Jesse Hildebrand

Enterprise architect and agile coach, with twenty years of building, running, and improving federal IT systems.

See experience

Career timeline

Scrum Master, Fusion Technology, 2024–present

Summary

I started out racking servers and keeping Solaris and Red Hat fleets running. I moved into enterprise architecture on FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) programs, then spent five years coaching Agile Release Trains for a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence.

Today I'm a Scrum Master and the go-to SAFe expert on my Agile Release Train. My background in infrastructure and architecture means I understand the work my team does, which helps me guide them to improve every iteration.

SAFe 6 Practice Consultant
Certified SPC who has taught official SAFe certification courses.
20 years in IT
Federal contracting with Lockheed Martin and Fusion Technology since 2007, including CJIS programs.
Active Top Secret clearance

Experience

Fusion Technology LLC

2012–present, four roles

Scrum Master

September 2024–present
  • Servant leader for a large development team that builds and maintains two distinct applications.
  • Coaches the team and its Agile Release Train (ART) on best practices.
  • Uses AI tools to gather and track team metrics, pinpointing bottlenecks and areas for improvement, then leads the resulting process improvements every iteration.
  • Runs all team events: team sync, backlog refinement, iteration planning, iteration review, and customer demos.
  • Works closely with the Product Owner, respecting their responsibilities, to help the team excel.
  • Serves as the go-to SAFe expert for the entire ART on process and execution questions.

Agile Transformation Coach, Lean-Agile Center of Excellence

August 2019–September 2024
  • Coached Agile Release Trains and teams on agile practices, suggested process improvements, and spotted and resolved anti-patterns.
  • Taught official SAFe 6.0 certification courses to internal participants, including SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner, and SAFe for Teams.
  • Wrote quick-start guides for SAFe roles to help new members get up to speed on the train.
  • Supported the team's architecture work, including guidance, coaching, and architectural context.

Enterprise Architect, IT Architecture Group (ITAG) at CJIS

July 2013–August 2019
  • Recommended IT architecture best practices and wrote and presented architecture guidance documents.
  • Worked on procuring a customer-funded public cloud environment on AWS and Azure, and provided architectural guidance for its use.
  • Led a performance study of IBM DataPower and IBM Cloud Private (Kubernetes), delivering a full review and architectural recommendations.
  • Technical liaison on The Justice Cloud onboarding team. Gathered customers' system requirements and guided their application architecture for CJIS cloud infrastructure. Tracked each environment from request to completion with all CJIS service providers and coordinated Enterprise Change Requests (ECRs) in IBM ClearQuest as lead technical contact.
  • Administered the team's Office 365 environment. Wrote the security documentation and rules of behavior that won CJIS Security approval to use Office 365 in a secure environment.

Led a video-conferencing initiative to cut customer travel costs. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) used the solution to meet external customers who could not travel.

Sr. System Administrator, Law Enforcement Online Enterprise Portal (LEO-EP)

July 2012–July 2013
  • Administered 67 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 servers running IBM WebSphere Portal and Application Server, Tivoli Identity Manager, and Tivoli Access Manager.
  • Built and deployed servers on VMware ESXi and vSphere. Maintained developer workstations and configured development VMs with WebSphere, Rational Application Developer, and Mobile Portal Toolkit.
  • Opened and worked change requests in IBM Rational ClearQuest.
  • Led the deployment of a wireless access point for mobile testing and wrote its security policy, which FBI Security approved.

Lockheed Martin

2007–2012, two roles

Solaris System Administrator

October 2009–July 2012
  • Administered 200+ Solaris servers across two high-availability sites, production and Continuity of Operations (COOP).
  • Troubleshot and replaced failed hardware on Sun servers, and administered blades, LDOMs, and Zones through the command line, ALOM, and ILOM.
  • Maintained IBM Tivoli Access Manager, Tivoli Identity Manager, and WebSphere products. Handled OS patching, installs, and COTS troubleshooting.
  • Managed a Tier 3 ticket queue. Managed user accounts in SDS 6.3 LDAP and reported application usage metrics to management.
  • Racked, configured, and security-hardened 36 Solaris servers for a hardware expansion. Led classroom training for 25 users and one-on-one training sessions.

Hardware Engineer

July 2007–October 2009
  • Administered 50+ Solaris 10 and 20+ SUSE Linux (SGI) servers in a development environment, including NIS account management.
  • Owned hardware troubleshooting and repair on Sun and SGI servers. Helped with OS patching, upgrades, and Foundry and Cisco switch configuration.
  • Maintained 300+ Solaris 10 desktop PCs.

Led the rollout of 100 Sun Ray thin clients to replace aging desktops, saving $50k a year in maintenance and electricity.

Early experience

2005–2007

Student IT Support, Mount Vernon Nazarene University

May 2005–May 2007

Removed viruses and malware, fixed connectivity problems, and reported campus-wide network issues. Supervised three other student support staff.

Networking Intern, Micro Industries Inc.

May 2006–July 2006

Configured and repaired Windows desktops and servers, deployed laptops, set up switches, and helped maintain customers' touch-screen kiosks remotely.

Certifications

  • SAFe Practice Consultant (SPC)2019
  • Red Hat Certified System Administrator2017Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7
  • Solaris Administration 12009
  • SUSE Linux Administration 1 and 22009
  • CCNA Bootcamp2008

Skills

Agile and delivery

  • SAFe 6.0
  • Agile Release Trains
  • Scrum
  • Agile coaching
  • SAFe training delivery
  • Team metrics and flow
  • AI-assisted metrics

Architecture and cloud

  • Enterprise architecture
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Kubernetes (IBM Cloud Private)
  • IBM DataPower
  • CJIS cloud onboarding
  • Security policy

Systems

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Solaris
  • SUSE Linux
  • VMware ESXi and vSphere
  • IBM WebSphere
  • Tivoli Identity and Access Manager
  • LDAP
  • Office 365
  • IBM ClearQuest

Education

Mount Vernon Nazarene University, 2007

B.S. in Computer Science