2025-09-15 –, Main Room
In today's technology economy, people frequently move jobs before getting to experience the long-term consequences (both good and bad) of the decisions they made. In contrast, I spent over a decade at my previous company both building out their AWS footprint as well as building internal software for business users on top of that AWS footprint. This gave me perspectives on both sides of the fence -- both wanting to ensure our AWS account fleet was well managed and secure while also needing to deliver value to the business using it. In this talk, I'll offer some reflections from both perspectives about the good and the bad of decisions I made as our account fleet grew from a single AWS lab account into hundreds of AWS accounts supporting different business units.
Joel previously worked for 16 years at a financial services company, performing many different technology roles. He has worked closely with AWS since 2013, working to both manage the company's overall footprint as well as deliver software to internal business users running inside of AWS. He is passionate about security, operational resiliency, and just getting things done. In addition, Joel is one of the co-founders of fwd:cloudsec and is an organizer for fwd:cloudsec North America.