jay@cottamtech:~$

Jay Cottam

Senior Technical Engineer & Team Lead

Thirty years of IT experience across Windows, macOS, and Linux — on-prem and cloud alike. I mentor teams of any size, run M365 and Azure environments, know Fortinet and Ubiquiti gear inside out, and make IT easy for whoever's on the other end.

About

Three decades, every layer of the stack

I've spent thirty years in IT because I like fixing things and explaining them without jargon. Desktops, networks, servers, cloud — I've worked all of it, and I still do the hands-on work myself rather than handing it off.

I lead technical teams and mentor engineers coming up, from small shops to larger organizations. I also carry the escalations nobody else wants — the ones that need someone who's seen the problem before.

Skills

What I work with

Operating Systems

Windows, macOS, and Linux, deployed and supported on-prem and in the cloud.

WindowsmacOSLinux

Cloud & Productivity

Tenant setup, administration, and day-to-day management of Microsoft's cloud stack.

Microsoft 365Azure

Networking & Security

Firewall and network hardware I know inside out, from setup through ongoing management.

FortinetUbiquiti

Leadership

Mentoring technicians and engineers, owning escalations, and running project delivery end to end.

Team MentoringEscalationsProject Delivery

Virtualization

Hypervisor platforms for consolidating and managing infrastructure, from single hosts to clusters.

VMwareHyper-VKVMProxmoxVergeOS

Storage

Enterprise and NAS storage platforms, sized and managed for the workloads sitting on top of them.

ZadaraTrueNASEMC

Backup & Recovery

Backup and disaster recovery across on-prem and cloud, built so restores actually work when it counts.

VeeamVeritas Backup ExecEMC Data DomainDatto BCDR
Certifications

Credentials

CompTIA A+

Foundational certification covering hardware, networking, troubleshooting, and operating systems.

CompTIA

VCP-DCV

VMware Certified Professional — Data Center Virtualization.

VMware

MCP

Microsoft Certified Professional.

Microsoft
What I Do

Where I add the most value

Systems administration & support

Desktop to server, Windows to Linux to macOS — day-to-day administration and the fixes that keep people working.

Cloud management

M365 and Azure environments set up, secured, and maintained without unnecessary complexity.

Network & security

Fortinet and Ubiquiti deployments, configured and managed by someone who's done it for decades.

Team leadership & mentoring

Building up technicians and engineers, at teams of any size, while still owning the hardest tickets myself.

Virtualization & consolidation

VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, Proxmox, and VergeOS environments, built and managed to get the most out of the hardware underneath.

Storage & data management

Zadara, TrueNAS, and EMC platforms, sized right and kept healthy.

Backup & disaster recovery

Veeam, Veritas Backup Exec, EMC Data Domain, and Datto BCDR — backups that get tested, not just scheduled.

Contact

Get in touch

Have a project, a problem, or a team that needs help? Send a message and I'll get back to you.

Email: jay@cottamtech.com