.

- **Today** — I lead operations, including an AI Platform team that builds tools for colleagues across the company.

## Technical and business experience

The examples below include workplace responsibilities and personal projects. Links lead to fuller accounts of the work.

### Technical work

**Applied AI and agent workflows** — I created an internal AI toolkit and built the first version of a Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration. My personal work includes model-routing workflows with independent review. Examples: [AI tools and integrations](https://raidz.net/work/applied-ai/)

**Infrastructure architecture and operations** — I’ve designed infrastructure for customer-facing services and guided teams through implementation. My experience includes Linux, networking and virtualization across cloud and data-center environments. In personal projects, I operate Proxmox and Docker hosting with storage, backups and service monitoring. Examples: [Product launches and ongoing operations](https://raidz.net/work/delivery/) · [Personal projects](https://raidz.net/projects/)

**Document ingestion and search** — In personal projects, I build tools for document ingestion and search, including optical character recognition (OCR), embeddings, and keyword and vector retrieval. I use PostgreSQL for application data and SQLite for service records and collected reports. Examples: [AI tools and integrations](https://raidz.net/work/applied-ai/)

**Product operations and release coordination** — I oversee infrastructure and product operations for a cloud service and self-hosted VPN software. The work includes capacity planning and release coordination, with colleagues across the company involved in billing and distribution changes. Examples: [Product launches and ongoing operations](https://raidz.net/work/delivery/)

**Incident response and recovery** — Restoring service can introduce new risks. I lead the response and work through recovery decisions with engineers, then make sure corrective work has an owner. [How I run an incident](https://raidz.net/profile/)

### Business and leadership

**Organization design and team leadership** — I make staffing decisions and set priorities as the organization grows. Team leaders own delivery in their areas; I resolve decisions that cross team boundaries. Examples: [Building an operations organization](https://raidz.net/work/teams/)

**Budgets and vendor decisions** — My responsibilities include budgets and resource allocation. I negotiate with vendors and review contracts, weighing operating costs against support needs and the work of changing systems. [How I approach supplier and business decisions](https://raidz.net/work/teams/)

**Customer experience and investment priorities** — I assess proposed changes from the customer’s point of view and use that perspective when deciding where to invest. [How customer experience shapes my decisions](https://raidz.net/profile/)

**Business intelligence and reporting** — I previously had responsibility for business intelligence, analytics and company-wide metrics governance.

**Company systems and program oversight** — My oversight includes identity and access management, employee-device controls, and security and compliance programs.

[See my personal projects](https://raidz.net/projects/) [Contact me](https://raidz.net/contact/) [LinkedIn ↗ (opens in a new tab)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcproctor)

Canonical HTML: [https://raidz.net/work/](https://raidz.net/work/)