Career Profile

Below is a brief summary of the below paragraphs.

  • Close to 15 years of experience in multi-site companies
  • Alignment with business strategies and goals
  • Encourage the exchange of experience and knowledge
  • Help team to focus on interesting and valuable tasks / projects
  • Ability to relate to others, customer oriented, open-minded and creative thinking
  • Some of my key skills: independent, team work, efficient, reliable, honest
  • IT generalist with a wide scope of skills and interests

After over ten years at various positions in information technology, operating IT infrastructures, leading IT projects and providing support, I have evolved to team lead. My latest focus is to develop further management skills and to reach that goal, I have started the brevet fédéral de gestion d’équipe (Swiss federal patent of team lead) in April 2023.

I am a sociable person with good interpersonal skills, which I put to good use for external and internal relationships. People are happy to have me as a professional partner for projects, tasks and general operations.

My motivation stems from the following:

  1. What I like best, is developing personal skills, be it technical or interpersonal.
  2. What I do best is improving a team’s efficiency by helping implementing new collaboration methods.

It is always with great pleasure that I use my different language skills, be it with users or partners. I left out Spanish, which I only gabble a little.

Some of my key technical skills include learning about new technologies, scripting in various languages and implementing system software.

My responsibilities usually include coordinating, various internal and external partners, creating simple and helpful documentation, follow change and transmit know-how to other teams.

Everybody has her/his own set of skills, so it is important to me to be able to convey technical matters in a comprehensive manner to non-technical people and to further each person’s competencies.

I work independently and assume responsibility for my decisions, I take initiatives and envision the bigger picture.

Experiences

Team Leader Operations & Support Suisse Romande

2022 - Present
BNC AG, Yverdon-les-Bains

In this role, I was and am able to hire people for the team myself.

My day-to-day include helping my team to have the tools and knowledge they need, accompany and coordinate tasks for managed services customers, plan out of business hours interventions, periodical review of staff members, planning technical courses for staff members, participate in management meetings with CEO and other team leaders and service managers and much more.

I’m also helping in operating, manageing and maintaining our managed services platforms, which includes adding new solutions, plan interventions and communicate with customers.

Our recent additions include:

  • a new config backup server based on Unimus.net
  • a new internal Gitlab server to centralize script and configs
  • a new automation server to build and centralize more and better automation for our managed services customers.

Operations & Support Engineer

2021 - 2022 (1 year)
BNC AG, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne (before the move to Yverdon-les-Bains)

This position was the start of a new challenge for me: working at a service company. Until now, I have only been working at internal IT departments.

My responsibilities included dispatching incidents, service requests and change requests, working on analysis and troubleshooting of incidents, implementing change requests in networking and security areas of managed services and support customers.

My additional contributions: from early on, I was able to help improve our ticketing system so that it becomes more efficient to work with, improving processes and documention. From the start, I also positioned myself as an internal IT helper which allowed me to implement FSLogix for our internal jump servers based on VMware Horizon View.

IT Technical Lead and Team Lead

2021 (7 months)
Conforama Suisse SA, Bussigny

Swiss national company with 22 stores and 6 warehouses.

  • sysadmin team lead to improve organisation for increased efficiency
  • technical project management and implementation
  • networking with Aruba products and Checkpoint Firewall
  • management of cloud computing (OVH, Azure)

Citrix ICT systems engineer

2018 - 2020 (2.5 years)
Unilabs laboratoires d’analyses médicales, Coppet

Swiss national wide company which provides administrative and operational services to a number of laboratories and sampling sites.

  • technical project management
  • manage, maintain and evolve Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop farm, including its hardware
  • virtualize lab software with Citrix XenApp
  • Recently migrated XenApp hosting from XenServer to VMware 6.7
  • collaborating with other IT teams (Service Desk, Applications, Interfaces, Project, etc. in D-CH, F-CH and I-CH)

Information Services Consultant

2015 - 2018 (3 years)
McDonald's Suisse Management Services Sàrl, Crissier

Swiss national wide company which provides administrative and operational services to 160+ restaurants.

  • technical project management of restaurant solutions
  • proprietary restaurant back office solutions management for Swiss market
  • collaborating with Global IS department for multi-national project implementations in Swiss market
  • collaborating with Service Desk in Hungary and India, including knowledge transfer
  • driving multiple partners for integration, deployment and troubleshooting

Personal break and intermittent IT job

2012 - 2014 (3 years)
the world

During this time, I left first for Mozambique where I learned how to be a proficient PADI divemaster. I continued with traveling most of the countries in southern Africa. During the travelling period, I used land-based local transportation exclusively, which put me in some interesting situations.

I returned to Switzerland to volunteer at Paléo Festival for the whole set-up and tear-down, which took about 3 months all in all.

After this I worked a year for ATI Stellram as an IT Helpdesk Operator. The company was in the process of being aquired by Kennametal.

The last phase of my personal break was completing my PADI education with the Open Water Scuba Instructor in Costa Rica. From where I jumped over to the Dominican Republic for a stunt at the job and then over to Cambodia. There I discovered South East Asia using local transportation for a period of about 6 months.

Operations & Support Engineer

2021 - 2022 (1 year)
BNC AG, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne (before the move to Yverdon-les-Bains)

IT Manager ad interim

2012 (4 months)
Manpower SA, Genève

Swiss franchise of the renowned international staffing company;
400 users and 60 sites across Switzerland, working as a member of its IT team which covers all sites.

During the time it took to hire a new and trained IT manager, which would become the IT Director (not being part of finance department anymore), I was able to take this responsibility.

Included in my duties were:

  • leading of IT related projects
  • leading of IT team of 4 people
  • management of external service providers

IT Systems Engineer

2006 - 2012
Manpower SA, Genève

This is the position where I was able to evolve from a student to a skilled professional. My team leader was great at entrusting me interesting tasks and projects and we had similar ways of thinking and operating the service.

My duties included:

  • collaboration with external service providers
  • server installation and management
  • server virtualisation
  • storage management (HP EVA 4400)
  • domain and e-mail systems management
  • SharePoint installation and management
  • database installation and management
  • desktop imaging and management
  • software packages creation and deployment
  • network management
  • helpdesk support level 2 & 3
  • patch deployment
  • anti-virus and threat management
  • multifunctional printers management

IT technical support

2005 - 2006 (1 year)
Performance System Software SA, Chêne-Bourg

Small company selling and providing support on software for Windows and maintenance contracts on general IT support.

  • helpdesk support level 1 & 2 for customers
  • on-site support
  • on-site product installation
  • installing Debian webserver for company

Projects

These are some projects I was able to accomplish.

Implementing and follow-up of an on-going training plan for the Operations & Support team @ BNC - During my job interview, I was told I would be able to benefit from vendor trainings to help me get up on speed with the many different technologies we are implementing and managing for managed services and support customers. The reality was slightly different: after a couple of months I was dropped into dispatching and incident resolution without prior training. I was able to setup a training plan (customized for each team member), which is aligned with our business needs at the moment and in a projected mid-term future. Out newly hired staff now start with vendor trainings and certifications in addition to the internal training.
Re-design the organization and operations of the Operations & Support team @ BNC - When I started at BNC, the dispatcher did everything by himself from creating the ticket to working towards its resolution or reassigning it to other teams. For this job I reviewed and updated processes, workflow diagrams and guidelines. At the end of this project, the dispatcher had different tasks which include: - Open tickets from the monitoring system, the customers and the vendors (vulnerabilities); - Have a good overview of current issues and help identify recurring issues. - Review and cleanup of old problems still active in the monitoring system;
Migration of Citrix hosting from XenServer to VMware @ Unilabs - Participate in VMware ESX preparation, configure Citrix hosting for VMware, move all existing master images from XenServer to VMware, create new machine catalogs for VMware and seamlessly move users to the VMware hosted worker machines.
Full Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment @ Unilabs - At Unilabs, the production environment was fully in place. All I needed to do was create and use strict processes. But for the pre-production environment, what was available was obsolete and not working. The tasks for this included the following: • Set up Citrix Delivery Controllers; • Set up Citrix ADC Load Balancers; • Set up Citrix ADC Access Gateway; • Create master machines; • Deploy applications for testing purposes.
Windows 7 replacement for Windows 2003 and Windows XP back office devices @ McDonald's - Working towards a new solution with SCCM software deployments and minimal manual intervention. Redefinition of strategies like user document location. Scripted an almost completely automated Windows 7 image deployment to remote locations using Powershell. This project needed careful planning with the operations and the local restaurant teams.
Designing new Windows 7 virtual machine for restaurant management for the Swiss market @ McDonald’s - Design and implement a solution for deploying Windows 7 virtual machines into restaurants in order to replace the previous solution. Part of the task: • Define and design a new set of GPO’s in the new domains (one for users and one for machines); • Create automated installation packages for deployment with SCCM; • Coordinate with partner for SCCM package deployments; • Design and implement a set of Powershell and Batch scripts to copy the Hyper-V VHD to the restaurant server, create the VM, start it and configure it.
Harmonizing restaurant management software versions @ McDonald’s - Driving an external partner to prepare and upgrade two restaurant management software to a single version of each software, also harmonizing their configuration and management. Part of task: • Specify requirements and managing external partner to their fulfilment; • Prepare and send communication to the franchisees and restaurants; • Prepare and drive the deployment of the upgrades.
Hardware replacement for time-punching device @ McDonald’s - Driving an external partner to build a new device and OS to replace current solution. Part of the task: • Specify requirements and managing external partner to their fulfilment; • Design and implement a Powershell script to configure the device on first start in restaurant; • Prepare and send communication to the franchisees and restaurants; • Prepare and drive the deployment of the new device to the restaurants.
VMware virtualisation infrastructure @ Manpower - Implementing, managing and growing of a virtualisation infrastructure in a SAN environment. After implementing a first draft with the help of a third-party provider, we quickly realized that the design would not be working on the long-term. After a SAN crash, we had to rebuild everything from scratch, project I led and implemented without external help.
Virtual desktop infrastructure @ Manpower - Implementing, managing and maintaining a VDI infrastructure with Citrix XenDesktop. For this project, we requested help from my previous employer, PSS SA, with whom we spent some time setting up the environment and first golden image. After that, I was able to operate the environment on my own.
Backup restructuring @ Manpower - Restructuring of a multiple tape drives and library backup to a disk backup and tape duplication system with a single tape library.
Security definition with GPOs @ Manpower - Redesigning security scopes for IT tasks in Active Directory for Helpdesk, Admins and specific tasks. The goal was to split Helpdesk from being domain admins and create standard users for all admin users (helpdesk and infrastructure team).
Desktop imaging system @ Manpower - Implementing an automated desktop imaging system with Linux and WinPE preboot images using Altiris Deployment Solutions in a multiple sites environment. With the help from a third-party provider, I set up my first image deployment automation solution. Once in place, the Helpdesk team members were able to deploy the latest image on workstations in all of the remote locations.

Education

Ingénieur HES en informatique (IT)

2001 - 2005
École d'ingénieurs du canton de Vaud, Yverdon

CFC en informatique

1999 - 2001
École Technique de Sainte-Croix (ETSC)

Following my diplôme de commerce, I didn’t really know in what direction I should go. Finally, it was decided I should start this school, which also started me into my independent life.

Diplôme de commerce ESC

1996 - 1999
Gymnase de Nyon

This cursus was a follow-up of studies instead of going for an apprenticeship.

Courses and Trainings

Citrix XenDesktop & XenApp Knowledge Transfer by 4net @ Unilabs

2018
4net AG

A few live session days with Roman from 4net and many phone calls helped me take over the operation of the Citrix Xen infrastructure.

Fire extinguishing training @ McDonald’s

2016
KAB Brandschutz

EFR instructor

2014
Go Pro Costa Rica, Costa Rica (323063)

PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor

2014
Go Pro Costa Rica, Costa Rica (323063)

PADI Divemaster

2013
Tofo Scuba, Mozambique (323063)

Spent 5 months in Mozambique to go from Open Water Scuba Diver to Divemaster.
During this time, I was able to do over 200 hundred dives in beautiful dive spots.

MS SQL: Configuring, Managing & Troubleshooting

2011
IT Training Academy, Geneva

Microsoft Exchange: Configuring, Managing & Troubleshooting

2010
IT Training Academy, Geneva

VMware Infrastructure 3: Install & Configure

2008
Magirus Academy, Geneva

Infrastructure virtuelle avec ESX et VirtualCenter

2006
Magirus Academy, Geneva

Skills & Proficiency

Planning, Coordination and Communication

Technical Project Lead

Team Management

Change Management

Python & PowerShell Scripting

Virtualization Systems Engineer with Citrix Xen Products

Active Directory and Group Policy Design, Implementation and Management

Windows 7 - 10 Automated Deployment

Virtualization Operations Engineer with VMware Horizon View

Network and Security Engineer

Code and Configuration Management with Git (GitHub and GitLab)

Linux Operations and Management