Hi, I'm Danny. The "Chad" in Chadfi.

Twenty years in IT, starting in the Navy and ending up as the engineer who designs networks, security, and cloud for schools and businesses across Northern California. Chadfi IT is what happens when I bring that home to Red Bluff.

Danny Chadwell

The short version

I'm the friendly-neighborhood-IT-guy type, but with a suit in the closet. By day I'm a lead solutions engineer at a regional IT services company, the person who sits with a school district or a manufacturer, figures out what they actually need, and designs the network, the security, the backups, and the cloud pieces so they work together. I've been the primary architect on projects north of four million dollars, and I've also fixed a lot of printers.

Before that I built out the IT for a brand-new 1.2-million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center, ran field service across the Central Valley, and spent five years as an Information Systems Technician in the U.S. Navy, in Seoul and aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, supervising a help desk for more than five thousand users.

The through-line is the same everywhere: explain it plainly, build it properly, and hand it over so the person can run it themselves. That's what I want for my neighbors too.

  • 20 yrsin IT, from the Navy to enterprise architecture
  • $4M+largest infrastructure project I've been the architect on
  • 5,000+users supported by the Navy help desk I supervised

Where the experience comes from

A career of making technology work for people who'd rather not think about it.

  1. 2015 to today

    Lead Solutions Engineer, regional IT services company

    Sole engineer supporting a ten-person sales team: discovery, architecture, scoping, and delivery for enterprise, small-business, and K-12 clients. Designed and launched the company's first public-cloud offering, led a company-wide overhaul of the managed backup platform, and built the AI-assisted estimating and proposal tooling the whole team now runs on.

  2. 2014 to 2015

    Field Service Technician, Central Valley

    Two thousand service tickets at a 99.8% satisfaction rate. Also pulled about 27,000 feet of network cable, which is exactly why I now leave cabling to the licensed pros and stick to the fun part.

  3. 2013 to 2014

    IT Support Technician, Amazon

    Deployed and maintained the complete IT infrastructure for a new 1.2-million-square-foot fulfillment center: 100+ switches, 500 access points, thousands of endpoints. Wrote the scripts that cut deployment time by a quarter.

  4. 2006 to 2011

    Information Systems Technician, U.S. Navy

    Seoul, Korea and the USS Ronald Reagan. Supervised a fifteen-person help desk supporting more than 5,000 users, and ran a communications center that had to be up 100% of the time. The Navy is where I learned that "it works" means "it works for the person using it."

What I work with

The enterprise versions of the things I set up in homes.

  • CloudMicrosoft Azure (Certified Administrator), Microsoft 365, private cloud, migrations
  • NetworkingEnterprise firewalls, SD-WAN, zero-trust access, Meraki and Ruckus wireless, UniFi at home
  • SecurityEndpoint detection and response, identity and MFA, network segmentation
  • Data protection3-2-1 backup design, Veeam, Microsoft 365 backup, disaster recovery planning
  • ServersHyper-V, VMware, hyperconverged storage, Linux, Docker
  • EndpointsIntune and Entra ID, mobile device management, Windows, macOS, Linux
  • VoiceTeams Voice, 3CX, Dialpad
  • AI and automationLocal LLMs, document assistants (RAG), agent pipelines, PowerShell and Bash

Credentials and the rest

  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
  • U.S. Navy veteran, Information Systems Technician (2006 to 2011)
  • B.S. Computer Science, in progress, American Military University
  • Red Bluff resident, fully remote for six years, so I understand rural internet firsthand
  • Supervised at home by Theo, Senior Cat

Tell me what's going on

A few lines is plenty. I'll reply with a time for a free remote call, and you'll have a real number before anything starts.

Email
help@chadfi.com

Chadfi IT runs alongside my day job, so I work evenings and weekends and I'll be straight with you about when I can get to it.

Book a call