Joseph Defanti
Platform & Infrastructure Engineering Leader | SRE, Cloud (AWS), Distributed Systems | Scaling High-Availability Platforms
- Role
- Director of Devops at Midpoint Markets
- Location
- San Francisco, CA, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About Joseph Defanti
I build and scale platform infrastructure and SRE organizations that power high-availability, distributed systems at scale. Over the past 20+ years, I’ve led teams responsible for distributed systems at scale — from early-stage infrastructure (20 servers) to large production environments supporting thousands of instances and real-time workloads. My work sits at the intersection of reliability, scalability, and developer productivity, with a strong focus on treating infrastructure as a product.I specialize in- Building and evolving SRE and platform engineering functions- Designing cloud-native infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes) for scale and resilience- Improving system reliability, observability, and incident response- Enabling engineering teams through self-service platforms and automation- Driving cost efficiency and capacity planning at scale I’ve led infrastructure and operations for- High-scale video and streaming platforms (real-time + on-demand)- Distributed cloud-native systems with strict uptime and latency requirements- Trading and data platforms where reliability and performance are criticalI’m most effective in environments where- systems are scaling quickly- reliability matters to the business- teams need better platforms to move fasterAt this stage of my career, I’m focused on helping organizations build durable, scalable infrastructure and strong engineering cultures — while delivering meaningful business outcomes through reliability and operational excellence.
Experience
Director of Devops
Jul 2022 — Present · US
Lead Site Reliability Engineering and platform infrastructure for a high-performance digital asset trading platform, responsible for reliability, scalability, cost efficiency, and developer enablement across distributed AWS-based systems. • Reduced annual AWS spend by $500K+ through Reserved Instance strategy, capacity planning, and infrastructure right-sizing initiatives • Re-architected AWS networking for EC2 instances, implementing Transit Gateway and private networking to improve security, scalability, and operational consistency • Built and scaled production observability platform (Prometheus, Alertmanager, Grafana), improving signal quality and accelerating incident detection and response • Drove adoption of infrastructure-as-code and automation-first practices, reducing manual operations and increasing deployment reliability across teams • Established platform capabilities and operational standards that improved developer productivity and enabled more consistent, reliable service delivery
Education
University of Rhode Island
Bachelor of Science, Mathematics
1979 — 1983
London Business School
MSc, Management
2006 — 2007
Skills
- Cross-Functional Team Leadership
- Solution Architecture
- Strategic Partnerships
- Scalability
- Strategy
- Storage
- Cluster
- Networking
- Unix
- Information Security
- Data Center
- Paas
- Network Architecture
- Program Management
- IT Strategy
- Software Development
- Team Leadership
- Network Security
- IT Management
- Load Balancing
- Databases
- Agile Methodologies
- Management
- System Administration
- High Availability
- System Deployment
- Servers
- Leadership
- Solaris
- Telecommunications
- Perl
- Vendor Management
- Integration
- Digital Media
- Mobile Devices
- Start-Ups
- Cloud Computing
- Saas
- Windows
- Virtualization
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