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François-Xavier Cat

Staff Engineer, AI Platform Engineering · Azure · Platform Engineering · Infrastructure as Code · CI/CD · Automation

United States · lazywinadmin.com · linkedin.com/in/fxcat · github.com/lazywinadmin

Summary

Staff platform engineer with 19 years in infrastructure, the last 7 focused on Azure and Infrastructure as Code. At Ares I build the Terraform control plane, governance as code, and landing-zone guardrails other teams build on, and I now work on AI platform engineering. Microsoft MVP 2014 - 2022 and author of lazywinadmin.com.

Skills

  • Cloud and platform: Microsoft Azure, Azure Policy, Kubernetes (AKS), Docker, Helm, Databricks, Linux
  • Infrastructure as Code: Terraform / Terraform Cloud, ARM, Ansible, Packer
  • CI/CD: Azure DevOps, GitHub Enterprise / GitHub Actions, JFrog Artifactory
  • Languages: PowerShell, Python, Go
  • Security and observability: Chef InSpec, Splunk, Cribl

Experience

Ares Management

Remote, United States

Staff Engineer, AI Platform Engineering · Sep 2026 – Present

Staff Engineer, Cloud Engineering · Dec 2024 – Sep 2026

  • Built a Terraform control plane for vNets, Azure Firewall, Private DNS, vWAN and new-region core services
  • Delivered governance as code: Azure Policy, custom RBAC, landing-zone guardrails and auto-remediation
  • Authored reusable Terraform modules for networking, private endpoints, connectivity and SaaS
  • Managed Databricks as code: Unity Catalog, SCIM, serverless network policies and SAT hardening
  • Driving landing zones as code (in progress)
  • Trained Cloud engineers on Platform Engineering pipelines and modules

Staff Engineer, Platform Engineering · Dec 2023 – Dec 2024

  • Greenfield Infrastructure as Code, environments on demand and containerization
  • Self-hosted Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions agents on AKS
  • Policy as code with Terraform

Lead Engineer, Platform Engineering · Jan 2023 – Dec 2023

  • Terraform modules; migrated an on-premises application to AKS
  • Databricks Unity Catalog infrastructure

Lead Engineer, DevOps Engineering · Jun 2021 – Jan 2023

  • Migrated ARM templates to Terraform; AKS migration
  • Self-hosted build agents on VM Scale Sets (Packer, Ansible, Terraform)

Morgan Stanley

San Francisco Bay Area / Montreal

Cloud Engineer · Dec 2019 – May 2021

  • Landing zones as Infrastructure as Code, auto-remediation and security blueprints; on-call rotation
  • Terraform, ARM, Ansible, PowerShell, Python, Go, Azure DevOps

Systems Engineer · Jul 2018 – Dec 2019 · San Francisco Bay Area

  • Orchestrated Windows 10 deployment; Chef / DSC proof of concept
  • Windows containers on OpenShift
  • Ran monthly PowerShell workshops

Automation Specialist · Apr 2016 – Jul 2018 · Montreal

  • Automated Windows Server deployment via API; service catalog
  • PSScriptAnalyzer rules and Pester testing

WB Games Montreal

Senior System Administrator · Jun 2014 – Apr 2016

  • Infrastructure automation with System Center (SCCM, SCSM, SCORCH) and Cireson
  • Automated onboarding and offboarding; SQL cluster
  • Moved SCSM / SCORCH workloads to Azure

Domtar

Montreal

Infrastructure Administrator · Feb 2013 – Jun 2014

System Administrator · Jun 2009 – Feb 2013

  • Supported 800 Windows servers, 40 ESXi hosts and 25+ sites
  • Wrote a PowerShell VMware disaster-recovery script; upgraded to SCCM 2012 R2; SCORCH
  • Automated SOX audit reporting

Inovestor Inc.

Montreal

System Administrator · Aug 2007 – Jun 2009

  • Hyper-V P2V migration, Cisco VoIP, Google Apps migration

Earlier experience

Network Administrator

  • Supported servers, desktops, phones, databases, virtualization and backups; helpdesk and provider contracts
  • Started automating with VBScript and Monad (PowerShell) around 2006

Education

  • AEC, Computer Sciences: Network Security — ISI Montreal — 2005 – 2007
  • BTS, Network Administrator — CFAI Sifor Oise — 2002 – 2004

Certifications

  • Microsoft MVP Alumni — Microsoft — 2023
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) — Microsoft — 2022
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) — Microsoft — 2020
  • VMware Certified Professional 5 – Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV) — VMware — 2013
  • Previously held (expired): Azure Solutions Architect Expert (2022), DevOps Engineer Expert AZ-400 (2021), Azure Administrator Associate AZ-104 (2020)

Awards

Award Authority Year
Most Valuable Professional (Windows PowerShell; Cloud and Datacenter Management) Microsoft 2014 – 2022
SAPIEN MVP SAPIEN Technologies 2015
PowerShell Hero PowerShell.org 2014

Community

Languages

  • French — native
  • English — full professional proficiency