Ben Hankins
Solutions Engineer translating complex business challenges into scalable technical solutions. I help enterprise teams move from "what if" to production with confidence.
About Me
Solutions Engineer and infrastructure specialist helping enterprise customers solve complex cloud and platform challenges.
My journey
Started in web development, then moved into Solutions Engineering at IBM when I realized I preferred solving problems with customers, not just for them.
Served as technical advisor for 12+ enterprise clients including CenterPoint Energy, AT&T, Cencora, and Pepsi. Led technical delivery for CenterPoint's 11-month SAP RISE evaluation—designed automation that cut environment provisioning by 85%, which helped close the $10.1M deal and expanded into a multi-year engagement.
After proving I could drive deals, I went deeper on infrastructure (promoted to Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, then SRE contract at Prove AI). Most SEs hand off to implementation teams after the sale closes. I wanted to own the full stack—POC to production.
At Prove AI, led SOC 2 compliance from 34% to 100% while maintaining 99.9% uptime. Also mentored 8 Solutions Engineers at IBM—3 earned promotions, 2 received performance awards.
Founded Sproutflow Studio in late 2024 to apply SE methodology to small businesses. Built my portfolio site as proof-of-concept, which landed my first paying client. Side venture, but reinforces the consultative approach I bring to Solutions Engineering.
What drives me: solving real problems for real teams. POCs that prove feasibility, architecture that avoids expensive mistakes, automation that lets engineers ship confidently.
Core Capabilities
Customer Engagement
Technical presentations, POC delivery, solution architecture, stakeholder management
Cloud & Multi-Cloud
AWS, GCP, IBM Cloud, Azure - architecture, migration, optimization
Container Platforms
Kubernetes, OpenShift, Docker, Helm, service mesh, microservices
DevOps & Automation
Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, infrastructure-as-code
Security & Compliance
IAM, RBAC, SOC 2, compliance frameworks, security controls
Observability & SRE
Monitoring, logging, alerting, SLO/SLI design, incident response
Professional Experience
Helping enterprise customers succeed through technical expertise, consultative problem-solving, and customer-focused solution delivery.
Site Reliability Engineer
Prove AI
Founder & CEO
Sproutflow Studio
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
IBM
Senior Solutions Engineer
IBM
Solutions Engineer
IBM
Web Developer
Kortivity
Featured Projects
Real-world solutions I've architected, from infrastructure automation to platform engineering that powers production systems.
Automated VPC Deployment (CenterPoint)
As a key client project at IBM, I led the complete automation of a complex VPC & VSI deployment using Terraform, drastically reducing the provisioning time from over 2 weeks to just 2.7 hours.
Terraform Infra Platform (Prove AI)
Production-level Terraform automation used to build the entire ProveAI infrastructure. This project showcases advanced IaC patterns, modular design, and reusable deployment strategies.
DevOps Studio
An open-source learning tool for new DevOps and Infra Engineers, providing hands-on labs, tutorials, and real-world scenarios to accelerate skill development in a sandboxed environment.
Second Line Psychiatry
Professional telehealth website for a mental health private practice in New Orleans. Built to showcase services, provider information, and enable online consultation scheduling. Modern, accessible design focused on patient experience and HIPAA compliance considerations.
Nealy Event Decor
Launching a small business owner's first online presence with a modern, fast, and elegant website. Built with Next.js and Tailwind CSS, featuring a custom CMS for easy content updates. Client is thrilled with progress and we're finalizing for launch.
Sproutflow Studio Website
Personal Portfolio
This site! A Solutions Engineering portfolio built with Next.js, featuring glassmorphism UI, project showcases, and a customer-first narrative. Serves as both my professional presence and proof-of-concept for Sproutflow's capabilities.
Enterprise Cloud Delivery (IBM)
Architected and automated cloud environments for major enterprise clients, resulting in a $10.1M SAP RISE deal. Reduced deployment times by 85% using Terraform and custom automation.
Terraform AWS Modules
Created reusable Terraform modules for AWS infrastructure provisioning, including VPC, EKS, RDS, and security groups with best practice configurations.
Python & Go SRE Utilities
A powerful CLI tool featuring useful Python automation scripts, bash utilities, and performant Go system code for common SRE and DevOps tasks, designed to boost daily productivity.
AT&T Watsonx.ai Integration
Enhanced customer service capabilities for AT&T by integrating IBM's watsonx.ai into their Connected Solutions platform, enabling advanced, AI-driven analytics and support.
Python PR Summary Bot
Developed Python scripts to summarize Terraform 'plan' output and post clean summaries in Pull Request comments, improving transparency and reducing review friction for the engineering team.
deployment-patterns
Reference implementations of blue/green, canary, and GitOps flows with scripts and concise guides.
gcp-gke-gitops
GitOps-driven GKE deployment framework using Argo CD and Terraform with environment overlays.
mlops-sre-mini
Train a model, serve via FastAPI, deploy with Helm, monitor with Prometheus/Grafana, and automate CI/CD.
Platform Engineering Lab
Comprehensive platform engineering experiments and patterns, showcasing modern platform tools, service mesh implementations, and developer experience optimization techniques.
Helm Charts
Production-ready Helm charts for common applications and services, featuring best practices for templating, values management, and release automation.
GitHub Action Templates
Reusable GitHub Actions workflows and templates for common CI/CD patterns, infrastructure deployment, and automated testing pipelines.