Byron Howell

Senior Systems Administrator

hello@byronhowell.me | linkedin.com/in/byron-bennett-howell | San Diego, CA

Experience

Senior Systems Administrator

Healthpilot Technologies, San Diego, CA

February 2021 – Present

Solo IT and security engineer at a 70-person HIPAA startup, reporting to the VP of Engineering. Own M365, Intune (Mac and Windows), Entra ID, Sentinel XDR, Drata, and the internal tools around them.
Built BLAST, an in-house URL shortener with API and cookie-based A/B-test routing for landing pages. Runs on Azure Functions (Node.js), Cosmos DB, and APIM.
Deployed and managed Azure Virtual Desktop for the seasonal workforce across 4 operating regions running Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session; FSLogix used for profile storage enabling rapid VM scaling.
Enforced passwordless privileged access using macOS Platform SSO and Windows Hello for Business platform keys, with Admin by Request managing all admin sessions in a HIPAA environment.
Led SOC 2 Type 2 audit, coordinating across security, engineering, and compliance.
Automated major business processes including onboarding/offboarding and incident-response workflows, reducing manual work and improving operational consistency.
Launched a virtual contact centre with integrated telephony, routing, and analytics; managed vendor security reviews and Meta/Google data integrations for product and marketing.
Managed data integrations across Snowflake, RudderStack, Fivetran, Power BI, and BambooHR as part of the broader data and HR infrastructure stack.

Data Protection and Collaboration Consulting

PROJ1, Financial Industry

April 2024 – Present

Configured Microsoft Purview and Zscaler ZIA for a medium-sized organisation in the financial industry.
Migrated legacy WordPress intranet to a SharePoint Modern site, modernising content architecture and improving governance and access controls.

IT Support Analyst

Health IQ, San Diego, CA

September 2018 – December 2020

Served as lead IT on the contact centre system, overseeing platform operations across InContact and Five9 for a hybrid/remote workforce of 230 employees and 120 contractors.
Debugged and troubleshot Salesforce custom integrations and scripts, becoming the primary internal resource for Salesforce platform issues.
Migrated company identity platform from Okta to OneLogin.
Cut macOS MDM spend by 50% by migrating device management from Jamf to Kandji.
Redesigned Jira Service Desk workflows and automation logic, becoming the in-house expert for Jira Cloud development.
Awarded Health IQ MVP for 2019.

Skills

Security Engineering: KQL, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Purview, Zscaler ZIA, Drata, Detection Engineering, Incident Response, Zero Trust, DLP, SOC 2, HIPAA

Identity and Access: Entra ID, Conditional Access, FIDO2, Passwordless, macOS Platform SSO, Windows Hello for Business, Admin by Request, Okta, OneLogin

Endpoint Management: Microsoft Intune, JAMF, Kandji

Cloud and Infrastructure: Azure, Azure Functions, Cosmos DB, Azure API Management, Azure Virtual Desktop, FSLogix, AWS, Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare D1, Durable Objects, Serverless

Automation and Scripting: PowerShell, Node.js, Bash, Power Automate, Zapier, GitHub Actions, CI/CD

Software Development: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Vite, Progressive Web Apps, Service Workers, IndexedDB, Dexie, Clerk, REST APIs

Data and Analytics: Snowflake, RudderStack, Fivetran, Power BI, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager

Business Systems: Jira, Salesforce, Talkdesk, Amazon Connect, BambooHR

Selected Projects

Rallypoint

Offline-first festival-planning PWA

https://rallypt.app

Built on Cloudflare's edge stack: Pages Functions, D1, KV, R2, Workers AI, and Durable Objects for per-crew WebSocket fan-out.
React 19, TypeScript, and Tailwind frontend with Dexie-backed offline cache, vite-plugin-pwa service worker, and a sync queue that replays mutations when the connection returns.
Operated like production: Clerk auth, PostHog exception capture and autocapture analytics, structured error logs in KV, and a scaling-canary cron that pages at 80% of Workers Paid plan budget.

Education

M.S. Cybersecurity Engineering, University of San Diego

B.S. Cyber Forensics, University of Utica

Certifications

CompTIA IT Operations Specialist, CompTIA Network+, CompTIA A+