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 at heart — I like sitting at the intersection of technical depth and real customer problems. My background spans cloud infrastructure, reliability engineering, and building things from scratch.
My Journey
I started building websites because I loved creating things people actually use. That feeling stuck with me.
At IBM, I spent three years helping enterprise customers deploy cloud infrastructure across AWS, GCP, and IBM Cloud. I learned how to understand what they really needed, design solutions that would survive production, and guide teams through the whole process. The work I enjoyed most was when I could own it end to end: discovery, architecture, implementation, and making sure the team felt confident running it.
I took an SRE role at Prove AI to deepen my operational expertise. Owned reliability and SOC 2 compliance across four production Kubernetes clusters while maintaining 99.9% uptime. Made me better at customer-facing work because I've lived what they're dealing with.
Founded Sproutflow Studio in 2024 to stay close to what I love: building clean, modern websites for small businesses. Direct customer feedback, great UX, shipping something people enjoy using.
I'm looking for my next role in solutions engineering or customer-facing product work where I can combine technical depth with real customer impact.
Core Capabilities
Customer-Facing Technical Leadership
Discovery, architecture workshops, POC strategy, executive communication, stakeholder alignment
Cloud & Multi-Cloud Architecture
AWS / GCP / IBM Cloud architectures, migration planning, optimization, production readiness
Kubernetes & Platform Engineering
Kubernetes/OpenShift, multi-cluster patterns, networking/security primitives, delivery workflows
DevOps & Automation (IaC + CI/CD)
Terraform, GitOps, CI/CD automation, repeatable delivery frameworks
Security & Compliance Enablement
SOC 2 readiness, IAM/RBAC patterns, controls + evidence, security-conscious architectures
Web Development & Fullstack
Modern web development, fullstack applications, TypeScript/React/Next.js, production deployments
Professional Experience
Helping enterprise customers succeed through technical expertise, consultative problem-solving, and customer-focused solution delivery.
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
Prove AI
Owned production reliability, cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD for multi-cluster Kubernetes environments; sustained 99. 9% uptime while reducing deployment time by ~80%.
Founder / Technical Consultant
Sproutflow Studio
Built and deployed full-stack websites/platforms for small business clients using TypeScript, React, and Next. js.
Senior Solutions Engineer / Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
IBM
Led technical delivery for CenterPoint Energy’s 11-month SAP RISE evaluation ($10. 1M contract); ran daily architecture calls/workshops and built Terraform automation that cut environment provisioning from 2+ weeks to under 3 hours.
Solutions Engineer
IBM
Built and deployed OpenShift/Kubernetes environments for customer demos and constrained enterprise scenarios (private networking, restricted egress, security controls).
Software Engineer
Kortivity
Created, built, and launched to production a web crawler database extension that gathered future employee data from job profiles.
Software Engineering Bootcamp Graduate
General Assembly
Completed 5-month intensive full-stack web development bootcamp with on-the-job training for web development and software engineering.
Featured Projects
Real-world solutions I've architected, from infrastructure automation to platform engineering that powers production systems.