Director of Operations · Sr. Technical Program Manager

Mitchell
Brackett

Director of Operations
Asia Northwest Cultural Education Association / Sakura-Con
📍 Everett · Snohomish County, Washington
12+
Years in Incident Management
30K+
Convention Attendees
$4M+
Budget Managed
5
Sub Divisions Lead
400+
Total Staff Managed
23
Hotel, Venue & Public Safety/Agency Contracts Managed
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01

Expertise

Where I create impact
⚙️

Infrastructure & Cloud

Pioneered AWS regional migration methodology at Amazon. Led fleet management for HPC compute infrastructure. Built automation tooling that shipped as an official AWS service.

AWS Cloud Migration Automation HPC Infrastructure
🎯

Program Management

11+ years driving complex, cross-functional technical programs. Expert in incident management, call leader operations, stakeholder alignment, and executive communications under pressure.

TPM Incident Mgmt Roadmapping Stakeholders OKRs
🌸

Large-Scale Operations

Director of Operations for one of North America's largest anime conventions. Managing AV, IT, stage design, logistics, and a multi-million dollar budget across dozens of vendor relationships.

Event Ops Vendor Mgmt Budget Planning Staff Leadership
02

Experience

Career trajectory
2018 → Present Amazon

Senior Technical Program Manager

Leading cross-organizational technical programs spanning cloud infrastructure, operations automation, and incident response. Serving as Call Leader for high-severity production incidents across global infrastructure.

  • Built and led HPC fleet management programs for large-scale compute infrastructure
  • Primary Call Leader for Sev1/Sev2 incident management across global services
  • Drove automation and tooling initiatives that reduced operational toil at scale
  • Aligned engineering, product, and business stakeholders across complex multi-team programs
2013 → 2018 Amazon

Systems Development Manager

Managed a 7-person engineering team. Pioneered the AWS regional migration methodology adopted organization-wide, and developed a quota synchronization tool that was productized as an official AWS service.

  • Pioneered AWS regional migration methodology — became the internal standard
  • Developed quota sync tool that evolved into an official, productized AWS service
  • Managed team of 7 engineers through full software development lifecycle
  • Drove adoption of cloud-first infrastructure patterns across business units
2012 → 2013 Amazon

Support Engineer

Began at Amazon in a technical support engineering role, quickly growing into infrastructure automation and systems development work that led to rapid career advancement.

2010 → Present ANCEA / Sakura-Con

Director of Operations

Executive leadership of convention operations for one of the largest anime conventions in North America, held at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Managing a large volunteer staff and multi-million dollar budget.

  • Oversee AV, IT, stage design, logistics, and attendee services for 20,000+ attendee event
  • Lead vendor relationships with BlueLightProductions LLC and dozens of service partners
  • Manage multi-million dollar operational and production budget year-over-year
  • Drive process documentation, Scope of Work agreements, and operational continuity
03

Selected Projects

High-impact work
Amazon · Migration

AWS Regional Migration Methodology

Designed and piloted a migration playbook for moving workloads into AWS regions. The methodology became the adopted internal standard across the organization.

Impact → Became org-wide standard methodology
Sakura-Con · Operations

Convention Operations Scale-Up

Built and refined the operational infrastructure supporting 20,000+ attendees — including vendor SOWs, staff scheduling systems, AV and IT integration, and multi-year budget frameworks.

Impact → Scalable ops playbook for North America's largest anime conventions
Amazon · Incident

Call Leader Incident Management Program

Developed and executed high-severity incident response leadership across Amazon's global infrastructure. Coordinating engineering, communications, and executive escalation under real-time pressure.

Impact → Reduced MTTR across Sev1/Sev2 production incidents
04

Skills & Tools

Technical depth
Technical & Cloud
AWS / Cloud Infra
Infrastructure Automation
Incident Management
Linux / Systems Admin
Python / Scripting
Smart Home / IoT
Program & Operations
Program Management
Stakeholder Management
Vendor & Budget Mgmt
Large-Scale Event Ops
Team Leadership
Executive Communication

Let's build something great.

Open to conversations about senior TPM, Principal, or Director of Operations roles — as well as strategic partnerships in the convention and events space.