# IAN B. MACDONALD

Etobicoke (Toronto), Ontario, Canada | (416) 988-0856 | ian@netstatz.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianbmacdonald/ | Website: https://www.netstatz.com/

## TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE (CTO / CIO / VP ENGINEERING)

Founder-to-exit technology leader with experience building and operating high-availability network and service platforms with disciplined security, compliance, and customer experience outcomes. C-suite partner translating business strategy into roadmaps, operating models, and automation that improves reliability, productivity, and cost-to-serve. Current focus: agentic AI orchestration — designing and operating supervised multi-agent harnesses (hermes, openclaw) with human-in-the-loop gates, autonomous workflow execution, and credential governance — and privacy-first local LLM deployment, where harness guardrails let local models deliver frontier-grade results so sensitive data never leaves the client environment. Hands-on with cloud GPU inference (vLLM on Azure ND MI300X v5-series; per-minute cloud GPU capacity) for cost-controlled burst workloads.

## SIGNATURE IMPACT

- Founder-led growth and successful M&A exit; owned P&L and technology leadership from inception through integration.
- Led regulatory-aligned security outcomes including cybersecurity audit and remediation leadership supporting Ontario Securities Commission requirements.
- Architected and operate a fleet of supervised AI orchestration harnesses (openclaw — infrastructure ops; hermes) with documented cross-harness delegation contracts, HITL gates, autonomous workflow execution, and auditable credential management — including client-deployed harnesses.
- Still hands-on at the deepest layer: authored a mainline Linux kernel contribution — "net: thunderbolt: Allow reading link settings" — enabling bonding over Thunderbolt networking (merged via net-next, 2026).
- Built resilience at scale: resolved management/security flaws in a 10,000-unit router deployment; deployed fault-detection across 150 points of presence, reducing power-related truck rolls by 90% (est. $50K+ annual savings).
- Implemented vendor-agnostic upgrade and remote support workflows for on-prem appliances to reduce outages (est. $5K per incident) and strengthen security posture.
- Designed and operationalized AI enablement patterns (multi-agent workflows, governance, knowledge capture) delivering estimated 25–50% productivity gains in select roles, validated across client deployments.

## CORE COMPETENCIES

Technology Strategy & Roadmapping | P&L Ownership | Founder Leadership | M&A Technical Due Diligence & Integration

Cybersecurity Audits & Remediation | Regulatory Compliance (OSC) | Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity | Reliability Engineering | Monitoring, Observability & Automated Remediation

Product & Platform Leadership | SDLC Oversight | QA & CI/CD Governance | Vendor Management & Negotiation

Multi-Agent AI Orchestration & Harness Design | Autonomous Workflow Execution | AI Enablement & Governance | Human-in-the-Loop Automation | Knowledge Management & Institutional Capture

Local LLM Deployment & Optimization | Data-Privacy-First AI (local inference, guardrailed) | GPU Computing (AMD ROCm) | Cloud GPU Inference & Serving (vLLM)

Azure ND MI300X v5-Series Optimization | Elastic Per-Minute Cloud GPUs

AI Desktop Automation | AI-Assisted Development (Claude Code, Codex, pi-coding-agent)

LLM API Routing (OpenRouter, Cerebras, Hot Aisle, NVIDIA NIM) | Change Management | Customer Experience & Service Quality | Remote Operations

## PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

### CTO, Westfield Partners Ltd. | Hamilton, Ontario | 2025–Present

- Led a cybersecurity audit aligned to Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) requirements; directed remediation of identified vulnerabilities and achieved compliance outcomes while establishing a continuous-improvement security strategy.
- Implemented monitoring and alerting for web service infrastructure and introduced automated and human-in-the-loop remediation workflows to reduce outage impact and operational drag.
- Launched multi-agent workflows (CrewAI) to maintain CRM data freshness and integrate new data sources, improving data integrity for prospect development and sales forecasting while reducing change-management overhead.
- Established enterprise adoption patterns for generative AI tooling: governance guardrails, best-practice enablement, and repeatable workflows; drove estimated 25–50% productivity improvements in select roles.
- Enabled AI-assisted knowledge capture and reuse to reduce key-person dependency and accelerate onboarding for repeatable workflows.

### President, Dotto-One (Rally Internet Corp.) | Toronto, Ontario | 2023–2025

- Integrated financial, support, and network systems and staff into the parent organization; refreshed process documentation and knowledgebase content and led in-person technical training workshops to support scaling integration.
- Led relationship transition for a landmark 5-year, multi-property bulk Internet/TV contract, securing over $1M in net new recurring revenue.
- Identified and corrected management and security flaws in a 10,000-unit router deployment, preventing service disruption and protecting a key channel partnership.
- Implemented a vendor-agnostic upgrade workflow and remote support capability for on-prem appliances, reducing outage risk and strengthening security posture.
- Engineered and deployed a proprietary fault-detection appliance across 150 points of presence, reducing power-related truck rolls by 90% and improving service levels (est. $50K+ annual savings).

### CEO & Founder, Dotto-One Inc. | Toronto, Ontario | 2014–2023

- Built and led a technology-driven ISP business from inception through successful exit; owned full P&L, strategy, and execution across product, operations, and customer experience.
- Orchestrated end-to-end M&A process including technical due diligence, financial negotiations, and integration planning to achieve a successful sale (details as confidentiality permits).
- Designed a high-security, high-performance ISP architecture delivering a managed commercial experience to residential customers with minimal resources and fully remote operations.
- Leveraged proactive monitoring and lab-tested rollout practices to reduce upgrade-related outages to planned five-minute windows while improving update cadence and security posture.
- Engineered a resilient, open-source network service stack supporting six major OS upgrades and three hardware generations without service interruption, maintaining scalability and cost control.
- Implemented a continuous modernization ("evergreening") framework: increased update cadence by 200% and achieved a 100% reduction in unplanned outages during scheduled maintenance windows. Services first deployed in 2014 remain in production and fully current today (e.g., kb.netstatz.com), and a Xen hypervisor host has been continuously evergreened across two decades of Debian releases.
- Built a support model that achieved a 5-star reputation; recognized as the only Canadian ISP (1000+ subscribers) with zero complaints registered with the CCTS public registry.
- Secured fibre construction permits under a Municipal Access Agreement with the City of Toronto.

### Director, Network Services, Quartet Service Corporation | Toronto, Ontario | 2012–2014

- Accountable for network infrastructure, professional services, and customer help desk teams.
- Migrated operational teams and clients to ConnectWise professional services automation.
- Improved profitability by exiting/realigning clients below a $500/month MRR threshold.

### Director, Product Management, N8 Identity Inc. | Burlington, Ontario | 2008–2012

- Led a software engineering team to design and build an identity and access management (IAM) product.
- Owned client relationships and solution delivery for large Canadian enterprises including Rogers, Loblaws, and OMERS.
- Delivered a five-year IAM strategy for a major financial institution.

### Principal, Systemware Innovation Inc. | Toronto & Pickering, Ontario | 2005–2008

- Program management and key vendor management for Ontario Power Generation.
- Project management for implementation of Energy Markets day-ahead commitment process (IESO).
- Delivered classroom training for Sun Microsystems Management Center across North America.

## SELECTED AI / GPU ENGINEERING PROJECTS (OPEN SOURCE / INDEPENDENT)

- Multi-Agent Orchestration Harnesses (hermes, openclaw): designed and operate a fleet of supervised Claude Code orchestration harnesses with documented cross-harness delegation contracts, machine-readable governance, scoped credential service accounts, and auditable change logs. Recent autonomous-execution results: a delegated infra-ops harness rebuilt a full WordPress dev-environment clone in under an hour (previously a documented two-day initiative), and an unattended overnight deployment harness reduced a full day of bare-metal LLM-server bring-up to a three-hour autonomous run driven by a local Qwen dense model on Strix Halo hardware. Research published in the open at netstatz.com.
- Local LLM Deployment & Optimization (lemonade): implemented local inference workflows supporting GPU acceleration (AMD ROCm) and multiple model formats (GGUF/ONNX/SafeTensors) for privacy-sensitive and cost-controlled inference; operate a multi-node local inference fleet serving bulk agent-pipeline workloads.
- Cloud GPU Inference & Serving (vLLM): configured and tuned vLLM serving on Azure ND MI300X v5-series (MI300X) GPU VMs for high-throughput inference; used per-minute cloud GPU capacity (Hot Aisle, Cloudrift) for burst capacity and cost-controlled experimentation.
- AI Desktop Automation: developed natural-language desktop automation ("computer use" workflows) for repeatable operational tasks.
- AI-Assisted Development + LLM Routing: Claude Code, Codex, and pi-coding-agent in day-to-day development; routing patterns (OpenRouter, Cerebras, Hot Aisle, NVIDIA NIM) to balance cost/latency.

## OPEN-SOURCE CONTRIBUTIONS

- **Linux kernel (mainline):** authored "net: thunderbolt: Allow reading link settings" — ethtool get_link_ksettings support enabling Thunderbolt networking as part of bonded interfaces; reviewed by netdev maintainers and merged via net-next (commit 7a3d3279a566, 2026).
- **lemonade (lemonade-sdk):** 14 merged upstream PRs (2025–2026) spanning server reliability (declarative/idempotent model load fixing a TOCTOU race, model-selection race fix, fail-fast disk-space handling), Debian packaging, download/caching robustness, multi-checkpoint storage with Qwen Image support, and whisper.cpp integration; additional PRs in review.
- **OpenWhispr (voice-to-text):** merged fixes for Linux packaging (chrome-sandbox SUID) and privacy-first onboarding (local/BYOK transcription mode).
- **claude-code-remote:** merged Linux amd64 support with build instructions.
- **PacketFence (network access control):** merged OpenWRT hostapd support (2018).
- **Author, claude-session-rescue:** open-source tool to repair broken Claude Code sessions.

## AWARDS & RECOGNITION

- Winner, AMD developer enablement contest (Fall 2025) — recognized for contributions to AMD ROCm and the lemonade local LLM runtime; awarded Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max+ 395) hardware.

## VOLUNTEER & COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP

- Chair, AI Tiger Team (AITT) — prpl Foundation: chair the foundation's AI taskforce since its inaugural meeting (March 2026), driving AI collaboration across member companies in the open-source carrier/CPE software ecosystem.
- Contributor, lemonade-server (AMD-sponsored open-source local LLM runtime): 14 merged upstream PRs — backend, packaging, and deployment contributions (ROCm/Vulkan), reproducible install guides, and community support; work recognized via the AMD developer contest win (Fall 2025). See Open-Source Contributions.
- Treasurer & Scout Leader, 219th Toronto Scout Group.

## PUBLICATIONS (SELECTED)

- "Strix Halo on Ubuntu looks great" — reproducible Ubuntu/Debian + ROCm + Lemonade deployment guide. https://netstatz.com/strix_halo_lemonade/
- "From Zero to Tokens: ROCm 7.0.2 Quickstart on Cloudrift's 8-GPU Node" — multi-GPU inference bring-up guide (Netstatz).

## EDUCATION

**Queen's University**, Kingston, Ontario — B.Sc.H., Electrical Engineering | B.A., Economics | 1995–2000

**Neuchâtel Junior College**, Neuchâtel, Switzerland — Secondary School Diploma with Academic Letter | 1994–1995

**University of New Brunswick**, Fredericton, New Brunswick — Shad Valley Program (Nortel sponsorship) | 1993

## ADDITIONAL AFFILIATIONS

prpl Foundation (AI Tiger Team Chair; Product Committee) | Canadian Network Operators Consortium

Toronto Product Management Association | Shad Valley Alumni

Languages: Bilingual in French