michael.zazon.us

MZ 2026 · Résumé

Michael Zazon

Principal Cloud Architect · Financial services cloud transformation · Author

New York, NY · michael@zazon.us · linkedin.com/in/mike-zazon · github.com/mzazon

About

Hands-on, multi-cloud architect with more than 20 years in technology. For the last eight I have worked with financial-services firms on enterprise cloud adoption and application modernization.

At AWS I am the principal technical lead on the account teams for global financial institutions, where I lead infrastructure modernization and application transformation work.

Co-author of the AWS Cookbook (O’Reilly Media), creator of Cloud Projects and an open-source contributor, with hands-on experience across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

Experience

Amazon Web Services

New York, NY · Dec 2019 to present

Principal Cloud Architect, Mar 2023 to present · Senior Cloud Architect, Dec 2019 to Mar 2023

  • Technical lead for sales and delivery across a portfolio of tier-1 financial-services customers.
  • Spent four of my first six years in Professional Services, architecting and building cloud platforms hands-on for large global banks.
  • Led application modernization programs for three of the five largest global investment banks.
  • AWS technical lead on a multi-year data-center exit for a global market-intelligence firm, moving its estate onto AWS and modernizing it along the way.
  • Co-lead of generative AI programs across the financial-services vertical since 2024.
  • Brought customer requirements to AWS service teams, and several of them shipped as features.
  • Designed multi-region, fault-tolerant architectures for trading platforms.
  • Hired and mentored engineers, and led cross-functional delivery teams.

Technologies: AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Python, infrastructure as code

Cloudreach

Cloud Solutions Architect (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) · Oct 2018 to Dec 2019

  • Led enterprise cloud migrations for healthcare and financial-services customers on all three major clouds.
  • Built fixed-price delivery frameworks for security baselines and container platforms, which let customers adopt cloud faster.
  • Designed multi-cloud architectures that met CIS, NIST, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS and FedRAMP requirements.
  • Moved customers from release cycles measured in weeks to deploys measured in hours with CI/CD and containers.
  • Wrote cloud governance frameworks and reference architectures adopted by eight enterprise customers.

Technologies: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Jenkins

Cloudreach

Cloud Systems Developer Lead · Jun 2017 to Oct 2018

  • Led agile delivery pods of 12 or more engineers across several customer engagements.
  • Built infrastructure automation for financial-services customers that cut their cloud spend with auto-scaling, containers and right-sizing.
  • Refactored applications and modernized infrastructure using infrastructure as code.

zEngineering, LLC

Owner and Chief Architect · 2008 to 2017 (independent practice, alongside my Ohio State roles)

  • Founded and ran a cloud consulting practice for more than 15 small and mid-size clients.
  • Led cloud migrations on AWS and Azure from first sale to delivery.
  • Re-platformed C# and .NET applications for manufacturing and financial clients.

The Ohio State University, College of Engineering

Manager of Application Development · Sep 2016 to Jun 2017

  • Lead software and infrastructure architect for the college’s application development team.
  • Hired, coached and reviewed the team.
  • Ran development and operations for more than 250 public websites on open-source and proprietary platforms.
  • Introduced DevOps practices and automation across the development lifecycle.

Technologies: Linux (RHEL, CentOS), Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, VMware, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Drupal, C#, Ruby on Rails, PHP (Laravel), Bash, PowerShell

The Ohio State University

Columbus, OH · Jan 2004 to Sep 2016

Senior Systems Manager, Jun 2008 to Sep 2016 · Systems Developer Engineer, Jan 2004 to Jun 2008

  • Working manager and team lead for IT groups in the Office of Academic Affairs and the College of Engineering.
  • Enterprise architect for ten business units, including vendor selection, design, cost and operating spend.
  • Managed federal compliance (NIST, CIS, DFARS) for academic and funded research.
  • Led the ITIL-based consolidation of the college’s IT service groups.

Technologies: VMware, Hyper-V, Windows Server, Active Directory, Microsoft System Center, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Cisco, Dell, Puppet, Chef, Ansible

Writing, speaking and open source

  • Co-author, AWS Cookbook (O’Reilly Media), a category best-seller.
  • More than 100 hands-on, interactive AWS learning labs for the O’Reilly online learning platform (formerly Katacoda).
  • Creator of Cloud Projects, which carries the Cookbook and lab approach to multi-cloud: more than 1,100 cloud recipes published as open source for learners at every level.
  • Speaker at more than 12 industry conferences, including AWS re:Invent and re:Inforce.
  • More than 25 technical articles and whitepapers on cloud architecture and financial-services transformation.

Education

The Ohio State University

BS, Computer Science and Engineering · 2012

Undergraduate research in artificial intelligence, image recognition and neural networks. Tutored computer science courses.

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Professional · 2024, valid to 2027
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Associate · 2024, valid to 2027
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner · 2024, valid to 2027
  • AWS Certified Big Data, Specialty · 2020 (certification since retired by AWS)
  • Docker Certified Trainer and Docker Certified Associate · 2017
  • Microsoft Exam 70-534: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions · 2017 · Credly badge