Brett Nielsen
leaves things better
than he found them.

When I joined as an accounting clerk, almost every process was manual. Physical invoices moved between folders. Computers weren't connected to Azure AD, if a local admin password was forgotten, the machine was a brick. There were no VLANs, no MDM, no email archiving, no cybersecurity, no dashboards, no documentation. The custom operations software had no product manager. If you were sick, you couldn't work, remote access didn't exist.

• Designed and deployed full Azure AD, Autopilot/Intune MDM infrastructure, automating device provisioning so new hires were fully configured, role-specific, and operational before their first day, without IT being in the room
• Automated the AP/AR workflow end-to-end: eliminated physical invoice routing, implemented OCR-based invoice capture via Bill.com, integrated with accounting software, and eventually eliminated 75% of the AP clerk position through automation
• Built company-wide intranet with role-based access control, giving each department a structured, permissioned home for documents, eliminating the desktop chaos and enabling remote work for the first time
• Took over product management of GM2 (now Allgrounds), introduced user stories, sprint planning, and quarterly roadmaps signed off by the CEO, cutting mid-sprint pivots and reducing development cycle time by 30%
• Built executive dashboards integrating operations, revenue, invoicing, and budget data, giving leadership real-time visibility across the organization for the first time
• Developed 50+ SOPs and governance frameworks that survived my departure and scaled with the company

The CEO asked me to help spin off an internal ERP tool into a standalone SaaS product targeting the landscaping industry. The software had been running since 2015 but was clunky, had no real product owner, and couldn't scale. I was tasked with managing the product and overseeing a globally distributed development team of 15+ across the US, Ukraine, Turkey, India, and Brazil.

• Introduced quarterly roadmap planning with executive sign-off, locking priorities for 90-day cycles so leadership felt in control while the team could execute without constant disruption
• Built Monday goal-setting, Wednesday check-in, and Friday close-out cadence across 5 countries and multiple time zones using Teams, ClickUp, Jira, Notion, and SharePoint
• Shipped invoicing capability within the platform, eliminating the need for subcontractors to mail or email invoices, removing 30-40 hours/week of manual staff processing
• Built CSV bulk import, allowing new contract wins with thousands of sites to be onboarded in minutes instead of hundreds of hours of manual entry
• Developed contract template system, private/public notes, YouTube integration, and redesigned navigation, systematically removing the friction that made the old platform hard to adopt

As a subcontractor to a prime contractor on the Red Hill program, I stepped into a program that had already started without proper program management structure. Milestones were undefined, timelines were unclear, and the prime contractor was struggling to drive software delivery. The program required navigating civilian, military, and contractor teams across Navy, DLA, and NASA with strict confidentiality requirements.

• Established program governance framework from scratch, defined milestones, delivery timelines, and accountability structures that gave leadership visibility into where the program actually stood
• Led NIST 800-60 and RMF compliance discovery and mapping across a 6-month roadmap to support software application hosting on DLA infrastructure
• Coordinated cross-branch stakeholders including Navy and DLA, maintaining strict confidentiality and delivery accountability in a high-stakes environment
• Began scoping a multi-branch chemical inventory consolidation initiative to unify siloed databases across government branches, demonstrating the ability to operate at the intersection of technical complexity and organizational ambiguity