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Engineering leadership
I lead engineering teams and run day-to-day DevOps: setting priorities, making architecture calls, reviewing code, and keeping production healthy. Teams that communicate well build better systems.
CIO & Head of Engineering at Speakeasy · CISSP
Chris Elkins
Engineering leader, technologist, and software builder.
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.
Currently
Details
CIO & Head of Engineering since 2026 Owner & VP of Technology
- Ryse Software since 2026
- Wire Safe Solutions since 2025
- Active DataComm since 2024
- Vitality South since 2021
What I do
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Software & SaaS
I design and build SaaS platforms and custom software, from the data model and APIs to billing, deployment, and the internal tools teams use every day.
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Infrastructure & security
Cloud infrastructure, Linux, networking, and security programs. As a CISSP, I treat security as part of the architecture, not a checklist at the end.
Selected initiatives
All initiatives-
Engineering leadership
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.
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Infrastructure
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.
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Business systems
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.
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Cloud
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.
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Security & compliance
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.
How I work
Understand the problem, build the right thing, and make it dependable.
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Operational simplicity
Fewer moving parts, well-understood tools, and systems that are easy to observe, debug, and hand off. Simple systems are the ones that stay up.
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Automate the repetitive work
If a task gets done by hand more than twice, it becomes a script, a pipeline, or a scheduled job, so people can spend their time on judgment.
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Security is part of the architecture
Least privilege, safe defaults, and audit trails are designed in from the start, not bolted on before an audit.
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Safe, incremental production changes
Small, reversible changes, observable rollouts, and a rollback plan before every deploy.
Contact
If you'd like to talk about engineering leadership, platform reliability, custom software, or the technology side of hospitality and nightlife, let's connect.