Resume

William Janness

Senior Network & Security Engineer · SaaS Product Architect · AI Systems Builder

William Janness

Senior Network & Security Engineer · SaaS Product Architect · AI Systems Builder
Northern Illinois · wjanness.com · linkedin.com/in/williamjanness
Summary

Senior network and security engineer with 20+ years in enterprise IT — and a track record of building the products that run on that infrastructure. I design spine-leaf data center fabrics in the morning and ship production SaaS features in the afternoon. My work spans SOC 2 / HIPAA / GDPR compliance, AI-integrated system design, full-stack development, and co-founding a multi-product creative tech company. Security is not a layer I add at the end — it's the foundation I build on.

Experience
Senior Network Administrator & Security Engineer
AI Technology Company — Chicago, IL
2022 – Present
  • Designed a complete 3-spine / 6-leaf, all-100G data center network fabric for a growing GPU server fleet — replacing a flat network with a BGP Layer 3 underlay, VLT peer pairs, ECMP across all three spines, and Anycast Gateway per zone (Dell S5232F-ON / OS10)
  • Built an enterprise-grade ITSM platform from scratch — 10-container Docker stack, Python/FastAPI API, React/TypeScript frontend, PostgreSQL, Redis — replacing commercial tools quoted at up to $152K/year
  • Integrated an autonomous AI remediation agent (Claude API) into the ITSM platform — monitors tickets, executes approved playbooks, escalates on low-confidence scenarios — reducing Level 1 resolution time
  • Led SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance initiatives — implemented Zero Trust network design, SIEM, endpoint management, and incident response procedures
  • Implemented Active Directory / LDAP user sync, Slack interactive approval workflows (Block Kit), and SLA enforcement automation across the ITSM platform
  • Managed Fortinet firewall infrastructure, VPN, and north-south security policy for the data center environment
  • Operated multi-product SaaS hosting infrastructure serving live users; maintained 99%+ uptime across all hosted services
Co-Founder & CTO
Mad Monkey Creative LLC — Chicago, IL
2020 – Present
  • Co-founded a Chicago-area creative technology LLC with 7 live product brands across apparel, software, music, and education
  • Designed and operate all shared infrastructure — Apache vhosts per brand, PM2 process management, SSL via reverse proxy, internal VLAN segmentation, on-prem hardware
  • Architected and built Time To Plate (timetoplate.com) — a production SaaS recipe manager and event execution engine — as the LLC's flagship software product; sole developer across the full stack
  • Manage all technical operations: server provisioning, domain/SSL management, deployment pipelines, monitoring, and incident response across 7 active brands
Senior IT & Network Engineer
Enterprise Environments — Northern Illinois
2004 – 2022
  • 20+ years designing, implementing, and operating enterprise network and security infrastructure across multiple organizations and industries
  • Hands-on expertise across the full network stack: LAN/WAN design, routing (BGP, OSPF), switching, VPN, firewall policy, VLAN segmentation, and wireless
  • Led security initiatives including penetration testing, SIEM implementation, endpoint management, identity and access control, and compliance audits
  • Administered Windows Server / Active Directory environments, VMware virtualization, and hybrid cloud integrations
  • Deployed and managed enterprise applications across healthcare, finance, and technology verticals — each with distinct compliance and uptime requirements
Selected Projects
Enterprise IT Service Management Platform Production

Self-hosted ITSM replacing tools quoted at up to $152K/year. 10-container Docker stack, 41 ticket types, autonomous AI remediation agent (Claude), Active Directory sync, Slack interactive approvals. Python/FastAPI · React/TypeScript · PostgreSQL · Redis · Celery.

Time To Plate — SaaS Recipe & Event Execution Engine timetoplate.com

Full-stack SaaS product — sole architect and developer. Backward-planning scheduler with appliance lanes, human bandwidth constraints, allergen safety, PWA push notifications, and pluggable AI assistance. Next.js 14 · Fastify/TypeScript · PostgreSQL · Redis · BullMQ · Drizzle · Lucia Auth.

3-Spine / 6-Leaf Data Center Network Fabric Design Complete

Complete data center fabric design for AI company GPU fleet. Dell S5232F-ON / OS10, eBGP underlay, VLT pairs, ECMP across 3 spines, Anycast Gateway, all-100G links, Fortinet NGFW. Replaces flat Layer 2 network; implementation in progress.

Technical Skills
Networking
BGP / OSPF Spine & Leaf VLT / ECMP VLAN / 802.1Q Dell OS10 Cisco IOS Fortinet IPSec VPN
Security & Compliance
SOC 2 HIPAA GDPR Zero Trust SIEM Penetration Testing IAM / RBAC Incident Response
Software Development
TypeScript Python React Next.js 14 FastAPI Fastify Drizzle ORM Zod
Data & Infrastructure
PostgreSQL Redis Docker / Compose BullMQ / Celery Apache Active Directory VMware Linux
AI & Integrations
Claude API AI Agent Design Slack API Block Kit SendGrid REST APIs
Education
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Certifications & Licenses
CompTIA Security+
CompTIA
CompTIA Network+
CompTIA
CompTIA A+
CompTIA
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
Microsoft