Hello, I'm
Michael Lyons
Staff Technology Engineer
30+ years designing and operating enterprise platforms at scale — from mainframe to cloud-native. Specializing in AWS, infrastructure automation, event-driven systems, and SRE.
Experience
Staff Technology Engineer
State Farm · Lawrenceville, GA
- Established team expectations and architectural standards for multi-region AWS deployments across the Claims organization
- Created, piloted, and released a production-grade Terraform module for enterprise consumption; published an open-source module for industry-wide adoption
- Set vision and direction as a core member of the Tenant Visions and Architecture (TVA) team
- Coordinated organization-wide migration to SCALR, aligning multiple product teams and reducing operational overhead
- Rearchitected Claims Vault usage to increase security posture and adopt change management best practices
- Contributed the SSL Lambda Layer to PCAT for enterprise consumption
- Regularly mentor lead engineers; participated on P7 Software Engineer and P7 Infrastructure Engineer Promotion boards
- Selected for a special stability/reliability assignment for TP2 which averted a major platform incident
- Presented at the 2022 and 2023 Resiliency Summits and other technical venues
Senior Technology Engineer – ET Claims SRE
State Farm · Atlanta, GA
- SRE engineering with focus on AWS platform reliability, observability, and incident response for the Claims organization
- Developed a cross-platform (AWS/TP2) event-based monitoring solution using Terraform and Python
- Piloted AWS Deep Racer for automation experimentation
- Coordinated production implementation across multiple teams for initial go-live rollout
- Coached teams on AWS, Git, and product-team best practices
Technology Engineer – SRE Engineering
State Farm · Atlanta, GA
- Transitioned into SRE engineering, applying site reliability principles to Claims platform operations
- Established foundational monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes for AWS-based services
Lead Developer – Team Insomnia
State Farm (Volunteer Assignment) · Atlanta, GA
- Led Hack Day ATL events in 2020 and 2021, fostering innovation and cross-team collaboration
- Implemented GitOps and Terraform Enterprise for production deployment pipelines
- Developed CloudWatch queries for monitoring and reporting needs
- Collaborated across organizational boundaries as part of the Cross-Claims API Tribe
Software Developer Technical Lead – Digital Claims
State Farm · Greater Atlanta, GA
- Established and championed the Claims API Ecosystem, communicating methodologies to peers and leadership
- Introduced an industry-standard rules engine for authorization and eligibility automation
- Architected, developed, and implemented APIs within the Claims API Ecosystem
- Created governance regarding API Best Practices across Claims and the Systems Organization
- Migrated a high-traffic TP1 Java API to a Node.js AWS API backed by DynamoDB
- Established patterns for migrating Business Capability APIs from TP1 to TP2
Technical Architect
State Farm · Various
Over a 17-year tenure, progressed through increasingly complex architecture and engineering roles across multiple platforms and business domains:
- Solution Architect – Customer Communications: Designed on-demand and batch communications solutions, increasing integration speed and efficiency
- Lead Developer – Digital Claims: Established the Claims API Ecosystem and introduced industry-standard rules engine for authorization automation
- Designed and delivered enterprise solutions across mainframe, WAS, and emerging cloud platforms
- Built integration patterns for cross-platform data exchange and established development standards
Computer Programmer
CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation)
- Developed and maintained enterprise software systems for government and commercial clients
Computer Programmer
United States Air Force
- Developed and maintained mission-critical software systems supporting Air Force operations
Skills & Certifications
Cloud & Infrastructure
Languages
Platforms & Tools
Practices
Certifications
Notable Projects
Open-Source Terraform Module
Published a production-grade Terraform module to the State Farm GitHub repository for industry-wide consumption, enabling standardized infrastructure provisioning.
Cross-Platform Event Monitoring
Developed an event-based monitoring solution spanning AWS and TP2 platforms using Terraform and Python, providing real-time observability across heterogeneous environments.
Claims API Ecosystem
Established and championed the Claims API Ecosystem, introducing governance, best practices, and an industry-standard rules engine for authorization and eligibility.
SSL Lambda Layer
Contributed the SSL Lambda Layer to PCAT for enterprise consumption, streamlining SSL certificate management across AWS Lambda functions.