Nikhil Bonthapally

IT OPERATIONS & INFRASTRUCTURE LEADERSHIP | SECURITY & COMPLIANCE | MICROSOFT 365 ENTERPRISE

Ashburn, Virginia · (571) 344-5462 · nikhil@vniks.com

Board Member, Cyber Grants Alliance

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PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

IT manager with 18 years of experience running and securing enterprise technology across federal contractor, managed services, and multi-site commercial environments. Currently holds full-lifecycle ownership of IT for a federal contractor, including a ~$400K annual budget, delivering 80 services across 13 service areas and 27 platforms, from end-user support and Microsoft 365 through security operations, compliance, and internal DevOps.

Combines hands-on technical depth with disciplined operations management: Microsoft 365, Entra ID, and Intune; Windows Server, Hyper-V, and VMware; Cisco Meraki, Cisco ASA, and Fortinet networking; SIEM, EDR, and STIG hardening; ISO/IEC 27001 and CMMC compliance; vendor, budget, and asset management; and business continuity. Has delivered more than $200K in documented savings across two employers. Currently completing IIT Madras's Professional Certificate Programme in Agentic AI and Applications (IITM Pravartak), expected January 2027.

CORE EXPERTISE

IT Operations & Service Delivery: Service catalog management · End-user support · Device lifecycle management · Asset management · IT process documentation · Knowledge-base development

Infrastructure & Cloud: Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune · Windows Server, Active Directory and Entra ID migration · Hyper-V and VMware · SAN and backup (Veeam) · LAN/WAN (EIGRP, OSPF, BGP, VLANs)

Security & Compliance: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · CMMC 2.0 Levels 1 and 2 · CMMC gap assessments · NIST SP 800-171 · SIEM and EDR · Application allowlisting · STIG hardening · Conditional access and MFA · Incident response

AI & Automation: Local LLMs on NVIDIA DGX Spark (Ollama) · Retrieval design over Microsoft 365 · Python for AI · LLMs, embeddings, and vector search (FAISS, ChromaDB)

Management: Budget ownership and cost reduction · Vendor management · Business continuity and disaster recovery · Team leadership and mentoring

SIGNATURE IMPACT

• Cost Reduction: Cut more than $200K in costs: over $100K a year in phone costs through a 30-site VoIP rollout, $50K+ by consolidating VMware onto Hyper-V, $30K by moving file server data to SharePoint, and about $20K a year by restructuring Microsoft 365 licensing.
• Full-Function IT Ownership: Delivers 80 IT services across 13 service areas and 27 platforms, on a ~$400K budget, for a federal contractor of approximately 100 employees.
• Certification Outcomes: Led the transition to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and kept the organization certified through every audit of his tenure, most recently with zero nonconformities; took the organization to CMMC Level 1 and was part of the team that earned C3PAO-certified CMMC Level 2 with zero findings.
• Enterprise Scale: Nine years supporting and securing a 500+ employee, 30+ location enterprise, including migrating 350 mailboxes to Office 365 and standardizing 15 locations on Cisco ASA firewalls.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

IT Manager (previously IT Lead), Unissant Inc. | Northern Virginia 05/2022 to present

Mandate. Owns information technology and information security for a federal contractor of approximately 100 employees, with a ~$400K annual technology budget (including the CMMC enclave) and one direct report. Received a company Spot Award for Operational Excellence (Q3 2022). Served under the CISO throughout the 2025 to 2026 CMMC Level 2 program and has held sole ownership of the function since mid-2026.

• Service Delivery: Delivers 80 services across 13 areas, including end-user support, Microsoft 365, network and infrastructure, security operations, compliance, internal DevOps, and audio-visual.
• Microsoft 365 & Identity: Supports 100 users; administers 218 mailboxes and 31 license types, cloud-only Entra ID, Intune, conditional access, and MFA.
• Endpoint Modernization: Moved every company laptop, 80+ in service and 20 spares, to Microsoft Entra ID join, scripted the move of 106 contractors, and retired on-premises Active Directory, leaving identity cloud-only. Rolled out company-wide MFA (2023) and replaced Symantec with EDR plus USB blocking (2022), now running Cynet XDR with a 24x7 SOC.
• Infrastructure Modernization: Personally built the move from 3 unsupported VMware ESXi hosts to 2 Hyper-V hosts running 8 VMs with zero unplanned downtime, retiring the standalone SAN for local storage with S3 backup and eliminating VMware licensing, saving at least $50K; led the emergency replacement of the 3 HQ core switches with UniFi (May 2026, $3,180 in hardware); replaced the Avaya PBX with Microsoft Teams Phone company-wide; moved asset management to self-hosted Snipe-IT (about $77 a year against commercial quotes of $24K and up), now tracking about 500 assets.
• Device Lifecycle: Governs devices from procurement through disposal, hardening every new and reissued endpoint to STIG baselines.
• Financial & Vendor Management: Owns the ~$400K budget and IT vendor relationships, with a cost baseline built from the general ledger; saved $30K in support and license costs by moving file server data to SharePoint, and cut annual Microsoft spend from $73.6K to $53.2K by restructuring 110 seats onto Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
• ISO/IEC 27001: Led the transition from ISO/IEC 27001:2013 to 2022, remapping all 93 Annex A controls to delivered services; the organization has passed every audit during his tenure, most recently with zero nonconformities. Cut penetration test exposure from 5 critical and 1 high findings (November 2024) to zero critical or high (October 2025, 67 hosts re-tested), after also leading remediation of the 2023 test findings.
• CMMC: Took the organization to CMMC Level 1. For CMMC Level 2, worked with the third party that built the 10-user CUI enclave, delivered the remaining implementation, and completed the documentation with the compliance director; certified by a C3PAO in April 2026 with zero findings (110 of 110 requirements).
• Security Operations: Migrated the firewalls from Fortinet to Cisco Meraki for FIPS-validated encryption; runs self-hosted SIEM, EDR, application allowlisting across 668 applications, protective DNS, and incident response.
• AI Enablement: Runs local LLMs on an NVIDIA DGX Spark through Ollama; building a CISO Assistant and a talent acquisition resume parser; leads the infrastructure for George Mason University's ChallengeX (September to November 2026), serving 60+ remote students.
• Business Continuity: Owns continuity and disaster recovery, including restore testing and immutable backup for collaboration platforms.
• Operational Documentation: Authored 14 published IT processes and 11 employee knowledge-base articles; built and operates two management dashboards.

Senior Network Engineer, ABC Imaging | Alexandria, VA 09/2016 to 05/2022

Mandate. Senior infrastructure engineer for a 500+ employee enterprise operating across 30+ locations, accountable for network operations, systems administration, and company-wide technology programs.

• Unified Communications: Led the 3CX VoIP rollout (2019 to 2022) across 30 sites, cutting phone costs by more than $100K a year, and trained staff on the new platform.
• Cloud Migration: Led the 2019 Office 365 migration of 350 mailboxes across 30+ US locations and offices in London and Dubai; administered Office 365 and Google Apps for Business.
• Perimeter Modernization: Led the Cisco ASA firewall rollout (2021 to 2022), standardizing 15 locations, and supported Fortinet and SonicWall platforms.
• Escalation Leadership: Served as the senior escalation point (Tier 3/4) for infrastructure, network, and user issues across all locations, and mentored junior engineers.
• Systems & Resilience: Administered Windows Server 2016/2019, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, FTP, and Linux; owned backup, restoration, and recovery for all VMware servers.
• Network Operations: Operated the multi-site LAN/WAN, including EIGRP, OSPF, and BGP routing and VLAN segmentation on Cisco switching.

Network Engineer / Backup Administrator, NetLogicDC (MSP) 03/2014 to 09/2016

• Client Delivery: Delivered end-to-end IT for 20+ client organizations, from help desk and on-site support to standardized server builds, NAS, monitoring, and ticketing.
• Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery: Designed and operated Veeam backup and disaster recovery for all managed clients, with GFS retention and archival to Amazon S3.
• Client Infrastructure: Built VMware HA/DRS and Microsoft failover clusters, led a client SAN migration, and migrated clients to Office 365 and Google Apps.

System Administrator, ABC Imaging 07/2011 to 03/2014

• Team & Vendor Leadership: Senior administrator guiding a team of three system administrators; managed all infrastructure, network, and telecom vendors.
• Windows Infrastructure: Designed and operated Windows Server infrastructure (2003 through 2012 R2) across 30 locations, including Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS/DHCP, file and print, DirectAccess, Terminal Services, and IIS.
• Data Center Build: Led the design and build of the colocation data center: 5 ESXi hosts running 30+ VMs, with vCenter, SAN, Veeam, and NAS backup.
• Messaging Migration: Migrated users from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013.
• Crisis Recovery: Following Hurricane Sandy's destruction of a New York client's offices, relocated server infrastructure, restored Active Directory and SAN, and deployed 50+ workstations in temporary space within weeks.

Earlier Roles

Backup Engineer, Idealstor (2010) · Tier 2 Technician, CPN Networks (2010 to 2011) · Jr. Systems Administrator, GSA Telework Center at George Mason University (2008 to 2010)

EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Professional Certificate Programme in Agentic AI and Applications, IITM Pravartak (Technology Innovation Hub of IIT Madras) · In progress, expected January 2027. Curriculum spans LLMs, embeddings and vector search, retrieval-augmented generation, multi-agent systems, agent evaluation, and responsible AI, with three IBM certificates on completion.
• M.S., Electrical Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
• B.E., Electronics and Communications Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India

BOARD SERVICE

• Board Member, Cyber Grants Alliance (01/2026 to present): Has performed 25 CMMC gap assessments for small and mid-sized businesses and advises members on their security programs.