Resume

Complete professional experience and qualifications.

Damien Smrt

AWS Certified (7x) | GitHub Advanced Security

Principal / Staff Platform Engineer

Senior engineering leader with 18+ years architecting secure, scalable AWS systems and 17+ years in Linux environments. Specializes in platform engineering, DevSecOps enablement, identity & API security, and enterprise CI/CD standardization.

Proven ability to influence cross-organization engineering practices, establish secure delivery patterns, and design reusable systems that accelerate development velocity while improving compliance and reliability.

Strategic Impact Areas

  • → Enterprise Platform Architecture
  • → DevSecOps & Secure SDLC Enablement
  • → CI/CD Standardization (GitHub Actions, Concourse)
  • → GitOps Patterns & Infrastructure as Code
  • → Expertise in Authentication and Authorization Integrations and Implementations (OAuth2 and SAML)
  • → Event-Driven & Serverless Systems
  • → DynamoDB Data Modeling & Access Patterns
  • → Multi-Tenant SaaS Architecture
  • → Developer Experience & Tooling
  • → Organizational Security Posture Improvement

Professional Experience

Cigna / HCSC

March 2023 – Present

Senior Software Engineer – Platform Engineering

Enterprise healthcare engineering organization.

Principal-Level Contributions

Enterprise GitOps Authentication Framework
  • Architected and implemented standardized machine-to-machine authentication pattern using AWS API Gateway and GitOps workflows.
  • Enabled secure, repeatable internal API consumption across multiple engineering teams.
  • Reduced duplication of auth implementations and improved security consistency.
Organization-Wide CI/CD Platform Standardization
  • Designed and built shared GitHub Actions libraries for Terraform deployments, security scanning (Checkov), and AWS SecurityHub integrations.
  • Built and published a standardized base Docker container for GitHub Actions runners used organization-wide.
  • Elevated CI/CD reliability, security posture, and pipeline performance.
DevSecOps & Security Enablement
  • Integrated automated infrastructure security scanning into pull request workflows.
  • Advocated and implemented GitHub Advanced Security practices.
  • Influenced broader DevOps modernization initiatives across teams.
Reusable Engineering Libraries
  • Designed and published internal Python SDKs to standardize DynamoDB access patterns and REST API integrations.
  • Reduced code duplication and improved maintainability across services.
Architectural Leadership
  • Guided best practices for API authentication & authorization, DynamoDB modeling strategies, Infrastructure-as-Code structure, and secure deployment workflows.
  • Acted as cross-team advisor for AWS architecture optimization.

TekSystems (Supporting Comcast)

September 2022 – March 2023

Cloud Engineer III

  • Led CI/CD implementation using Concourse CI for IoT microservices.
  • Designed AWS infrastructure using Terraform and CloudFormation.
  • Directed deployment strategies for containerized and serverless services.
  • Identified and remediated vulnerabilities in EC2, Docker, and Lambda workloads.
  • Provided architectural guidance on AWS cloud best practices.

Flipbox Digital

March 2015 – September 2022

Senior Software Engineer & DevOps Lead

Led cloud architecture and DevOps modernization for SaaS and enterprise client systems.

Notable Impact

  • Authored open-source SAML Identity & Service Provider plugins (100k+ installs).
  • Designed multi-tenant authentication & authorization frameworks for SaaS platforms.
  • Built event-driven serverless data pipelines and data warehousing systems.
  • Created custom AWS CDK construct libraries to standardize provisioning.
  • Migrated legacy hosting environments to AWS, improving uptime and scalability.
  • Designed centralized logging, metrics, and alerting platforms.
  • Built and maintained public Docker images used by external developers.

Early Career

Charter Communications (TekSystems) – Data Services Consultant

Indaba Group – Senior Lead Developer

ToolKing.com – Lead Developer

Callaway Golf – Engineer Associate

Focused on ETL systems, AWS adoption, ecommerce infrastructure, GPS data automation, and large-scale system scripting.

Certifications

  • 7x AWS Certifications (Solutions Architect, Developer, DevOps Engineer, and related)
  • GitHub Advanced Security

Community Leadership

Organizer – ServerlessDays Denver

  • Coordinate speakers and sponsorships
  • Foster regional cloud engineering community
  • Advocate serverless and modern cloud patterns

Technical Stack

AWS (API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB, ECS, ECR, IAM, SecurityHub) Terraform, AWS CDK, CloudFormation GitHub Actions, Concourse CI Docker Python, TypeScript, Golang Linux, Bash SAML, OAuth2, OIDC