justin dean

CTO and CIO at Weedmaps (NASDAQ: MAPS)

Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

Leading the amazing 300+ person Engineering, Product, Design and Technology org at Weedmaps to build and scale our products, software and underlying platform for the rapidly emerging cannabis industry serving 6M+ users with 12,000+ customer listings. Our team is comprised of folks from great tech shops such as Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, Microsoft, IBM, SpaceX, Google, Ticketmaster, Facebook combined with talent from within the cannabis industry. We are solving problems at scale for e-commerce, logistics, b2c and b2b marketplaces and content delivery specific to cannabis in a highly regulated landscape. Our mission is to not only build a world-class business and technical platform for the entire cannabis industry to thrive, but also advocate for the legalization and normalization of cannabis globally. If you are interested in joining a truly mission based company to help define an industry as well as fighting to restore our basic civil liberties, give me a shout.

Weedmaps

Chief Technology Officer / Chief Information Officer

As SVP, Technology, I led the technology and cultural transformation up-leveling the software delivery capabilities of the global product and technology teams totaling 1200 people distributed across 14 locations in 5 countries. From the ground up we transitioned Ticketmaster into a modern, fast moving, software delivery company with the speed and agility to outpace the competition which has led to an amazing pace of product innovations and ultimately to consistent double digit quarterly earnings growth.

In this role I have the unique and exciting responsibility of building and leading the teams that shape the future of the foundational technology platform that powers the vast Ticketmaster product portfolio and business.  My org's mission is to create leverage for our 1200+ product and tech team members by delivering world-class public and private cloud infrastructure platforms and continually evolving our developer productivity tools, platforms and pipelines to enable our teams to deliver their software to market safe, secure, fast and frictionless.  The Ticketmaster ecosystem is one of the most unique, challenging and exciting environments to work in made up 22,000+ systems. The large Consumer and Client SaaS portfolio combined with the notorious web-scale challenges of selling major high demand events on <a href="http://ticketmaster.com">ticketmaster.com</a> means our organization is responsible for solving some of the world's most complicated technical problems.

Directly led an org of 225 employees and the following teams:
Hybrid Public & Private Cloud Engineering
Kubernetes Engineering
Global Network Engineering
Systems Engineering, SRE, Devops
Developer Platform Engineering
Global Datacenters
Database Engineering
Technical Solutions Architecture
Incident Management & NOC
Contact Center Tech
Technical Security
Product Development for over 30 mature stage apps

Ticketmaster

Senior Vice President, Technology & Head of Platform

As Vice President, Global Infrastructure and Head of Technical Operations at Connexity (formerly Shopzilla / Bizrate) I managed all aspects of the Shopzilla infrastructure, datacenters, public and private cloud deployments and manage the teams that are responsible for delivering these services at scale (thousands of servers) to the company including:

Cloud Migrations and Operations (AWS, Joyent, Private OpenVZ / Cloudstack / Openstack)
Network Operations
Linux Systems Operations
SRE / Site Reliability Engineering
Devops / Configuration Management / App Integration / Hadoop Ops
Systems Engineering / Systems Architecture
Storage Operations
Internal IT
Datacenter Facilities Operations

While there are many disciplines that make up our operations team, we strive to foster a Devops culture that embraces working together to achieve common goals and ultimately deliver the best product and services to the company.  I am passionate about building high performance distributed/remote operations teams and place a high value on empowering and motivating engineers to achieve their goals and be excited about doing it along the way.

Shopzilla

VP, Global Infrastructure and Head of Techops

As a Senior Network Architect, contracted to Sempra Energy / SDGE, my role was to provide the following solutions and support in one of the most demanding infrastructures imaginable for a major power utility company.

- Provide network architecture, security, and support for SDG&E’s mission critical SCADA networks.
- Implemented Cisco CSS Content Services Switches and Cisco CSS SCA (Secure Content Accelerator) Switches to load balance web and application farms as well as provide SSL security acceleration.
- Provide network support for Sempra Energy’s corporate network to include Cisco 7513’s, Catalyst 6513’s, Catalyst 4006’s, and Pix Firewalls.
- Implemented routing protocols, such as OSPF and BGP, to provide a robust routing architecture for mission critical networks.
- Implemented Network Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) to provide real-time security monitoring, alerting, and logging.

Compuware

Senior Network Architect (CCIE Certified)

- Directly manage all Infrastructure departments and operational areas for B3 including:  Network Operations and Engineering, Systems Operations and Engineering, Database Operations and Engineering, Security Operations and Compliances, and Datacenter Operations.
- Provide all aspects of network engineering and hands-on network configuration, troubleshooting and support for the entire B3 Corp SaaS/ASP (Application Service Provider) network infrastructure, which is responsible for providing e-commerce hosting, online payment transaction processing for thousands of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Time Warner merchants.
- Provide all aspects of network engineering and hands-on network build-outs, configuration, troubleshooting and support for the entire B3 Corp Digital Media infrastructures.
- Strategically managed multi-million dollar IT budgets to effectively align IT projects to coincide with business goals and objectives.
- Successfully managed company wide initial compliance certification achievement of Visa CISP, MasterCard SDP and the credit card industry PCI security compliance for B3 Corp.
- Designed large-scale global Digital Media Asset Delivery infrastructure capable of delivering over 100 million secure encrypted .wma and .wmv Media files.
- Designed and built high-availability DRM (Digital Rights Management) infrastructure to support the download of over 140,000 encrypted Warner Music Group tracks.
- Designed and implemented a GSLB network solution to provide High-Availability by distributing load across multiple data centers.
- Designed and built the B3 Network Security Architecture to conform to financial services security standards, such as the VISA CISP, PCI (Payment Card Industries), and the MasterCard SDP programs.
- Acted in the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) role for all aspects related to company security.
- Responsible for the B3 Extranets and connectivity to all business partners, digital and physical warehouses and banks.

B3 Corp

VP, Information Technology

- Delivered Nation-wide Infrastructure for over 1000 Coldwell Banker, ERA, Century 21, O’Conner, Piper & Flynn, and various other Real Estate branch offices.
- Responsible for all design, implementation, security, and monitoring of entire nation-wide corporate network infrastructure, which includes 30 metro areas and over 1000 branch offices.
- Design and execute integrations for all new companies and offices acquired.
- Designed National Wan redundancy with BGP and IPSec Tunnels from remote Firewalls to central VPN Routers.
- Implemented ATM DS3 solution to provide local network for all So Cal frame-relay offices.
- Responsible for designing and implementing all Internet connectivity points nation-wide.
- Implemented Cisco Catalyst 6509 switches in conjunction with Nortel multilayer switches in a campus environment.
- Configured Cisco CSS 11000 series content switches for web server load balancing.
- Implemented a central network management point for all company routers and switches.
- Implemented ISDN with Dial-on-Demand routing as a Nation-wide fail-over solution.
- Redesigned Nation-wide Frame-Relay network, which saved NRT millions of dollars a year in monthly long-distance circuit charges.
- Built and automated configuration of core level Cisco 7507 routers, all distribution level Cisco routers, and provide standard templates for automating install of all access level Cisco routers.
- Implemented Voice over IP network between east and west coast offices using Cisco routers and QOS features to provide toll-bypass calling method.
- Provided solution for xDSL offices via Cisco routers with IPSec tunnels to a corporate Cisco VPN Router for all intra-company data traffic.
- Did National frame-relay provider migration project, which entire long-distance frame-relay network was migrated from with zero downtime.
- Maintained large Corporate Windows and Exchange Enterprise with over 200 servers and 4000 users.

Network Architect

- Provide LAN/WAN support for over 2500 users aboard Camp Pendleton as well as provide network support and security for deployed operations around the world.
- Provide documentation and detailed network topologies including network infrastructure, Windows NT and Exchange Enterprise, configuration procedures for network hardware and servers, and TCP/IP layouts.
- Implement, maintain and troubleshoot network backbone equipment including Cisco 2500, 4000, 4500, and 7000 series routers, Cisco Catalyst 5500 Switch, over 50 3Com 3300 switches, and all media types including 100baseTX, 100baseFX, and 10baseT.
- Configured Catalyst 5500 with ATM Lane Module to connect to Camp Pendleton Backbone ATM Lane Network.
- Responsible for the planning, operation, upgrading, and maintenance of over 40 Windows NT Servers.
- Designed and Implemented 25 Microsoft Exchange Servers in a LAN/WAN environment to provide 2500 users with worldwide messaging connectivity.
- Received National Award, while in Kuwait, for superior performance while serving as Project Manager, providing network support, implementing IIS and MS Exchange as a means of worldwide collaboration.
- Played a key role in the migration from 20 Banyan Vines Servers to 30 Windows NT and Exchange 5.5 Servers.
- Responsible for the planning, implementation, and maintenance of over 30 Windows NT Domain Controllers and Exchange Servers over various types of WAN links.
- Implemented DHCP, WINS, and unattended NT installations, which reduced network support man-hours by more than 50 percent.
- Designed and implemented IIS web servers, which streamlined information management and administrative tasks.
- Developed and taught many classes to advanced Network Administrators on Windows NT Server, Workstation, TCP/IP, Exchange 5.5, and various other networking subjects.

Justin Dean