Nick Sanders

Résumé

Nick Sanders — Network Engineering Leader

Network engineering leader with more than two decades of enterprise infrastructure experience, spanning fintech, legal, and mid-market organizations across the Dallas–Fort Worth region. I specialize in SD-WAN rollouts, campus and data center refresh, and zero-trust security integration — pairing deep hands-on engineering with the program management chops needed to land six- and seven-figure initiatives on schedule.

Currently consulting as Manager of Network Engineering at Baker Botts LLP through Kamis Pro. Previously led network engineering at Triumph Financial, where I owned the SD-WAN program across 350+ branch circuits and modernized the underlying Nexus 9K core.

I’m actively evaluating Director / Head of Network Engineering opportunities in the DFW metro or remote — with a preference for infrastructure-forward organizations that treat the network as a competitive advantage, not a commodity.

Core competencies

  • SD-WAN & WAN optimization — Fortinet SD-WAN, Cisco Viptela, Meraki, carrier orchestration
  • Data center & campus — Cisco Nexus 9K, Catalyst 9K, ACI, VXLAN/EVPN, spine-leaf
  • Cloud networking — Azure VNet / ExpressRoute, AWS Transit Gateway, multi-cloud hub-and-spoke
  • Security integration — Fortinet FortiGate, zero-trust network access, NAC (Aruba ClearPass, Cisco ISE)
  • Observability — SolarWinds, LogicMonitor, Grafana, NetFlow analytics
  • Leadership — Team build-out, vendor negotiation, executive reporting, budget ownership

Selected achievements

  • Led Fortinet SD-WAN migration across 350+ branches at Triumph Financial, replacing legacy MPLS and cutting WAN spend ~30% while improving branch uptime to 99.98%.
  • Architected Nexus 9K spine-leaf refresh in two primary data centers, eliminating a pervasive east-west bottleneck and enabling 100G uplinks for analytics workloads.
  • Designed and rolled out Azure ExpressRoute hybrid connectivity supporting fintech core banking integration with sub-5ms latency to on-prem.
  • Stood up NOC/SOC observability stack (LogicMonitor + Fortinet FortiAnalyzer) that reduced MTTR on network incidents from 90+ minutes to under 20.
  • Currently leading network engineering at Baker Botts LLP (contract via Kamis Pro), supporting a global legal operation across multiple continents.

What I’m looking for next

A Director or Head of Network Engineering / Infrastructure role at a DFW-based or remote-friendly organization where:

  • The network is treated as strategic, not operational overhead
  • There’s appetite for modernization (SD-WAN, zero-trust, cloud interconnect)
  • Leadership wants a hands-on technical leader who can also brief the board

If that sounds like your org, let’s talk.