Biography

Matt Jenkins is an accomplished information technologist with extensive experience in computer networking, systems administration, and software development.  He has successfully built and managed IT infrastructure projects, software solutions, and identity and access management systems throughout his career.  He prides himself on his ability to quickly learn and adapt to new technologies, as well as his commitment to safety and efficiency.

From an early age, Matt developed a passion for technology.  As a teenager, he learned several programming languages on DOS, including Basic, C, and Java.  This knowledge was used for projects such as his electronic BBS (Bulletin Board System) he operated while living in Atlanta.  As technology evolved, he learned other languages such as C++, ASP, PHP, and HTML to maintain various websites he created for himself and as a side job during college.

During college at Salem-Teikyo University, Matt began a position in IT and continued to learn an array of new technologies, such as Windows NT and 2000, OS/2, VAX VMS, Solaris, SGI Irix, BSD, and Linux.  He took a pivotal role in upgrading the university’s coax WAN and LAN infrastructure to fiber in addition to deploying emerging 802.11 wireless technologies throughout the campus.  He also deployed essential IP services including ipfwadm firewall, DHCP, DNS, and mail services (SMTP, POP3, and IMAP). He also set up file and print sharing across the university using Samba, as well as used BSD to enforce rate limiting and QoS to ensure network availability across the campus.

After graduating Salem and seeking a new challenge, Matt had an opportunity to work for Analytic Services, Inc. as a software developer for various government entities.  Matt worked on various projects including Naive Bayes text categorization, biometric enrollment and identification, and Internet crawling utilities. Many of these projects were developed under the CMMI model in UNIX C, Microsoft .NET managed C/C++/C# and Visual Basic.

Later, Matt would join TMC to manage the IT infrastructures for TMC and many commercial clients. There, he assisted in deploying Linux and AIX servers used for the development of software which collected weather data for long-term archival.

Moving on to larger challenges, Matt began a position as a network and systems administrator for Fairmont State University.  Here, Matt was part of a team that migrated over 30,000 Active Directory accounts that were integrated with Microsoft Exchange.  He was also heavily involved with installing new Cisco routers, adaptive security appliances, lightweight wireless access points, and VoIP. He was also responsible for installing and maintaining VMWare ESXi on blade hardware that utilized an IBM SAN.  Later, he assisted with moving student email to the cloud.

Next, Matt joined Fusion Technology for an opportunity to engineer Identity and Access Management solutions for various customers. Here, he assisted multiple applications in utilizing SaaS solutions and became a SME (Subject Matter Expert) for IBM Security software including Access Manager, Identity Manager, and Federated Identity Manager products. He also deployed IBM WebSphere Portal, Splunk, Nagios, custom Java applications, and RedHat Enterprise Linux OS hosted on VMWare vSphere which provided an IaaS to a multitude of customers.

Matt’s current opportunity is performing Identity and Access Management at a large financial institution.  His responsibilities include automating build and operation activities for EIAM and CIAM (Enterprise and Customer Identity and Access Management) Systems.  Many of these systems are rapidly evolving as technologies such as FIDO (Passkey), OAuth, and OIDC continue to improve.  In addition, the underlying platforms are shifting to colocation facilities and cloud service providers to further reduce operational costs.  Following Agile and DevSecOps practices, Matt assists the organization with decreasing time to market on these large-scale projects.

While not at work, Matt enjoys time with his family, dog, and horses on their small farm outside of Pittsburgh, PA in northern West Virginia. Much of Matt’s time is also occupied with helping various volunteer organizations provide community services for both people and pets. Matt also enjoys being an amateur equine photographer whose works can be found on his Flickr photo site. If Matt is not out on the trail walking his dog, he can probably be found at his desk tinkering with the latest technology.