Jake Armstrong

Security & Cloud Architect

Download my resume

Education

M.S. Cybersecurity (Information Assurance, Cyber Operations)

B.S. in Digital Forensics

A.S. in Pre-Engineering

Certifications

Certified AI Agent Security Specialist

CISSP

Computer Forensics Certificate

AccessData Certified Examiner

AccessData Mobile Examiner

Languages

English (Native)
German (Fluent)

Interests

Climbing
Snowboarding
Wakeboarding
Mountain Biking
Photography
Videography
LEGO MOCs
Home Automation

Career Profile

I'm a security and cloud architect focused on the availability, integrity, and security of information in modern enterprise environments. I started in digital forensics, which gave me a useful habit: assuming every system will eventually be inspected, attacked, or both.

Today I lead IT and DevOps at Zonos, where I built the information security program that took our API platform through PCI-DSS and SOC 2. Previously I architected hybrid cloud infrastructure at SkyWest Airlines and led a full-stack IT team at Wilson Connectivity. I write about security and cloud architecture at blog.jakearmstrong.me.

Most recently I’ve been bringing AI — generative tools, agentic workflows, and the governance that should sit underneath them — into the security program and into how the team actually ships work.

AI & Emerging Tech

I treat AI tooling the way I treat any other system that touches our data: useful, accountable, and in scope for the security program. That means policy and tenant controls on the governance side, and hands-on adoption inside the engineering and operations workflows I own.

AI security & governance at Zonos. Authored acceptable-use, data-handling, and vendor-review guidance for generative AI tools used across engineering and operations; folded AI vendor risk into the existing SOC 2 evidence trail.
Certified AI Agent Security Specialist (Proofpoint, 2026). Coursework on prompt injection, agent tool-use abuse, supply-chain risk for model and plugin sources, and identity boundaries for autonomous agents.
Agentic tooling in daily practice. Operate Claude Code with MCP server integrations (GitHub, Atlassian, Linear, Datadog) as part of the infra, security, and IT workload — including authoring Terraform, runbooks, and policy that ship to production.
AI in the SDLC. AI-assisted code review on pull requests against cloud and CI/CD repos; AI-assisted log and alert triage to shorten the path from signal to root cause.

Experience

Head of Information Technology / DevOps Engineer

2021 — Present

Zonos · St. George, Utah

Built the company's information security program from scratch and led it through successful PCI-DSS and SOC 2 audits covering the full API platform.
Owned policy design, endpoint/MDM, network hardening, vulnerability management, and external penetration testing.
Authored and maintained cloud infrastructure in Terraform and CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions, shifting security testing left into the SDLC.
Established monitoring and SLO tracking for application uptime and performance; surfaced actionable reliability recommendations to engineering leadership.
Set the AI usage and vendor-review guidance for the company and folded AI tools into the SOC 2 evidence trail; standardized on agentic tooling (Claude Code, MCP) for infra, security, and IT workflows.

Systems Engineer

2018 — 2021

SkyWest Airlines · St. George, Utah

Operated a hybrid Azure + on-premises VMware/NetApp environment spanning multiple datacenters and WAN sites for a regional airline with thousands of employees.
Played a lead role in Office 365 and Azure migration, integrating SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services into existing enterprise workflows.
Administered Oracle, RHEL, and CentOS Linux fleets, F5 load balancers, and Cohesity backup infrastructure.

I.T. Supervisor / Project Manager

2013 — 2018

Wilson Connectivity · St. George, Utah

Led a team of 7 across networking, systems, support, database, DevOps, and security, serving a 250+ employee manufacturing company.
Drove migration to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Azure while modernizing on-premises architecture using Agile project planning.
Ran eDiscovery, penetration testing, network analysis, and file recovery using digital forensics skills; headed security initiatives protecting company IP and customer data.

Systems Administrator

2015 — 2016

Utah Tech University · St. George, Utah

Hardened campus systems and migrated SharePoint and Exchange workloads to the cloud.
Collaborated with a security audit team on ongoing penetration testing to identify and remediate vulnerabilities.

Key Achievements

PCI-DSS & SOC 2 Compliance — Designed and implemented Zonos' information security program from zero, taking the API platform through both audits.

CISSP — Earned the (ISC)² Certified Information Systems Security Professional credential (2025).

AI Security at Zonos — Stood up acceptable-use and vendor-review guidance for generative AI, earned the Proofpoint Certified AI Agent Security Specialist credential, and integrated agentic tooling (Claude Code, MCP) into day-to-day infra and security work.

M.S. in Cybersecurity — Master of Science in Cybersecurity with Information Assurance, emphasis in Cyber Operations, Southern Utah University (2025).

Hybrid Cloud at SkyWest — Helped architect and operate a hybrid Azure + on-premises VMware/NetApp environment across multiple datacenters for a regional airline.

IaC & CI/CD at Zonos — Built cloud infrastructure in Terraform and automation pipelines in GitHub Actions, embedding security testing throughout the SDLC.

Writing — Publishing field notes on security and cloud architecture at blog.jakearmstrong.me.