Atlanta, Georgia / IT Infrastructure Engineering

Shay Wade

Senior Systems Engineer

Senior individual contributor designing identity, enterprise SaaS, AI-assisted automation, and the operational systems that keep organizations productive at scale.

View Experience Selected Work LinkedIn

Focus: Identity, enterprise SaaS, and AI-assisted automation
Recent scale: 1,500-user migration across 450+ Slack channels
Ownership: Technical design, tooling, policy, rollout, and operations

Selected work

Selected systems work.

Approximate scale is included for context. Sensitive implementation details are intentionally omitted.

Identity and collaboration infrastructure

Migrating 1,500 contingent workers across 450+ Slack channels

Modernized contingent-workforce access while eliminating routine manual onboarding.

Scale1,500 workers
Surface450+ channels
SystemsSlack + IAM

Challenge

A fragmented, high-touch guest-access model supported nearly 1,500 contingent workers across 450+ channels. The migration had to preserve critical collaboration paths, apply company-specific access policies, and account for an overall population of nearly 4,000 affected employees and contingent workers.

Ownership

I authored the technical design and rollback-aware migration plan, configured the new workspace and access policies, and built Tines and Python tooling for user conversion and channel moves. I ran a controlled pilot, validated access, incorporated feedback, and led the broader quarter-long cutover and support plan.

Outcome

A dedicated full-member workspace improved collaboration while reducing access ambiguity and overexposure. Identity-driven provisioning now applies permissions by worker type and removes the IT Help Desk from routine onboarding. Reusable governance and exception-review paths made future access decisions more consistent and traceable.

AI-assisted infrastructure automation / Current work

Turning Jira requests into human-reviewed SSO pull requests

Converts one approved request into coordinated, reviewable infrastructure changes across three repositories.

Volume4–5 weekly
Change3 repositories
ImpactCoordination reduced

Challenge

A team handling four to five new SaaS authentication onboardings each week must translate Jira request data into coordinated changes across three Terraform repositories: Cloudflare Zero Trust applications, Okta application and bookmark management for SAML or OIDC flows, and Okta group management.

Design

I am building a workflow with Codex and an internal automation harness that interprets approved Jira fields and creates the required pull requests in each repository. This preserves clear infrastructure boundaries while automating the repeated work of translating one approved request into three coordinated changes.

Impact and control

The workflow removes repeated manual configuration, shortens vendor back-and-forth, and reduces typo-driven downstream troubleshooting. After each Terraform plan, engineers verify the generated code and compare its diff with the expected configuration blueprints before any change is implemented.

AI-assisted governance / Current work

Building policy-aware guidance for complex IT approvals

Gives reviewers policy-grounded guidance while preserving human approval authority in a sensitive system.

ModeRead-only
Guidance1–100 score
UpdatesNo plugin rebuild

Challenge

IT reviews new software, software-dependent professional services, and requests that create or modify data across company systems. A review may take five minutes or several days depending on its technical complexity, risk, and ownership dependencies.

Design

I built a Codex plugin that combines Atlassian Rovo with an internal Zip HQ MCP hosted in Tines. Its skills evaluate requests against requirements retrieved from Confluence, produce a 1–100 policy-alignment score, flag concerns, and identify follow-up tasks and the appropriate system owners.

Control

I evaluated direct approval actions but deliberately kept the integration read-only because the platform is sensitive and not owned by the IT team. Human reviewers retain approval authority, while policy can be updated in Confluence without changing or redeploying the plugin.

Experience

A career built close to the problem.

A progression from hands-on technical service to systems ownership and engineering, grounded in the needs of the people using the tools.

Aug 2023 - Present

Senior Systems Engineer

Own and improve CorpTech systems and infrastructure across identity, access, administration, automation, and the operational workflows that connect them.

Led the quarter-long migration of nearly 1,500 contingent workers and 450+ channels into a dedicated Slack workspace, accounting for an overall population of nearly 4,000 affected people.
Building an AI-assisted SSO workflow that converts Jira requests into Terraform-planned, human-reviewed changes across three repositories, reducing repetitive configuration, vendor back-and-forth, and typo-driven troubleshooting for a team onboarding four to five SaaS applications each week.
Built a read-only Codex decision-support plugin that evaluates sensitive IT approval requests against live Confluence policy, surfaces concerns and ownership-aware follow-up, and preserves human approval authority.

Explore the technical case studies ↑

Apr 2021 - Aug 2023

IT Operations Engineer

Supported and improved the systems behind remote IT operations, administration tooling, identity workflows, and employee technology.

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Aug 2019 - Apr 2021

Samsara

IT Specialist I - III

Progressed through three specialist levels while supporting identity, Atlassian systems, employee technology, and daily IT operations in a fast-growing environment.

2015 - 2019

Apple

Retail Technical Path

Advanced from Specialist through Expert, Pro, and Genius roles, developing a foundation in troubleshooting, technical communication, customer experience, and calm problem solving.

Education

Kennesaw State University

Computer and Information Technology

Studied Computer and Information Technology.

Capabilities

Where I do my best work.

Core capabilities across systems engineering, IT operations, and cross-functional technical ownership.

Automation and Integrations

AI-assisted workflow automation
Systems integrations
Atlassian administration
Process improvement

Systems and Infrastructure

Systems engineering
System administration
CorpTech infrastructure
GitOps for device management

Identity

Identity and access management
Okta administration
Lifecycle workflows
Access governance

Operational Leadership

Service ownership
Project and program management
Technical documentation
Cross-functional problem solving

About

Curious about the whole system.

I am at my best when a technical problem does not fit neatly inside one tool or one team's boundary.

I like learning how a system behaves in practice: where people lose time, where ownership becomes unclear, and where a small design decision creates repeated friction. From there, I work toward solutions that are secure, understandable, and realistic to operate.

That means listening carefully, asking precise questions, documenting what matters, and staying close enough to the work to know whether the change actually helped.

Where fishing meets product building

Building the fishing app I wanted on the water.

Shay Wade holding a phone showing a Fish Wizard fishing trip entry

Fishing is where I slow down, pay attention to changing conditions, and learn through time on the water. Fish Wizard is where that passion meets my career in technology: an independent product I designed and built around the way anglers actually fish.

Independent iOS product

Fish Wizard

A free, private fishing log for iPhone with an Apple Watch companion. It helps anglers capture trips, catches, photos, conditions, and gear, then turn their history into patterns worth repeating.

Private by design
Smart photo import
iPhone + Apple Watch

Connect

Have a systems problem worth untangling?

I am always glad to compare notes on identity, internal systems, operational design, and the teams that make them work.

Prefer email? [email protected]

Connect on LinkedIn