Mike Holownych
Technology operations and service delivery leadership for reliable services and practical AI enablement.
I lead monitoring, major incidents, people, vendors, and operating resources for business-critical services. The same delivery discipline shows up in independent AI systems work: selecting useful use cases, building operable workflows, and keeping governance and recovery visible. Employer roles were technology operations mandates—not AI titles—and personal projects are not enterprise client outcomes.
TMX Group · BMO · BlackBerry · independent AI systems work
What brings you here?
Hiring for operations or service delivery leadership
Review leadership scope, operating accountability, and career chronology.
Review experience and chronologyExploring a bounded consulting engagement
See the service areas, expected outputs, and fit criteria.
View consulting detailsReviewing independent technical work
Inspect open-source projects, a personal operating lab, and the Nebula Components product surface.
Inspect projects
Where AI fits
AI is treated as a practical capability inside operational systems: choosing useful use cases, building reliable workflows, supporting adoption, and holding governance and service standards—the same discipline used for monitoring, change, and recovery. Independent work such as Homelab AI, Nexus Code, Citable, and Nebula Components shows that judgment in inspectable artifacts. It does not mean every operations role was an AI role, and it is not presented as enterprise client delivery for employer AI programs.
Operational proof
Scannable facts already documented on this site—leadership scope, teams, budget, vendors, incidents, and operating change. Not invented metrics or client logos.
P1/P2 Incident Lead
TMX Manager, IT Operations and Incident Response: unified L1 monitoring and major-incident team through three team leads; ServiceNow MIM collaboration bridges. Employment ended October 2026.
9 FTE · 10 contract
BMO Senior Manager, Technology Support: Linux and Windows administrators plus TCS and HCL staff-augmentation across cloud and on-premises environments.
CAD ~$1.6M
Annual operating budget ownership at BMO, including overtime trade-offs against service needs and vendor renewals, SLAs, and performance escalations.
99.999% SLA target
BlackBerry BIS email service owner: continuity, incident and problem management, vendor coordination, and final production-change authority inside that portfolio. Stated service target, not a personal uptime claim.
17 → 14 after amalgamation
CDS Post Trade Modernization at TMX consolidated two support groups into one monitoring and major-incident operating model with a documented cross-business incident process.
9 direct reports
Earlier BlackBerry NOC Team Lead; participated in no-notice leadership-initiated failovers of live production traffic from Waterloo to the UK at least quarterly.
Operational risk and resilience
Security, reliability, escalation discipline, vendor accountability, and continuity are handled as part of technology operations—not as a separate managed-security or compliance practice.
- Escalation and major-incident leadership with executive communications and documented severity process (TMX; earlier major-incident facilitation at BMO).
- Change governance and control attestations within assigned scope; production-change authority for a named service portfolio (BMO; BlackBerry BIS email).
- Vendor accountability inside operating budgets—renewals, SLA and KPI reviews, and performance escalations (BMO TCS and HCL; BlackBerry vendor coordination).
- Continuity and recovery discipline: stated availability ownership for BIS email; no-notice failover participation in the BlackBerry NOC; desired-state, validation, and rollback paths in Homelab AI.
- Security-adjacent operational hygiene where evidenced—vulnerability and patch automation for Internal Audit at BMO; approval and workspace controls in Nexus Code. Not CISO, penetration-testing, or certification services.
Experience evidenceHomelab recovery pathsNexus approval controls
Leadership scope
Leadership roles with the scale and boundaries that mattered in practice.
TMX Group
Led a unified L1 Monitoring and Major Incident Management team through three team leads. Accountable for escalations, executive communications, and developing team leads. Scope was monitoring and major incident operations, not infrastructure ownership.
Team size moved from 17 to 14 after CDS Post Trade Modernization amalgamated two support groups into one operating team.
BMO Financial Group
As Senior Manager, led 9 FTE systems administrators and 10 contract resources supporting corporate, finance, and financial-crimes technology across cloud and on-premises environments. Managed an approximately CAD $1.6 million annual operating budget.
Budget ownership meant prioritizing staffing and overtime against service needs, and managing TCS and HCL staff-augmentation contracts, renewals, and performance escalations.
BlackBerry
Service owner for a global email service with a 99.999% availability SLA. Accountable for continuity, incident and problem management, vendor coordination, and production change governance within that portfolio. Earlier, led a NOC team of 9 direct reports.
Service ownership meant final production-change authority and continuity accountability for BIS email, not every BlackBerry product line. The SLA is the stated service target owned in that role, not a personal uptime claim.
How I approach the work
Two examples of decisions and delivered operating work.
Unifying monitoring and major incident work through organizational change
- Context
- At TMX Group, monitoring and major incident work had to operate as one team after CDS Post Trade Modernization consolidated two support groups.
- Responsibility
- As Manager, IT Operations and Incident Response, I led the unified team through three team leads, with accountability for escalations and executive communications.
- What I did
- I brought the amalgamated team onto one operating model, documented an incident process across TMX businesses and subsidiaries (including Trayport) for all severity levels, and led ServiceNow Major Incident Management integration with Google Workspace automation that creates a Chat space and Meet bridge for each troubleshooting team.
- Result
- A single monitoring and major-incident team, a documented cross-business incident process, and ServiceNow MIM collaboration bridges in place.
Balancing people, vendors, and a defined operating budget
- Context
- At BMO, corporate, finance, and financial-crimes technology needed sustained support across AWS, Azure, and on-premises environments with employees and contracted capacity.
- Responsibility
- As Senior Manager, Technology Support, I led 9 FTE Linux and Windows administrators and 10 TCS and HCL contract resources, and managed an approximately CAD $1.6 million annual operating budget.
- What I did
- I negotiated and managed TCS and HCL after-hours staff augmentation, covering five resources per supplier under fixed-price and time-and-materials arrangements, including renewals, resource counts, SLA and KPI reviews, and performance escalations. I also held production change approval authority and related control attestations within assigned scope.
- Result
- People leadership across employees and contractors, active vendor operations, and budget accountability at the stated scale.
Where this maps to your mandate
Senior operations and service delivery needs this experience most directly addresses:
Operations or production-support leadership
TMX monitoring and major-incident leadership through team leads; BMO leadership of 9 FTE and 10 contract resources; BlackBerry NOC team of 9.
Ownership and escalation clarity
Cross-business TMX incident process; BMO production change authority within scope; BlackBerry portfolio change authority for BIS email.
Major incident coordination
TMX P1/P2 Incident Lead (excluding Trayport); ServiceNow MIM integration; earlier major-incident facilitation at BMO.
Vendors, budget, and service delivery
BMO CAD $1.6M operating budget with TCS and HCL contract management; BlackBerry vendor coordination for global email.
Practical automation
BMO Ansible Automation Platform adoption for online banking; independent Nexus Code, Homelab AI, Citable, and Nebula Components.
Independent technical work
Independent work that shows technical judgment beside the employment record. Nexus Code and Homelab AI are FOSS; Citable is Apache-2.0 FOSS; Nebula Components is a commercial diagnostic service with bounded claims.
Nexus Code
Operational question: how can an agentic coding tool make its actions reviewable instead of hiding them behind a single permission switch?
Project notesHomelab AI
Operational question: how do you treat self-hosted inference like an operable system (desired state, validation evidence, and rollback) when you are the only operator?
Project notesNebula Components
Operational question: how do you diagnose observable landing-page conversion friction with evidence-backed findings, without promising lift?
Project notesCitable
Operational question: how do you make SEO, AEO, and GEO audit findings defensible by binding them to evidence, change control, and explicit unknowns?
Project notes
Writing
Notes on mandate boundaries, operating responsibility, and claim limits.
Discuss the role you need filled
If you are hiring for senior technology operations or service delivery leadership, I would welcome a conversation about the team you are building and the responsibilities the next leader needs to hold.