Principal Cloud Architect

Building Cloud Infrastructure for Enterprise Scale

David Cox — Principal Cloud Architect designing enterprise Azure platforms for regulated financial services and healthcare. Landing zones, hybrid network architecture, and Zero Trust governance, delivered as reusable infrastructure-as-code.

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David Cox - Principal Cloud Architect
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01

About

Architecting the Future of Enterprise IT

I'm a Principal Solutions Architect at Resolve Tech Solutions, designing and delivering enterprise cloud platforms across Azure, AWS, and multi-cloud for regulated financial services and healthcare organizations — most recently for PAM Health and EverBank.

My focus is Cloud Adoption Framework landing zones, hub-spoke and Virtual WAN / ExpressRoute network design, identity and Zero Trust governance, and reusable Bicep automation. I pair hands-on infrastructure-as-code with architecture governance through Azure Policy guardrails, design-review boards, and standardized intake.

That has meant a 440-VM data-center exit, a 27,336-user production migration, multi-region BCDR designs with sub-5-minute failover, and governed Azure AI Foundry platforms — all while sustaining FFIEC, SOX, and HIPAA compliance.

Cloud Architecture
CAF landing zones & Virtual WAN design
Security & Governance
Zero Trust, Azure Policy & FFIEC / HIPAA
Infrastructure as Code
Bicep automation & CI/CD delivery
Identity & Access
Entra ID, PIM & enterprise PKI
David Cox
02

Experience

April 2024 — Present

Principal Solutions Architect

Resolve Tech Solutions
  • Cut new Azure landing zone provisioning from 3–14 days of drift-prone ClickOps to 1–2 hours with zero drift by engineering 65 reusable, Policy-governed landing zones from hundreds of Bicep modules — now spanning several hundred subscriptions at 14 enterprise clients.
  • Architected a Rackspace-to-Azure migration for a national healthcare network covering 440 VMs, 13 SQL clusters, and multi-region ExpressRoute connectivity, delivered in a 4-week single cutover for 27,336 users and roughly $2.4M in annual MSP savings.
  • Designed secure hub-and-spoke Azure Virtual WAN connectivity with Palo Alto Cloud NGFW, dual ExpressRoute circuits per hub, and routing-intent traffic inspection, cutting over 8 live production spokes with no business interruption.
  • Built a 3-tier Azure AI Foundry platform with private-endpoint-only isolation, egress lockdown, and customer-managed keys, enabling enterprise AI adoption under strict banking and data-residency rules.
  • Reduced standing privileged accounts from 165 to 2 break-glass by architecting a PIM and PIM for Groups strategy with CISO-level approval gates, tiered role activations, and Splunk audit logging.
Azure Bicep Landing Zones Virtual WAN AI Foundry
December 2019 — April 2024

Senior Network Architect

Sterling Bank & Trust
  • Reported to the CIO, owning enterprise architecture and IT strategy for a publicly traded regional bank across 30 branches in a highly regulated environment.
  • Migrated 250 users from Citrix to AVD, improving uptime from 98.9% to 99.998% while reducing latency 25% and capex 60% via hybrid architecture, CAF, vWAN hubs, BGP, FSLogix, and ExpressRoute.
  • Cut the severity-weighted confirmed incident rate 27% over 12 months by designing a Zero Trust architecture spanning SD-WAN, FortiGate NGFW, Entra ID (MFA/PIM/SSO/JIT), CrowdStrike, Azure Policy, Intune, and Purview DLP.
  • Improved the bank's FFIEC Consumer Compliance rating from a 5 to a 2 by creating an architecture review board to validate every purchase and design against data governance, risk, and regulatory standards.
  • Built an intranet chatbot on Azure AI Foundry, Container Apps, and Cognitive Search that handled 400 daily queries, reducing ticket volume 61% and saving $120K annually.
AVD Zero Trust BCDR FFIEC Entra ID
February 2017 — January 2020

Director of Information Technology

LiquidVPN
  • Overhauled the company website and redesigned the user experience across mobile, Windows, and Mac, increasing quarterly sales 35% via OAuth authentication, REST API publishing, and an in-app payment gateway — while maintaining GDPR and PCI-DSS compliance.
  • Cut infrastructure setup time from hours to minutes by automating deployments with Terraform and Ansible, standardizing configurations and nearly eliminating human error.
  • Reduced operating expenses 20% and improved service availability past 99.9% by migrating on-prem Active Directory to a cloud-native architecture spanning AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.
  • Expanded global reach 35% and cut vendor onboarding 50% by localizing web and mobile into six languages and implementing a vendor-management and DLP framework.
Multi-Cloud Terraform DevOps Compliance
January 2012 — February 2017

Lead Network Engineer & Founder

LiquidVPN
  • Founded LiquidVPN and led all engineering and operations from inception through rapid growth to eventual acquisition, managing product development, network infrastructure, and a global team.
  • Launched a B2C SaaS VPN to 300K users across 110 countries with 60% YoY growth via multi-cloud architecture and encryption, earning Wired and CNET recognition.
  • Built and led a 10-person engineering team, reducing project delivery timelines 20% and lowering customer churn from 18% to 3% through feedback loops, bug bounties, and a CI/CD pipeline.
  • Achieved 99.99% uptime by devising a geo-redundant RADIUS solution replicated across four Azure regions for seamless worldwide load balancing and authentication.
Entrepreneurship SaaS Multi-Cloud Leadership
03

Certifications

AZ-140

Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty

Planning, delivering, and managing virtual desktop experiences and remote apps on Microsoft Azure

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AZ-700

Azure Network Engineer Associate

Designing, implementing, and maintaining Azure networking infrastructure, hybrid connectivity, and network security

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AZ-104

Azure Administrator Associate

Implementing, managing, and monitoring Azure environments including identity, governance, and compute

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AZ-900

Azure Fundamentals

Foundational knowledge of cloud concepts, core Azure services, plus Azure management and governance

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AI-900

Azure AI Fundamentals

AI concepts and Azure AI services for creating AI solutions in the Microsoft ecosystem

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04

Technical Expertise

Cloud Platform & Networking

Microsoft Azure
Landing Zones / CAF
Virtual WAN / ExpressRoute
Azure Virtual Desktop

Automation & Platform Engineering

Bicep / Infrastructure as Code
Azure DevOps / CI-CD
PowerShell / Python
Azure AI Foundry / OpenAI

Security & Governance

Entra ID / PIM
Zero Trust Architecture
Azure Policy / RBAC
FFIEC / SOX / HIPAA

Let's Build Something Great

Whether you're planning a cloud migration, need expert architecture guidance, or want to modernize your IT infrastructure, I'm here to help. Let's discuss how we can transform your technology landscape.

Location
Canton, Michigan, USA
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