Nic Williams
Strategic Architect — AI Architecture, Infrastructure, and Standards
Denver, CO
I build practical systems at the intersection of AI, security, networking, and automation — and I take the protocols behind them into the standards bodies that decide how they work.
I like sharp edges: technical standards work and tooling that (usually) survives production.
Currently: documenting learnings + shipping small experiments at darknetian & within my homelab.
work
Remote • Denver, CO • 3 yrs 11 mos
Strategic Architect — AI Architecture, Infrastructure, and Standards
AUG 2026 — Present
WWFO AMS
- Overlay architect across AI, cloud, and infrastructure: provide expert support for the most strategic deals in the territory.
- In addition to previous responsibilities: Create innovative approaches to product-led growth in collaboration with Product and Engineering. (1)
- Run cloud and automation motions across AWS, Azure, and GCP — centralized IPAM, Terraform, third party integrations, marketplace strategy — and enable SAs, BDRs, and partners to qualify and convert them. Own cloud reference architecture and deployment scripts.
- Technical mentorship and leadership of inaugural SE Academy, and serve as accelerator to field enablement through closer peering with product, engineering, support, and sales leadership.
Senior Solutions Architect II
OCT 2025 — AUG 2026
WWFO AMS Southwest - Majors
- In addition to previous responsibilities: represent Infoblox and customers as an advocate and participant at standards development organizations (aka SDOs: IETF, UN's ITU-T & IGF, NANOG, DNS-OARC, ICANN, AAIF, LF, etc). Contribute to ongoing technical standards development (e.g. NIST SP 800-81, various RFCs, contributions to ITU, etc).
- Partner with Legal and Marketing for technical policy strategy, Engineering for productization strategy of SDO projects. Work with IT as field-facing manager of internal automation tool for customer-related activity tracking and reporting. (1)
- Secure ~7% of AMS ARR, deliver $M in new business ARR through pre-sales expansion motions. FY25 attainment: 267% (President's Club), Southwest MVP.
Senior Solutions Architect I
SEP 2024 — OCT 2025
WWFO AMS Southwest - Majors
- In addition to previous responsibilities: curated and edited technical expert content / responses on Infoblox community site. Developed and maintained custom software for SAs to identify pending, overdue, and complete customer health checks. (1)
- Partnered with Enablement and IT to consolidate SA home-grown tools to unified portal for consolidation of maintainer effort. Contributed testing materials and feedback to Education team. Delivered technical corporate blog post to Field Marketing. (2)
- Secured ~6% of AMS ARR, delivered $M in new business ARR through pre-sales expansion motions. FY24 attainment: 113%, SA of the Quarter (Q3).
Senior Solutions Architect
APR 2024 — SEP 2024
WWFO AMS Commercial West
- In addition to previous responsibilities: served as Commercial SME for security and threat intelligence products. Curated, edited, and created content for SA technical newsletter to customers.
- Partnered with policy team to deliver compliance framework heatmap reports. Served as Palo Alto Networks SME for competitive testing analysis. Field-facing PM for health check and workstream automation softwares (linked below).
- Secured ~35% of AMS Commercial West ARR, delivered <$M in new business ARR through pre-sales expansion and new logo acquisition motions. FY23 attainment: 98%, SA of the Year (FY24).
Solutions Architect
SEP 2022 — APR 2024
WWFO AMS Commercial
- Participated in RFP/RFI bid processes and proposal generation, conducted customer facing presentations and product demonstrations, engaged in proof of concept installations, scoped bill of materials and professional service statements of work.
- Developed and maintained custom softwares: health check automation (1), SA workstream automation (2), laptop local lab for threat emulation demonstration. (3)
- Secured ~40% of AMS Commercial ARR, delivered <$M in new business ARR through pre-sales expansion and new logo acquisition motions. SA of the Quarter (Q2, and tied for Q1).
Remote • Denver, CO • 1 yr 5 mos
Chief Information Officer (CIO)
MAR 2025 — Present
- Build operations backbone from zero to create reliable scale for core delivery of business systems (identity/access, device & endpoint security, collaboration, finance tooling, data plumbing).
- De-risk the company with pragmatic security & compliance. Establish security fundamentals (least-privilege, secrets, logging, backups/DR, vendor risk) and pave the path to the first external trust milestone.
- Manage and build international engineering team. Participate in vendor selection, contract management & negotiation, and develop technical roadmap for scale.
Remote • Denver, CO • 1 yr 7 mos
Member of the Board of Advisors
JAN 2025 — JAN 2026
Professional Education (Strategic Artificial Intelligence Program)
- Advised UCCS Executive Education faculty on Strategic AI curriculum, ensuring frameworks and capstone projects map to real enterprise constraints (governance, risk, integration, ROI).
- Provided structured program review across content, assessments, and outcomes, translating practitioner feedback into actionable updates that increase on-the-job applicability for executive cohorts.
- Strengthened the program’s industry relevance and network by contributing real-world use cases and aligning program deliverables to executive-ready artifacts (strategic AI plan, leadership decision-making, adoption playbooks).
Remote • Plano, TX • 2 yrs 7 mos
Field Systems Engineer 1
OCT 2021 — SEP 2022
West Enterprise - Healthcare & Critical Infrastructure
- Owned end-to-end pre-sales activities across NGFW, SASE, XDR, SOAR/SIEM, CSPM, and SD-WAN.
- Built hybrid-cloud security frameworks mapped to HIPAA & NIST controls, produced audit-ready artifacts and repeatable reference architectures for regulated customers.
- Partnered with PM/R&D on cloud-inline protocol anomaly detection at Black Hat & DEFCON NOCs, helping identify 12,000 new signatures. FY22 attainment: 83%, AMS West Cloud Delivered Security Service (CDSS) champion.
Inside Systems Engineer 1
FEB 2021 — OCT 2021
AMS Commercial
- Led technical pre-sales across a 10-state territory for NGFW and cloud-delivered security services.
- Shipped enablement contributions via GitHub (e.g., IronSkillet/SLI) and mentored SE Academy cohorts to expand organizational capability and readiness.
- CloudGenix Jedi #16 (top 20 to complete training / homelab deployment prior to acquisition completion). FY21 attainment: 72%.
Associate Systems Engineer
FEB 2020 — FEB 2021
AMS SE Academy
- Inaugural SE Academy cohort: completed intensive portfolio training, certifications, and field rotations across market segments and verticals.
- Built hands-on labs and reference architectures (AWS LocalStack). Delivered customer-facing technical presentations and demonstrations under mentorship.
education
Remote • Denver, CO
M.S. Computer Science
AUG 2025 — Present
- Concentration in AI and Cybersecurity.
Cambridge, UK
Research Fellowship
JUL 2023 — SEP 2023
- An attempt to quantify the increase in adversary efficacy in relation to cybersecurity compliance frameworks (ISO27001, NIST CSF, SOC2, etc) to assign fault to the frameworks, the policymakers, and/or the adversaries themselves. (1)
- Activities: Ely Tigers Rugby Club.
Boulder, CO
B.A. Computer Science
AUG 2014 — AUG 2019
- Activities: Men's Rugby (President), Timmy Global Health, Student Mobilization aka StuMo.
other
Denver, CO
Member, Board of Trustees
2025 — Present
- Oversee governance and financial stewardship: budgets, reserves, contracts, and board decisions to protect homeowners and property value.
- Manage vendor performance and project delivery (maintenance, repairs, compliance).
- Handle homeowner communications and risk items (policies, violations, insurance considerations), reducing friction and keeping the community informed.
Denver, CO
President, Men's Team
2022 — 2026
- Led club operations end-to-end (budget, scheduling, league coordination, vendors), keeping the team funded, compliant, and game-ready.
- Drove player recruitment/retention and improved team logistics (communications, travel, events), increasing consistency and participation.
- Represented the club with league, refs, sponsors, and community partners; resolved issues fast and kept stakeholders aligned.
skills
AI Standards & Policy Strategy
Agentic AI Trust & Identity
Internet Standards / RFC Development
Digital Identity & Decentralized Discovery
Technical Product Strategy
DNS / DHCP / IPAM (DDI)
Protective DNS Security (RPZ, DNSSEC)
Threat Intelligence & Detection Engineering
Network & Security Architecture
Cloud Security (AWS / Azure / GCP)
Hybrid Cloud Networking
SASE / SD-WAN
Identity & Access Management (IAM)
Security Strategy & Governance
Security Operations & Incident Response
Automation / Scripting (Python, Bash)
Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
AI Strategy & Applied Governance