Donald Cravens
Information Technology Leadership
 
IT Strategy Direction – Design and Implementation - Infrastructure and Operations - Team Building
 

 
Senior IT engineer and manager with demonstrated ability to engage executive stakeholders and successfully design and implement complex projects including global multi-site infrastructure, enterprise wide applications, data center convergence, and cloud services. Proven leader with more than 25 years of experience managing IT staff and contractors to drive innovative solutions that address critical business requirements.

Currently function as lead engineer and Deputy Director for IT staff serving 25 departments and 1,000+ city employees within the San Francisco City and County General Services Agency.
 

 
Experience
 
IS Engineer - Principal
City and County of San Francisco
November 2001 - Present (22 Years) San Francisco, CA

Lead engineer and Deputy Director; technical authority, primary architect, and systems integrator in the implementation, maintenance, and troubleshooting of technology services. Manage quality of service agreements with internal clients, including Office of the Mayor, Medical Examiner, Animal Care and Control, County Clerk, Accounting, Real Estate Division, Central Shops, and the Office on Disability, etc. Regularly provide consulting to other City departments, including the Board of Supervisors, City Attorney, DTIS, Recorder/Assessor, DPW, and Controller, on both department and citywide IT projects.

Recommended IT strategies, policies, and procedures by evaluating organization outcomes, identifying problems, evaluating trends, and anticipating requirements. Maintained organization's effectiveness and efficiency by defining, delivering, and supporting strategic plans for implementing solutions. Maintained quality service by establishing and enforcing organization standards. Accomplished staff results by communicating job expectations, appraising job results, and enforcing systems, policies, and procedures.

Responsible for ongoing design and support for network and communications, security, resilience, server architecture, OS (Windows NT to 2022, Win7 to Windows11, VMware, Linux), and applications (Office 365, L-1 Identity Solutions, Assetworks FA Suite, Forensic Advantage, Chameleon, Pro-Watch, Avigilon, and more), as well as the physical and logical components required to integrate with the San Francisco-wide network.
 
IS Operations Manager
Asera, Inc.
August 1999 - November 2001 (2 Years 2 Months) Belmont, CA

Reported to the Vice President of Information Services; recruited and lead a team of 12 employees and 4 full time contractors.

Drove IT design and budget management for software development and solution hosting startup through period of aggressive growth, including enterprise-wide applications, vendor management, global site planning, budget forecasting and services support.

Responsibilities included: global Nortel voice & Frame Relay WAN with redundancies on each continent (London, Bangalore, Belmont), LAN management including Cisco core and edge switches, application support in a high-availability e-commerce environment (Exchange, SQL Server, Solaris NIS and app dev environment, multi-site Clear Case source code control, Windows NT, Oracle, BEA Weblogic, Entrust GetAccess, and Asera’s eBusiness OS).
 
Senior Systems Engineer
Computown
October 1998 - July 1999 (10 Months) San Francisco, CA

Lead engineer for Computown's consulting and services business. Responsibilities included pre-sales consulting, analysis of customer environments, hands on design, implementation and support of customer solutions, and design and implementation of Computown’s corporate systems. Provided guidance to Computown colleagues on design and implementation of 100+ small-to-medium customer networks, Microsoft BackOffice components, and integration of 3rd party software for Computown’s diverse customer base.
 
Senior Systems Engineer
Desktop Products
December 1996 - October 1998 (1 Year 11 Months) Emeryville, CA

Systems engineer for Desktop Products consulting and services organization. Responsibilities included pre-sales consulting, analysis of customer environments, hands on design, implementation, and support of customer solutions, and design and implementation of Desktop Products corporate systems.
 
Senior Engineer
MCI Worldcom
1994 - 1996 (2 years) Wichita, KS & Austin TX

Systems engineer in the corporate-wide initiative to create a single telephony-enabled application and platform for use in 26 sales and customer service call centers. Supported the design, documentation, and implementation of systems for use in the pilot program, standard sales reporting tool, and full call center platform.
 

 
Traditional Education
1988 - 1990 The Wichita State University Wichita, KS
Two years undergraduate study with degree focus in Computer Information Systems
 

 
Professional Education
Supporting Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
Supporting Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
Supporting Microsoft Systems Management Server 1.1
Microsoft Web Site Essentials
Mastering Computers IIS4.0 CertTrack
Core Technologies of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0
Implementing a Database Design on Microsoft SQL Server 6.5