Malik Merchant

 MALIK MERCHANT CERTIFIED CLOUD PROFESSIONAL & TRUSTED CYBER SECURITY ADVISER Technical Sales Leader with a solid reputation for building thought leadership with prospective and Enterprise customers by being a trusted and empathetic partner to enable growth and solve most critical business problems. Heavily focused on highly regulated FinServ and Digital Natives to deliver AI/ML innovation, Cybersecurity, and hyperscale technology by accelerating orginizations’ ability to digitally transform their business. Possess AI/ML and cloud security industry knowledge that evolves with current and emerging trends, as well as an ongoing understanding of key business and technological processes. ISC² Certified Cloud Security Professional, AWS Solutions Architect Associate and Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect. Key skills include FinOps, IaaS and PaaS sales, Regulated Workloads, Greenfield conversion, Product Development, Cloud Administrator & Architect,, Cross-Team Collaboration, Management Leadership, Pipeline Management, Forecasting, Training & Enablement, Compliance, TECHNICAL EXPERTISE Compute & Storage: GCP: Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, App Engine, Cloud SQL, Spanner, BigQuery, Bigtable, Datastore, Cloud Storage AI/ML: VertexAI, Model Garden, PaLM-2, OpenAI Containers/Virtualization: Docker, Kubernetes, Hyper-V Networking: TCP/IP, IPX, SNMP, HTTP, NETBIOS/NetBEUI, IPSEC, PPTP, VPC, Shared VPC, VPC Network Peering, SDN Programming: SQL, ASP .NET, SSRS, PowerShell, SSH Scripting Tools: Nmap, Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, SolarWinds Topology Mapper, Metasploit, Kubernetes Engine, Google Cloud Platform, Load Balancers Compliance Knowledge: HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, SOC, Customer Privity, CMAs & SLAs/SLEs, Global Regulations PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE CLOUD KEY ACCOUNT DIRECTOR - GOOGLE: Enterprise - 2021 to Present Began Cloud Journey as Customer Engineer in a fast-paced Digital Native environment and transitioned to Field Sales in the Enterprise segment. Promoted after 18 months to KAD, and currently manages the largest FinServ account in Enterprise segment, Central Territory. As the Account Lead, directly responsible for $50M+ quota which was exceeded in Y1 at 172% and Y2 tracking 155% by implementing go-to-market propositions and maintaining relationships (CEO & CXO’x) to influence direction and act as an advisor to the customer. Collaborate with sales, engineering, and marketing resources to provide input on current collateral materials and ideas on how to improve the Google Cloud Platform.. Duties also include working across Alphabet to develop thought leadership and One Google strategic partnerships, driving cloud commitments, source and lead multi-million dollar opportunities, increasing market presence, leading complex and politically charged deals with senior executives, Successes have included: Exceptional Impact: Sourced and leading a $150M opportunity for Google Cloud to build a strategic partnership customer which is considered a lighthouse customer in Financial Services. Leadership: Interim FSM for the Central Enterprise region for the last three months. Highest interviewer in our team influencing FSR, KAE, and KAD interviews 10x Impact: Increased Market Presence for GCP by onboarding a national AWS only partner NVisia to become certified on Google Cloud Platform. Strategic: Provisioned six products on GCP Marketplace to help drive revenue for customers. Lead Data Analytics Hub ingestion to further drive revenue for customers by sale of customer data. CEO & CXO’x Engagement: Accountability of ongoing C.O relationships and future sales growth across the accounts, by creating and driving innovative CxO sales engagement focused on achieving growth at scale FinOps SME for Central Cluster and have run 5+ workshops in the last 6 months. Considered key partner in problem solving by internal Google Leadership and CE Team ZERO TRUST PRIVILEGE ACCESS TECHNICAL LEADER - IBM: The Americas - 2018 to 2021 Transitioned to IBM 11 months after OEM agreement with Thycotic. As the Technical Lead for PAM, directly responsible for multi-million-dollar quotas helping potential customers understand, compare, and contrast PAM solutions. Partner with both North American and international sales leaders to improve product revenue and growth. From time of hire to current date, North America PAM sales reached $16M. Duties also include hiring and training sales engineers for the IBM North America SE team, technical support staff, consultants in specific needed area. Supervise 2 employees and oversee 12 sales engineers on the NA team. Successes have included: Earning the “Solution Engineer of the Quarter” for Q4 of 2020 out of all of IBM Security. Earning the “Client-Value Outstanding Technical Achievement” for Q2 of 2019. Assisting worldwide IBM leadership on the cybersecurity portfolio, increasing the quarterly pipeline. Being chosen as a Cyber Security Specialist for the Kuppingercole webinar “Privileged Access Management - the Focal Point for Your IAM Today.” Orchestrating a training program for team members, IBM Professional Services engineers, and Sales engineers that enhanced technical capabilities needed to increase productivity; Created web training video to enhance knowledge of end-users. Offering continuous support to IBM leadership such as assisting the Marketing team’s “Marketplace” webpages/design, creating “Enterprise” customer SOW’s for the Professional Services division, and often joining efforts with the Product Offering manager. Implementing SharePoint site as RFP/RFI repository which allowed for quicker response time. SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT - DELINEA (Washington, DC) - 2017 to 2018 Promoted after one year of employment to Solutions Architect covering North America. Prior to promotion, dedicated coverage for IL, WI, IN, MI, IA, MN, OH, TX. Delivered technical product presentations to prospective customers and effectively explained difficult technical terms to non-technical decision makers. As the technical lead for production evaluation prospects, planned and architected product implementation to meet customers’ goals. Collaborated with technical support for ticket handouts and escalated critical bugs to the Engineering team for resolution. Installed, configured, and customized the product for customers as well as tested early product releases (provided feedback for feature enhancements to product management). Offered post-sales technical support and assisted with technical questions. Wrote custom scripts for customers to extend the product beyond its out of the box capabilities. SENIOR CYBER SECURITY ANALYST - ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE (Oak Brook, IL) - 2016 to 2017 Responsible for the ongoing management of information security policies, procedures, and technical systems to maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all organizational healthcare information systems. Architected and implemented “Identity Access Management” solution in addition to managing 2 associates. Analyzed a wide range of company data to determine the most significant risks. Identified and resolved several IAM software deficiencies while architecting and implementing prior to production move, resulting in $79K savings. Established key risk indicators based on the cyber security framework along with a risk threshold appropriate to the organization. Thoroughly documented recommendations and presented to upper management for review. Created and instituted company-wide policies, procedures, and control measures aimed at minimizing risks. Ensured all measures complied with government regulatory requirements. SR. APPLICATIONS ANALYST/DBA - Shirley Ability Institute (Chicago, Illinois) - 2014 to 2017 Promoted after one year from Technical Application Analyst to Senior Technical Applications Analyst/DBA. Responsible for design, development, testing, deployment, administration, support, and ongoing maintenance for business and clinical information technology. Produced $8M+ in revenue >6 months while working with business support and clinical teams to elicit and validate requirements for the business and clinical applications and their interfaces. Administrator of Courion (Identity & Access Management Solution), BMC Remedy Action Request System (Level 2 & 3), and ADP Security (V.6). Conducted development/production integration testing for multiple applications including Cerner, Courion, etc. as well as Microsoft CRM management and SharePoint maintenance/security. Successfully implemented Data Models and Reports with Microsoft SQL 2012. Prior to position with Shirley Ability Institute Hospital, worked as a Level 2 Systems Specialist with Amerisourcebergen, a Project Manager/Technical Account Manager with Onshore Security, and a Sales Engineer at Derm.MD. EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Illinois Champaign 2009 CERTIFICATIONS: Certified Cloud Security Professional, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, AWS Solutions Architect – Associate, Certified Ethical Hacker, CCENT