Dwight
Banks

Senior systems and platform engineer. Houston, working remote.

I run corporate IT the way you would run production: identity, cloud, and endpoints defined in code, changed through pull requests, and automated until the toil is gone. Ten years in, most recently at an AI security company, and lately building the MCP tooling that lets AI agents work safely inside Okta and Jamf.

Dwight Banks

Now

Senior IT Systems Engineer at XBOW, an AI offensive security company. Everything IT owns lives in Terraform Cloud and AWS, every change is a reviewed pull request, and deploys go through GitHub Actions with OIDC. Recent work: a self-service path from a GitHub repo to a running EKS or Lambda environment, deny-by-default device trust in Okta, just-in-time admin elevation from Slack, and a self-hosted Okta MCP server so the team can work with identity from Claude.

Selected work

  1. Self-service deployment platform

    Takes any GitHub repo to a running EKS or Lambda environment through reviewed Terraform and Helm pull requests. Okta SSO, a GitHub App, a security-review gate, and 1Password secrets synced into AWS Secrets Manager. Live in five days, then extended across four GitHub organizations.

    Terraform Cloud, Helm, EKS, Lambda, GitHub Apps, 1Password, OktaXBOW

  2. Identity as code

    An entire Okta tenant imported into Terraform at zero diff: groups, rules, SAML and OIDC apps, authenticators. Event hooks drive Lambda pipelines for onboarding, offboarding, and a daily dormant-account sweep. Device trust moved to deny-by-default across 142 apps without a single user losing access. Standing super-admin replaced by just-in-time elevation with automatic revocation and a full audit trail.

    Okta, Terraform, AWS Lambda, EventBridge, SlackXBOW

  3. Okta MCP server

    A self-hosted Model Context Protocol server that lets IT query and change Okta from Claude. Access is gated by Tailscale identity and Okta groups, every tool is scope-limited, and every call is logged. The same server gives an AI helpdesk agent read-only identity context when it drafts ticket replies.

    TypeScript, MCP, Tailscale, Claude, FrontXBOW

  4. AI-assisted support operations

    At Global Healing, a support system across Zendesk, Slack, and AWS Bedrock that auto-grades more than 26,000 tickets a month at 95% consistency. Ticket resolution cost fell by a third and new-agent onboarding time was cut in half.

    AWS Bedrock, Python, Zendesk API, SlackGlobal Healing

  5. Inventory and data pipelines

    Event-driven ETL on Lambda feeding a Redshift warehouse that joins Amazon, eBay, and Shopify data, with QuickSight dashboards used for daily operating decisions. A ten-hour-a-week manual inventory process became a pipeline that runs in seconds at 99.9% uptime.

    AWS Lambda, Redshift, QuickSight, Terraform, PythonGlobal Healing

  6. Mac fleet and network, rebuilt in the cloud

    Migrated on-premises Jamf Pro to a clustered AWS environment defined in Terraform and extended the corporate network into AWS with Meraki AutoVPN. Jamf Connect for identity-first login, Jamf Trust and Private Access for Zero Trust, CIS-aligned baselines across 300+ endpoints.

    Jamf Pro, Jamf Protect, Cisco Meraki, Cisco Umbrella, AWS VPCGlobal Healing

Writing

  • Deny-by-default device trust in Okta, with nobody locked out

    Moving 142 apps to a block-unmanaged-devices policy is a one-line change in Okta and a multi-week change for the people who use it. The order of operations is what kept it uneventful.

  • Nobody is Okta Super Admin anymore

    Standing super-admin access is the account every attacker wants and the one every auditor asks about. We replaced it with a Slack command, a Lambda, and a timer.

  • A safe door into Okta for AI agents

    An MCP server is just an API with a language model on the other end. The interesting decisions are about who can open the door, how far it opens, and who finds out.

Open source

MCP servers that give AI assistants a safe, scoped way into the systems IT teams already run. Built on nights and weekends, used by other teams.

All repositories on GitHub

Experience

2026 to now
Senior IT Systems Engineer, XBOWIdentity, cloud, and IT automation as code for an AI security company. Remote.
2021 to 2026
Senior IT Systems Engineer, Global HealingSole senior engineer for a 120-person e-commerce company: 300+ endpoints, 20+ SaaS applications, AWS, identity, and network. Cut 10+ hours of weekly toil with lifecycle automation.
2018 to 2021
Infrastructure Engineer / System Administrator, Global HealingMoved Jamf Pro to AWS with Terraform, built the Meraki network, and ran AD, CI/CD for device management, and the Mac, Windows, and Linux fleets.
2016 to 2018
Support Specialist, Global HealingEnterprise macOS support, Code42 backup and recovery, and the first shell-script automation of device administration.
2014
B.S. Computer Science, Jackson State University

Read the full resume

Skills

Identity and access
Okta (Workflows, event hooks, device trust, Terraform provider), OneLogin, Google Workspace, Active Directory, Jamf Connect, Tailscale, SAML and OIDC, Zero Trust, just-in-time access
Cloud and infrastructure
AWS (Lambda, EKS, EventBridge, API Gateway, IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, S3, RDS, Redshift, CloudWatch, Bedrock), Terraform and Terraform Cloud, Helm, Docker, GitHub Actions with OIDC, Jenkins
Endpoints and network
macOS, Windows, Linux, Jamf Pro, Jamf Protect, Jamf Trust, Mosyle, CIS baselines, Cisco Meraki, Cisco Umbrella, Code42
Languages and tooling
Python, TypeScript and Node.js, Bash, SQL, Git, Zapier, REST APIs
AI tooling
Model Context Protocol servers, LLM agents, Claude API, AWS Bedrock, LLM-assisted helpdesk automation
Certifications
Jamf Certified Expert, Admin, and Tech. Cisco Meraki Network Operator. Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt.

Off the clock

I make instrumental hip-hop beats and I'm learning bass. The tapes are on Apple Music and Spotify. I also run TechTune Digital Solutions, a small IT consultancy.