Nic Williams
Sr Cybersecurity Engineer • Jr Technical Standards & Policy Strategist
Denver, CO
I build practical systems at the intersection of security, networking, and automation.
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 4 mos
Senior Solutions Architect II
OCT 2025 — Present
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, NANOG, DNS-OARC, 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
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 $M in new business ARR through pre-sales expansion motions. FY24 attainment: 113%, SA of the Quarter (Q3).
Senior Solutions Architect
APR 2024 — SEP 2024
AMS Commercial West
- In addition to previous responsibilities: served as Commercial SME for security and threat intelligence products. Curated, edited, and created content for SA technical newsletter to customers.
- Partnered with policy team to deliver compliance framework heatmap reports. Served as Palo Alto Networks SME for competitive testing analysis. Field-facing PM for health check and workstream automation softwares (linked below).
- Secured ~35% of AMS Commercial West ARR, delivered <$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
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 • 10 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
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
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