Kyle Dunkerley
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Infrastructure leader · Melbourne

Kyle Dunkerley

Kyle
Dunkerley

I build capable teams and dependable infrastructure.

Associate Manager, Infrastructure Services · DXC Technology

Path · scope grows with every step
  1. 2007LAN AdministratorKwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
  2. Mar 2011NOC to on-site supportProphecy Networks, NZ
  3. 2018Microsoft Solutions SpecialistProphecy Networks, NZ
  4. Aug 2019Systems EngineerLANtech / Spark, NZ
  5. 2021 to 2026WinTel Admin → Team LeadDXC Technology, Melbourne
  6. 2026 → nowAssociate ManagerDXC Technology
Kyle Dunkerley
What I’m looking for

People. Platform. Direction.

An internal infrastructure or IT operations leadership role in Melbourne.

Location

Melbourne

Hybrid or remote. Full work rights in Australia.

The work

An estate with room to improve.

Set a practical roadmap, make operations dependable and help engineers take ownership.

Experience

Leading since 2021

People development alongside delivery and escalations.

Longer term

Broader technology leadership

Grow into senior IT management and, eventually, CIO responsibility.

What the team says

“Even routine or seemingly boring tasks often turn into valuable challenges that push us to learn, grow, and improve our skills.”

A member of my team

Start a conversation

Tell me about your team.

Four weeks’ notice. Connect or message on LinkedIn.

Kyle Dunkerley
Hybrid estate

Dependable today. Easier to run tomorrow.

Server operations, senior escalations and lifecycle work across Australia and New Zealand.

Estate

200+

Servers across Azure and on-premises.

People relying on it

5,000+

Across Australia and New Zealand.

Operating rhythm

Change. Recover. Learn.

  • CAB-reviewed changes
  • Timed DR failover every six months
  • Written incident reviews
Capacity decision

4 → 2 vCPUs

Right-sized three Azure VMs when the workload dropped. No budget, still cost-aware.

Next improvements

Less routine upkeep

Exploring managed file shares, Server Core and modern app delivery. Proposals only.

Kyle Dunkerley
Team

Build a team that owns the work.

Clear priorities, practical mentoring and trust earned through follow-through.

One team

4

Two on site. Two in the Philippines.

My role

Set direction

Prioritise, take the hardest escalations, run meetings when my manager is away.

A real progression

Service desk → ownership

  • Joined without server experience
  • About a year working side by side
  • Now owns patching end to end
How we work

Visible priorities. Living notes.

Weekly sprints, shared Kanban, runbooks and documentation the team can update.

What the team says

“No matter how busy things get, he takes the time to listen, share his knowledge, and help others succeed.”

Ray, DXC

“Kyle is a professional, supportive, and dependable colleague and team lead who is always willing to help the team.”

Marvin, DXC

Kyle Dunkerley
AI & toolkit

Give engineers more reach.

I’m pro AI where it helps people investigate faster, build better and take on harder work.

Working rule

Draft. Understand. Test.

The engineer challenges the answer and owns the result.

Identity & compute

The foundations

Automation & visibility

Tools with a purpose

Platform foundations

Enable the next step.

Kubernetes test environment for SAP. Power Platform production handover.

Kyle Dunkerley
Credentials

Learning that comes back to the team.

Azure architecture and administration, built on a Windows Server foundation.

Azure Solutions Architect Expert

AZ-305

Renewed through October 2027.

Azure Administrator Associate

AZ-104

Renewed through October 2027.

Fundamentals

AZ-900

March 2024.

Always learning

Certified since 2009

Fifteen years of Microsoft certification, from Windows Server 2003 to Azure.

Education

IT Networking

Two-year diploma, Varsity College. Completed in 2006.

Community recognition

Windows Insider MVP · 2016 to 2018

Insider since 2014, still active. SeniorNet adviser, 2017 to 2019.

Kyle Dunkerley
Selected work

Decisions that changed the work.

Choose a story: the trade-off, my responsibility and what happened next.

Kyle Dunkerley
How I think and lead

Build capability. Reduce dependence.

Better infrastructure leaves the team more capable of running it.

Responsibility

The buck stops here.

I own the direction, back the team and help put things right.

What the team says

“He leads by example, maintains a positive attitude, and is always ready to lend a helping hand.”

A member of my team

Communication

Call when it matters.

Make space for questions when a problem is urgent or tangled.

Trade-offs

Explain the extra work.

Server 2025 meant more app testing. I made the lifecycle case and took the pushback.

Kyle Dunkerley
Beyond the day job

Different interests. The same care.

Community, conversations, software and music. Each worth doing properly.

The XboxCastSince 2017

Make room for conversation.

A gaming and technology podcast. I rebuilt its website off WordPress.

Southlight I/O2026

Build the idea.

My privacy-first software studio, founded in 2026 and built with AI-assisted development.

Board service2023 to 2025

Southern Cross Church

Shared decisions on finances, remuneration, equipment and events.

Writing

The personal side

Essays and projects.

Discipline

75 Hard

Completed three times.

Kyle Dunkerley
Made By Humans

Music with energy. Room to create.

My independent instrumental rock and metal project, separate from Southlight I/O.

Five-track EP

InstruMETAL

Hope, tension, struggle and victory. An energetic alternative to lo-fi.

Listen

Apple Music

Made By Humans artist page.

Listen

Spotify

Made By Humans artist page.

The sound

Heavy meets cinematic.

  • Guitars and drums
  • Electronic textures
  • Space to work or create
First single

Victory Spurs Us Onwards

The feeling of a hard-won finish.

The story & creator use

Why I made it

The introduction and intended use for creative work.

Kyle Dunkerley
Career & perspective

Choosing the difficult move.

South Africa to New Zealand to Melbourne. Starting again and taking on more responsibility.

2007 · South Africa

LAN Administrator

Hands-on support for 200+ lab PCs.

March 2011 · New Zealand

Prophecy Networks

Started as a NOC agent, answering the phones, then moved on site at Napier Port.

2013 to 2018 · Napier Port

One role. Growing scope.

Level 1 to level 3, PowerShell admin of AD and Microsoft 365, some Azure. No new title.

2018 to 2019 · Prophecy

Microsoft Solutions Specialist

Operational experience informing identity and access solutions.

August 2019 · LANtech

Earn the client’s trust.

Systems Engineer, later Senior, with no formal promotion. Statements of Work.

2021 → now · Melbourne

Engineer → Lead → Manager

DXC from January 2021; team lead that August; Associate Manager in 2026.

Kyle Dunkerley
PIR-01 · Team capability

Rebuild around the engineers.

Staffing changes brought Windows infrastructure into a wider end-user computing group.

The team today

4 engineers

On-site and offshore delivery.

The outcome

Ownership grows.

No server background to running patching end to end, in about a year.

Starting point

Build a working team.

Initially one on-site and two offshore engineers, with server capability to develop.

What I introduced

A shared direction

Sprints, Kanban, living documentation and mentoring in Azure and IaC.

The hard part

Earn trust through delivery.

A methodical roadmap and follow-through mattered more than my title.

What the team says

“One of the most dependable and professional colleagues I have had the privilege of working with.”

A member of my team

Kyle Dunkerley
PIR-02 · Business separation

Move the estate. Keep the business moving.

New infrastructure, a new domain and a deadline across Australia and New Zealand.

Physical hosts moved

50+

Virtual machines moved

~100

My remit

Delivery end to end

Standards, installation, outage windows, cutovers, decommissioning. Not procurement.

Build

Agree the standards.

Prepare the new estate while the old stays in use.

Move

Join up the timetable.

Coordinate stakeholders and planned outage windows.

Finish

Retire what we replaced.

Complete operational cleanup as part of the delivery.

Kyle Dunkerley
PIR-03 · Automation

Readable is maintainable.

Automation improves an estate when more than one person can safely change it.

The change

ARM → Bicep

Reusable deployments, with backup and DR modules.

The result

Knowledge beyond the author.

Consistent deployments and a clearer route for junior engineers to maintain them.

Before

One person’s memory

Complex scripts concentrated knowledge and made changes harder.

After

Shared understanding

Simpler PowerShell, documentation and teaching.

The design test

Can the next engineer support it?

Readability is part of the engineering.

Kyle Dunkerley
PIR-04 · Incident recovery

Restored. Still locked out.

A mission critical Server 2012 VM in Azure, past end of support, came back from backup but could no longer authenticate.

Service restored

~3am

Recovery completed after a long incident.

The lesson

The VM is only one part.

Restoring authentication was what returned the service to use.

Investigate

Work through the trust.

The restore went back far enough that LAPS and admin passwords had changed, and the domain trust was broken.

Recover

Reset the computer account.

Used the Azure run command and PowerShell to reset it and rejoin the domain.

Communicate

Stay on the bridge.

Keep stakeholders informed.

Follow through

Record the cause.

Documented the root cause and recovery in the incident report.

Kyle Dunkerley
PIR-05 · Migration · April to May 2025

When the cutover changed.

I led planning, cutovers and health checks for a three-week Hyper-V to VMware move.

Scope

21 VMs

Five Hyper-V hosts to four VMware hosts, production and DR.

SQL server

3.5 TB

Total server storage across five drives.

The interruption

~6 hours on paper

The conversion locked the database at about 20%. Production stopped.

Option 1 · Stop

An uncertain release

Lose scan progress with no guarantee the database lock releases.

Option 2 · DR

Reconcile later

New orders would need merging. The DBA identified a risk of missed orders.

Option 3 · Chosen together

Complete the migration.

With the site manager and DBA: adjust, continue, finish. About four hours saved.

  • Next: rebuilt two smaller database servers rather than converting them.
Kyle Dunkerley
PIR-06 · Practical AI

AI finds a pattern. Engineers make the call.

A useful starting point for an investigation, backed by people who can challenge the answer.

Copilot analysis

1,081 reports

Backup reports reviewed for repeated failures.

My contribution

Set up the investigation.

Asked an engineer to verify the findings and the cause.

Team delivery

A justified change

The engineer fixed a firewall issue; subsequent results showed successful backups.

A separate patch review

Some findings did not hold up.

The team found superseded updates and software that wasn’t installed.

What the team says

“He encourages us to share ideas and explore new technologies that help resolve issues more efficiently.”

A member of my team

The responsibility

Understand. Test. Own it.

A confident generated answer is the beginning of engineering work.