Mike Haertel | Technical Account Manager & Infrastructure Engineer

Technical Account Manager & Infrastructure Engineer

Technical Account Manager with nearly 14 years at managed service providers and 20+ in IT — from the data center floor to the escalation desk for global SaaS platforms and Fortune 500 retailers. Now building modern applications with AI tools to bridge infrastructure expertise with software development.

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A Career Built on Understanding Systems — and People

I entered the hosting world in 2009, after several years working hands-on with hardware in a local computer shop and in laptop repair at Jabil Circuit. I enjoyed fixing things properly, but I wanted to work on larger systems — infrastructure that supported real businesses at scale.

Learning Infrastructure the Hard Way (2009–2012)

I started at Hostway on July 1, 2009, during a period when infrastructure was still very physical and deeply hands-on. As a NOC technician, I was responsible for building, imaging, and racking servers—primarily Dell PowerEdge hardware—along with supporting Cisco ASAs, Fortinet and BSD firewalls, and Linux-based iptables shared firewalls. Within six months I was promoted to L2 Support, taking on customer-facing tickets and support calls while continuing to work regularly in the data center. Hostway emphasized root-cause resolution and long-term stability, and that mindset shaped how I still approach systems today: understand how things fail, then design them so they don't fail again.

Exposure to Scale and Cloud (2012–2014)

At HostGator, I was exposed to hosting at massive scale—supporting high-volume environments with millions of domains. At Datapipe, where I worked as a Unix System Administrator, I gained early exposure to hybrid cloud architectures and AWS-adjacent infrastructure. Together, these experiences clarified what I enjoyed most: environments where deep technical understanding, customer trust, and thoughtful design all mattered.

Returning as a Technical Account Manager (2015–2023)

In January 2015, I returned to Hostway—later Ntirety—as a Technical Account Manager. This role brought everything together. As a TAM, I served as the bridge between clients and engineering teams, helping organizations operate, scale, and modernize complex infrastructure. I worked closely with our largest customers and traveled internationally to support client relationships, including multiple trips to Israel and visits to teams and customers across the U.S. and Europe. I became known for handling complex environments and high-stakes situations calmly and thoroughly.

Those eight years were anything but static: mergers, rebrands, new leadership, new ticket systems, new document repositories, new strategic directions—sometimes all in the same year. I became the constant. When something messy landed—an account nobody could untangle, a migration with no playbook, a platform we'd never supported before—it usually landed on my plate, because the last one had gotten fixed. That turned out to be the best professional education I could have asked for: every shift taught me a new stack, a new industry, or a new way to keep clients confident while everything around them changed. By early 2023, after many years of continuous on-call work, I was ready for a reset.

A Deliberate Reset and Reinvestment (2023–Present)

By February 2023—after eight years of on-call work and a long stretch of acquisitions and leadership changes—I was burned out, and for the first time since I was a teenager I stepped away from full-time work to reset on purpose. This period has been active, not idle. I invested in my mental and physical health, put serious miles on my bikes, and took on real community leadership. I also built a genuine self-employed income as a pedicab operator: three seasons across Austin, Chicago, and major festivals that have kept me comfortable while leaving most of my savings untouched. Professionally, I returned to technology on my own terms—building cloud-native applications, exploring AI tools daily, and re-engaging with the security community.

Where I'm Headed

I'm now looking to return to a Remote Technical Account Manager role. I bring more than 15 years of perspective across legacy infrastructure, cloud transitions, and client-facing technical leadership. I understand how systems used to be built, how they fail, and how modern, cloud-native architectures can be designed to avoid those failures altogether. Most importantly, I'm calm under pressure, clear with clients, and effective at translating complexity into confidence. That's the value I'm ready to bring to my next team.