Michael McGarrah

Technology leader with 30+ years bridging enterprise architecture, AI/ML, and cloud platforms. Career spans engineering leadership, enterprise architecture (statewide standards for NC state government), and hands-on platform engineering (AWS, EKS, production ML models). Security depth includes IRS SafeGuard audits, SOC 1/SOC 2 compliance across eight simultaneous audits, and Congressional subcommittee work (ETAAC). Currently completing an Executive MBA at UNC Wilmington.

Executive MBA — Corporate Entrepreneurship 2025 – present

University of North Carolina Wilmington | GPA: 4.0

MS Computer Science — Interactive Intelligence (AI/ML) 2014 – 2019

Georgia Institute of Technology | GPA: 3.63

BS Computer Science — Honors 1990 – 2011

North Carolina State University | GPA: 3.42

Lead Principal Engineer (Cloud & ML Focus) Oct 2021 – Present

Envestnet, Inc., Emerald Isle NC (Remote)

Cloud platform architecture across 20+ AWS accounts. Founded EKS Working Group. Led SOC 1/SOC 2 compliance for 8 simultaneous audits. Built enterprise observability framework.

Principal Data & Analytics Platform Engineer Apr 2019 – Oct 2021

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC, Raleigh-Durham NC (Remote)

Architected enterprise data science platform (EKS, EMR, SageMaker). Production deep learning models processing claims data for all NC members. Director-equivalent authority.

Data Engineer Nov 2017 – Apr 2019

United States Postal Service, Raleigh NC

Administered 25-node SAS Viya cluster (26TB RAM) connected to 50+ node Hadoop data lake. NIST 800-53 high security. Built data acquisition modules for Chief Data Scientist's team.

Cloud Architect Jul 2016 – Sep 2017

American Kennel Club, Raleigh-Durham NC

AWS cloud evangelist. Migrated www.akc.org in 6 weeks with zero customer impact. Reduced hosting costs from $30K/mo to under $5K. End-to-end CI/CD implementation.

Enterprise Architect for Strategic Initiatives May 2015 – Jul 2016

NC Department of Information Technology, Raleigh NC

Led enterprise-wide technology strategy for NC state government. Authored RFI for statewide data center network modernization. Co-authored security standards RFP with State Risk Officer.

Senior Systems Programmer & Administrator (AI) Apr 2013 – Jul 2015

Measurement Incorporated, Durham NC

Built scalable AWS compute platform for ML scoring workloads (thousands of spot instances). Owned all costs and FinOps. Custom MIT Star Cluster for distributed AI computing.

Systems Administrator Aug 2011 – Mar 2013

SAS Institute, Inc., Cary NC

FDA CFR Part 11 validated systems for pharmaceutical clinical trials. Multi-tier SAS architectures for 80+ customers. All 6 SAS certifications in 6 consecutive months.

Application and Network Security Specialist Mar 2007 – Aug 2011

NC Department of Revenue, Raleigh NC

Passed IRS SafeGuard audit (1,300-page report, no noteworthy findings). Congressional subcommittee (ETAAC) on security standards. NIST 800-53, PCI-DSS, FISMA frameworks.

Congressional Subcommittee Member Mar 2009 – Mar 2011

ETAAC Security Subcommittee, Washington DC

NIST 800-53 controls adapted to IRS Publication 1075 for third-party tax preparer security standards. Congressional report applied these as baseline.

IT Engineer (IT Director) Mar 2006 – Mar 2007

BD Biosciences, Durham NC

Sole IT leader for manufacturing plant. Managed all IT services, budgets, one direct report. Apriso MES, Oracle, SAP integration, medical device compliance.

Systems Programmer Jan 2005 – Mar 2006

NC Community College System, Raleigh NC

Administered Sun Solaris and IBM AIX for all 58 NC community colleges. Built automation reducing manual effort across 58 local administrators.

Systems Engineer May 2004 – Jan 2005

Hosted Solutions (Springboard Hosting), Raleigh NC

Senior off-shift supervisor across three operation centers. Enterprise storage (BakBone NetVault, 200+ customers). UNIX/Windows systems administration.

UNIX Engineer Jun 2002 – May 2004

NetIQ, Inc. (Ganymede Software), Morrisville NC

Cross-platform UNIX/Windows integration. Built API-driven lab automation (VM provisioning) before cloud computing existed. Automated build and regression testing.

Development Manager / Operations Manager — NC LIVE Jan 1999 – Nov 2000

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Statewide digital library serving all NC public libraries, community colleges, and universities. Managed budgets, staff, multi-site operations (NCSU, UNC-CH, State Library).

Application Analyst Programmer / Systems Programmer Jun 1998 – Jun 2002

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Financial systems (Sybase/Peoplesoft), cross-platform development, web infrastructure with campus Kerberos/AFS integration.

Benchmark Developer (System Programmer) Jun 1994 – Jun 1998

Ziff-Davis Publishing, Raleigh NC

Winstone, WinBench, PC Bench, JMark — industry-standard benchmarks in PC Magazine. Worked under NDA with Microsoft, Intel on pre-release hardware/software.

Senior Operations Technician / NOC 1998 – 2001

Interpath Communications, Raleigh NC (two part-time stints)

Network operations, UNIX/Windows administration, enterprise backup management. Reduced off-hours escalations to daytime engineering.

Technical Services Manager Jul 1992 – Jun 1994

Pioneer Software / Q+E Software, Raleigh NC

OEM manager for 130+ customers (IBM, Microsoft, Borland). International technical support staff of fifteen. ODBC driver development.

Forced alignment for Nordic languages: Rapidly constructing a high-quality prototype. Young, N.J. & McGarrah, M. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 2021.