About Me

Background

I'm Michael Murphy — an IT operations leader, U.S. Marine Corps veteran, and builder, based in Baltimore, Maryland.

By day, I'm Director of Technology Solutions at Prometric, the global testing and assessment company. I lead the teams responsible for technology across 700+ testing centers in more than 100 countries — 12,000+ endpoints, a 2,000-server data center, and global teams spanning six countries. It's the kind of role where you learn what works at scale and what breaks under pressure.

The work I'm most proud of from that role: driving a $10M+ platform modernization that retired aging Citrix VDI, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7 infrastructure in favor of a hybrid Azure platform — cutting support volume by 30%. And building the global technical teams that kept it all running at 99.98% uptime.

Before the IT career, I served as an NCO in the United States Marine Corps from 1987 to 1994. The Corps taught me how to lead under pressure, plan for contingencies, and take ownership of outcomes. Those lessons still shape how I approach every problem.

I hold a B.S. in Geography from Towson University, along with CompTIA Network+ and MCSE certifications — though at this point, the work speaks louder than the credentials.

What I'm Building

Outside of my day job, I've started building open-source tools that solve the kinds of operational problems I've spent my career dealing with. The question that kicked this off: What happens when someone with deep domain expertise in operations starts building software, using AI-assisted development to bridge the gap?

The first answer is Storm Scout — a weather advisory monitoring dashboard for operations teams managing physical locations across the US. It's the tool I wished I had when I was responsible for hundreds of sites and had no way to monitor weather threats across all of them at once.

I'm also maintaining this website and the South Baltimore Neighborhood Association website as a volunteer — both Bootstrap 5.3 sites with modern deployment pipelines.

Everything I build is open-source. Every commit carries a Co-Authored-By trailer identifying which AI tool was used. Full transparency in a new way of working.

Topper Solutions is the platform for all of it — open-source tools now, and IT consulting when the time is right.

At home, I run a small homelab — Docker containers, Tailscale networking, Linux machines, and self-hosted infrastructure. It's where I test ideas and break things without consequences.

Community

Baltimore's a city that rewards people who show up and do the work. I've been doing that for years:

• South Baltimore Neighborhood Association — President (2014–2019), Board Member (2019–present). Volunteer website maintainer.
• Baltimore City Residential Permit Parking Advisory Board — Board Member (2021–2024)
• Baltimore Casino Local Development Council — Board Member appointed by the Mayor (2015–2024). Advised on multi-year Casino Local Impact Grant spending plans.