Sam Gardner
I'm a Systems Thinker
About
IT Engineer & Systems Thinker based in Denver, CO.
Me and my golden retriever, Rudy
IT Engineer & Systems Thinker.
IT professional running the show at a K-8 school in Denver, where "the show" means everything from the firewall to the faculty laptop that won't connect to the projector five minutes before class. I keep the lights on for a school full of kids and the educators who learn alongside them. Before IT I spent five years managing airline operations, which taught me that systems fail, people adapt, and the goal is always to minimize how much the second thing has to compensate for the first. I work best in environments where technology exists to serve people, not the other way around.
Certifications
Industry-recognized credentials in IT infrastructure and security.
Skills & Tools
Technologies and platforms I work with regularly.
Cloud & Infrastructure
Networking
Systems
Security
Endpoint & Device Management
Tools & Platforms
Resume
IT engineer with a background in high-pressure operations management, focused on infrastructure that serves people and systems that don't need babysitting.
Professional Experience
IT Engineer
Feb 2024 – Present
Alerio Technology Group, Denver, CO
- Serve as sole embedded IT engineer for a private K-8 school, owning end-to-end IT operations across 120 staff including infrastructure, endpoints, security, and end-user support
- Manage and maintain multi-building network infrastructure including Sophos firewall, UniFi switching and wireless, VLAN segmentation, VoIP (FreePBX/Grandstream), and Starlink WAN failover
- Led full email platform migration from Outlook to Google Workspace, coordinating stakeholder communication, staff training, and cutover logistics across the full staff
- Architect and maintain virtualization, backup, and disaster recovery solutions using Hyper-V and Veeam
- Develop infrastructure proposals and multi-year capital planning for network hardware refreshes, balancing operational continuity with budget constraints
Frontier Airlines
Oct 2018 – Jan 2024
Denver, CO
Crew Scheduling Manager — Feb 2022 – Jan 2024
- Led a team of 35–40 employees during a period of rapid post-COVID expansion, helping scale daily departures from ~300 to 600+ while building out the department's operational leadership structure
- Identified, promoted, and directly mentored frontline employees into supervisory roles, owning their development from individual contributor to team lead
- Served as the operational last line of defense within the airline's operations center, managing FAR and contractual compliance, crew continuity, and real-time irregular operations response
Crew Scheduling Supervisor — Mar 2021 – Feb 2022
- Acted as shift lead for the crew scheduling operation, serving as direct supervisor for frontline schedulers and primary point of contact for real-time operational decisions
- Responsible for coaching, counseling, and day-to-day development of frontline scheduling staff, including performance conversations and corrective action
Crew Scheduling Coordinator — May 2019 – Mar 2021
- Operated on the airline's operational bridge coordinating crew scheduling with maintenance control, aircraft routing, customer service, and SOC in real time
- Oversaw frontline schedulers through delegation of recrews and time-sensitive tasks; served as trainer and mentor for newly hired staff
Crew Scheduler — Oct 2018 – May 2019
- Rotated across pilot and flight attendant scheduling functions including current-day crew support, reserve administration, and trip transactions
- Took initiative to learn beyond the scheduler role by working alongside crew coordinators during live operations, supporting a quick progression to Coordinator
Education
Aviation Management
2013 – 2017
Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, CO
Projects
Infrastructure projects and side builds worth talking about.
Homelab
A personal homelab built on dedicated hardware, designed to mirror real infrastructure patterns. Running Proxmox across multiple nodes with VLAN segmentation, dedicated subnets per service tier, Technitium DNS with conditional forwarding, Nginx Proxy Manager for reverse proxy, and Authentik for authentication. Used as a sandbox for testing, learning, and running self-hosted services with production-level discipline around uptime, backup, and security.
Cloud Resume
This site. An adaptation of Forrest Brazeal's Cloud Resume Challenge — static frontend on Hostinger, serverless AWS backend (Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB) powering the visitor counter, and GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines for both frontend and backend. Built with AI assistance.
Applied.
A job application tracker. Full-stack web app with a React + TypeScript frontend, Supabase backend, and GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline deployed to Hostinger. Demo version coming soon.
What I Do
The four areas where I spend most of my time and do my best work.
Infrastructure & Networking
Building and maintaining networks that stay up, segment properly, and fail over gracefully. From firewall policy to VLAN design to the moment the primary WAN goes down at 8am.
Systems & Endpoints
Keeping the machines people depend on managed, patched, and out of their way. The goal is always that IT is invisible until someone needs it.
IT Strategy & Planning
Translating business needs into infrastructure decisions. Capital planning, vendor evaluation, multi-year roadmaps, and making sure the people writing the checks understand what they're actually buying.
Self-Hosted & Homelab
Running production-like infrastructure at home because the best way to learn is to break things on your own hardware first.
Get In Touch
Open to new opportunities and conversations about infrastructure, systems, or anything IT.