Chris Umbel
Implementing AI-driven automation and instrumentation to harden operations and incident response
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Technology leader with more than 25 years of experience driving innovation, operational excellence, and business outcomes across software, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and cloud platforms. My current focus is the convergence of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, where I apply a broad technical foundation and leadership experience to solve complex problems, manage risk, and enable organizations to adopt emerging technologies with confidence.
Experience
AI SRE Lead / Sr. Principal Site Reliability Engineer
May 2025 – Present
Led the strategy, implementation, and ongoing operation of an enterprise agentic SRE platform with our trusted partner, Resolve.ai. Owned the roadmap for AI-driven operational incident management, including the development of MCP-based integrations as well as agents that provided critical operational context and accelerated automated investigation and response.
Chief Information Officer / Chief Information Security Officer
Ravana, LLC
Apr 2022 – May 2025
As CIO and CISO, led enterprise technology and security strategy across infrastructure, operations, data platforms, and business applications. Held executive responsibility for managing and resolving high-impact cybersecurity incidents, while defining and executing technology roadmaps that modernized core systems, improved operational effectiveness, and enabled scalable business outcomes.
Modern Apps and Infrastructure Lead
Ravana, LLC
Apr 2021 – Apr 2022
Led the architecture, implementation, and ongoing operation of enterprise Kubernetes infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines. Drove platform reliability, automation, and scalability by implementing modern DevOps practices that accelerated software delivery while maintaining security and operational excellence.
Product Manager
Jan 2021 – May 2021
Served as Product Manager for tooling that enabled application modernization and migration from legacy environments to modern cloud platforms, with a focus on J2EE, Spring and .NET sources.
.NET App Transformation Journey Lead
Dec 2019 – Jan 2021
Led the .NET Modernization Practice, helping organizations migrate legacy .NET applications to modern cloud platforms. Directed replatforming initiatives targeting Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry to improve scalability, reliability, and deployment agility.
.NET App Transformation Practice Lead
Pivotal Software, Inc.
Sep 2018 – Jan 2021
Led the .NET Modernization Practice, helping organizations migrate legacy .NET applications to modern cloud platforms like Cloud Foundry.
Solutions Architect
Pivotal Software, Inc.
Apr 2015 – Sep 2018
Partnered with customers to deploy Cloud Foundry and modernize legacy Java and .NET applications, enabling successful migration to a cloud-native platform.
Skunkworks Software Developer
Ravana, LLC
Jun 2010 – Mar 2015
Incubated R&D projects and tools used in our video encoding and delivery business using primarily open source technologies.
Database Administrator
Ravana, LLC
Mar 2007 – Jul 2010
Managed the organization's SQL Server infrastructure, including database administration, database development, business intelligence solutions, and performance optimization with a specialty in indexing and query tuning.
Senior Programmer
Sep 1999 – Mar 2007
Developed the data platform for the Unicentric "servicexpert" suite, creating an extensible and dynamic architecture that supported customer-specific data models and workflows without requiring separate database schemas.
Software Developer
Indianer Computer Corporation
1999 – 2002
Full stack developer focussed in Microsoft technologies.
Education
Penn State University — Master's degree - Artificial Intelligence
Aug 2024 – Aug 2026
Graduate program focused on the practical application of artificial intelligence, deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine vision, natural langauge processing, and data analytics to solve complex business and technical problems. Coursework emphasizes both the mathematical foundations of AI and the design, development, evaluation, and deployment of AI solutions in real-world environments.
Penn State University — Bachelor of Science - Cybersecurity
Aug 2017 – Dec 2023
Interdisciplinary program combining cybersecurity, risk management, analytics, programming, and cyber defense to prepare graduates to identify, analyze, and mitigate modern information security threats. Coursework emphasized incident response, network security, malware analysis, digital forensics, security operations, and the application of technical and analytical methods to protect complex enterprise systems and data.
Apr 2024 – Jun 2024
Filling in some mathematical gaps before Master's
