Chris Elkins

Engineering leader, technologist, and software builder.

Summary

I'm CIO and Head of Engineering at Speakeasy, where I lead engineering and run day-to-day DevOps for the platform behind venues, festivals, and live events. I also own four technology companies in Tupelo, Mississippi, and I work hands-on from business requirements down to code, databases, cloud infrastructure, networking, security, and production operations.

Experience

CIO & Head of Engineering, Speakeasy

Sep 2026 – Present

New York, NY · Remote

Lead the engineering team, from priorities and architecture to delivery
Run day-to-day DevOps across infrastructure, deployments, monitoring, and incident response
Build reliability, observability, and security into the platform by default

Owner & VP of Technology, Ryse Software

Jan 2026 – Present

Tupelo, MS

Founded the company and lead architecture, security, and delivery across every client platform
Built the ITP Virtual Career Expo (web, iOS, and Android) for 17 Northeast Mississippi counties, then redeployed it statewide in North Carolina
Built an LMS and business-planning platform for a CDFI, SMS/MMS shift broadcasting for a staffing firm, and a unified CRM and client portal

Owner & VP of Technology, Wire Safe Solutions

2025 – Present

Tupelo, MS

Set technical direction and standards for cabling, camera, and access control installations
Design network infrastructure for churches, property managers, manufacturers, healthcare providers, and commercial construction

Owner & VP of Technology, Active DataComm

Oct 2024 – Present

Tupelo, MS

Set technical direction and standards for managed services and support
Design networks, security, and backups for client businesses
Lead larger projects such as Microsoft 365 migrations and network rebuilds

Owner & VP of Technology, Vitality South

Jan 2021 – Present

Tupelo, MS

Lead the software development and cybersecurity teams
Build custom software and web applications, from data model to deployment
Run hosting, infrastructure, and security for client sites and systems, including PCI work

Before Vitality South, I worked in IT for companies across the U.S., then moved back to Tupelo to serve as IT Director at Journal, Inc. for five years.

Certifications

Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), ISC2

Feb 2023 – Feb 2029

CompTIA Security+

Mar 2022 – Mar 2031

All badges: credly.com/users/chriselkins

Selected initiatives

Live-experience platform and engineering. Leading engineering for Speakeasy's live-experience platform, owning architecture, production reliability, engineering process, and security while staying hands-on in the code.
Multi-tenant web hosting platform. Architected and operate a high-security, containerized Linux hosting platform for about 300 customer WordPress sites, with every tenant isolated, redundancy and failover built in, and performance tuned from nginx down to MySQL.
Custom-built CRM, operations tools and dashboard, recurring billing and financial systems. Built and integrated a custom CRM, operations tools and dashboard, and recurring billing and financial systems, with the CRM as the single source of truth and the heart that drives every other internal and external system.
AWS infrastructure modernization. Modernized production AWS infrastructure through right-sizing, cost optimization, security hardening, and automation with CloudFormation, while keeping production disruption to a minimum.
Security and SOC 2 readiness program. Led an organization-wide security and compliance program built on CIS Controls v8 and NIST CSF 2.0, using Vanta to reach SOC 2 control readiness with evidence that comes from how the systems actually run.

Also: Custom Debian routers and networking, Bitwarden deployment, Cloudflare security, MySQL migrations.

Technical profile

Languages: Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL
Web: Vue, Next.js
Data: MySQL
Cloud: AWS
Systems: Linux (Debian), Networking
Security: CISSP, Security+, SOC 2, PCI
Practice: Automation, Observability, CI/CD