Jacob Shah
Systems Administrator & IT Consultant
IT infrastructure specialist based in Owensboro, Kentucky. I design, secure, and manage the systems that keep businesses running — from endpoint to enterprise.
Get in TouchWork Experience
Henderson Water Utility
IT Systems Administrator
Feb 2025 — Mar 2026- My most recent role was also one of the most technically demanding. As the sole IT administrator for a municipal water and wastewater utility, I was responsible for everything: servers, networking, endpoints, SCADA systems, compliance, and security across six facilities. No team to hand things off to.
- The work I'm most proud of here sits at the intersection of security and infrastructure. I built a custom threat intelligence pipeline that pulls live attack indicators from MS-ISAC feeds and pushes them automatically into Palo Alto firewall policy, at zero recurring cost, fully automated. I also identified and helped contain an active intrusion attempt from a known threat actor network, coordinating response with an external SOC and implementing geo-based access restrictions to protect critical municipal applications.
- On the operational side: I deployed Jamf Pro MDM for iPads across all six sites, led an Active Directory security audit, implemented InvGate as the organization's first real ITSM platform, built out a complete IT documentation library in Outline, and managed a 27+ server environment running VMware vSphere, Windows Server, and Ubuntu. I also diagnosed and resolved two serious SCADA incidents, one involving Windows Update bypassing Group Policy and shutting down HMI workstations at water treatment plants, and another involving a cascade failure in AVEVA Historian data collection. Both required deep forensic work and formal incident documentation for plant leadership.
Lucid Integration
Owner
Oct 2020 — Jan 2025- I founded Lucid Integration as a managed service provider after years of noticing that small and mid-sized organizations, especially in healthcare, were consistently underserved by IT vendors who treated them as an afterthought. At its peak, Lucid supported around 300 users across 12 clients in 9+ states, with a small helpdesk team handling Tier 1 through Tier 3 support through NinjaOne RMM and Freshservice.
- The work I found most meaningful was the security side. I built and managed security stacks for each client, including SentinelOne EDR, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Avanan email security, and handled incident response when things went sideways. I also managed Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace deployments, migrations, and ongoing administration, with HIPAA compliance requirements threading through most of the healthcare client work.
- One project that stands out: supporting a medical laboratory client through a rapid expansion from 4 to 12 locations during the COVID-19 PCR testing surge. We built out network infrastructure, cabling, and endpoints for each new site under real time pressure. It's the kind of work that either breaks you or builds you, and we delivered.
Wachter
A/V Field Engineer
Feb 2020 — Sep 2020- A deliberate detour into the A/V world, where I got to work on large-scale commercial projects including conference systems, houses of worship, and broadcast environments using Crestron, Biamp, Atlona, and Dante-networked audio. I developed bid proposals and RFIs for projects up to $2M, used AFMG EASE for acoustic modeling, and produced full project documentation including one-line drawings and system schematics. Good work, good skills, and it reinforced that my home is on the infrastructure side.
Lieberman Technologies
Information Systems Engineer
Dec 2019 — Feb 2020- A brief MSP role where I delivered Tier 2 support, managed PC rollouts, maintained server and SAN infrastructure, and worked on Group Policy optimization and automation for client environments. Short tenure, meaningful experience.
Springs Medical Lab
IT Director
Jun 2016 — Nov 2019- I joined Springs Medical Lab as a Systems Administrator when it was a single-location medical lab, and left as IT Director overseeing IT operations across 11 locations and 250+ users. That arc, building the IT department as the company grew, is the experience I'm most shaped by.
- As IT Director, the work shifted toward leading people, managing vendors, maintaining HIPAA compliance, and solving genuinely hard problems, including engineering Lantronix device server integrations between clinical analyzers and three separate LIS platforms over IPSec VPN. That one took real work to get right.
Springs Medical Lab
Systems Administrator
May 2013 — May 2016- As Systems Administrator, I built the infrastructure from scratch: site-to-site IPSec VPN for thin-client LIS access, Proxmox virtualization, FreeNAS-backed storage, and eventually led migrations from on-premises Exchange to Microsoft 365 and analog PBX to hosted VoIP.
Advanced Engineering
Controls Engineer Intern
May 2015 — Aug 2015- Where my interest in industrial systems first got hands-on. I provided technical support for Allen-Bradley and Siemens automation systems, troubleshot PLC programs and control circuits, and designed HMI user interfaces. It planted a seed that came full circle at Henderson Water Utility a decade later.
About Me
I'm Jacob Shah, an IT professional with nearly 15 years of experience in systems administration, cybersecurity, and infrastructure management. I've built and led IT operations across healthcare, municipal government, and small business environments, from standing up the first IT department at a growing medical laboratory to managing critical water treatment infrastructure for a public utility. My work spans Windows and Linux server administration, enterprise networking, firewall and security policy management, endpoint protection, mobile device management, and compliance frameworks including HIPAA and CIS Controls. I'm the founder of Lucid Integration, an IT consultancy specializing in HIPAA compliance and cybersecurity for healthcare practices in western Kentucky. I believe technology should be invisible when it's working right. My job is making sure it stays that way.
