James La Vacca

Vice President of IT Operations / Chief Information Officer

About Me

Hello! As an IT Executive, I have over 26 years of demonstrated excellence in executive technology leadership for global institutions, including change management, operations leadership, and high-level project management. I come from a background in IT development and architecture, recruiting, and cross-functional team leadership. I am adept at motivating teams to exceed expectations in addition to expertise in continuously improving processes and reducing costs. I have a talent for supporting the bottom line and driving revenue through systematic quality improvements and on time, under budget project deliveries.

Contact Info

Email

[email protected]

Phone

+1 972-972-9985

Address

Rockwall, Texas, U.S.A

Professional Skills

Strategic IT and Operations Planning

Master

Vendor Relationship Development / Negotiations

Master

End-to-End Project Management

Expert

Team Management / Building

Expert

Cross-Functional Team Leadership

Master

CAPEX/OPEX Budget Leadership

Expert

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery

Expert

Multi-Cloud Operations

Master

Work Experience

Director of IT, Operations and Development (DevOps) at Tail Light and Bouncie

August, 2015 - Present

Guide core IT functions, including IT infrastructure, quality assurance, continuous process improvements, database administration, security, and workflow streamlining. Coordinate with C-level executives, manage development and operations teams across multiple product lines, and guide cloud/datacenter operations and improvements. Oversee validation of all release components, U/I validation, automation, testing, and general release management. Lead regulatory compliance for privacy and data security.

Architect at Match.com

January, 2014 - August, 2015

Managed the design and implementation of ITIL processes and procedures enterprise-wide, drove operations for internal and external IT business units, and led OPEX ($10M annual budget). Oversaw a $15M CAPEX budget, allocated resources, and developed storage infrastructure. Spearheaded virtualization rollout with VMware to reduce expenses and ensure high availability and functionality for multi-petabyte online SAN migrations. Collaborated with the Chief Information Officer (CIO) as a strategic planner in all fiscal and operational matters.

Director, Global Operations at Match.com

2011 - 2014

Strategically managed datacenter and IT services, including management of $11M OPEX and $8M CAPEX budgets, IT engineering, and cross-functional team leadership. Ensured reliable 24/7 support, continuous process improvements, and core designs for functionality across multiple devices. Led administration of over 3,500 physical servers, 1,900 virtual servers, 30 Storage Devices, and 50 network devices. Excelled as the operational and technical resource for all M&A activities, including the performance of pre-purchase due diligence, evaluation and merger (onboarding) the datacenters of recently procured companies, and resource integration into group datacenters.

References

Jeff Brayshaw

IT Consultant

I was constantly impressed with his diligence, effectiveness, insight, and ability to make a cohesive team from multiple departments. As a Test Engineer I was potentially the bearer of bad news. Under James’s leadership we worked through issues, and for the first time in the company history created a DevOps Team. His professionalism and leadership is well known in the company, managing the IT Infrastructure that seamlessly integrates business needs and resolves challenges from developers. I strongly recommend James to your company, as he has demonstrated how to build DevOps team from the ground up and how to migrate a company’s culture to continuously improve.

Geoffrey Alexander

Technologist

I’ve had to pleasure of working with James La Vacca for the last 12 years, and in that time he has proven time and again that he is result oriented in both managing the direction of a team as well as able to step in and make the technical changes required to complete a goal. James has the innate ability to see through much of the obstructions in completing a task and is skilled at coming to a simple, yet concise solution to meet the goals set for him and his teams. He has worn many hats within the organization while I’ve worked with him and each new role were considered a challenge that he would meet and exceed expectations on. James has been responsible for many large data centers, revenue streams and business critical systems and functions and in each he’s excelled at bringing them into a structured, supportable system. He is just as confident a technologist as he is a leader, able to get his hands fully into technology as well as direct others to support them. James has also been key in negotiating many contracts for technologies and services at substantially lower prices than even our larger VAR discounts.