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Chris_Roberts_Cover_Letter.md (2355B)

      1 Chris Roberts  
      2 Lowell, AR  
      3 chris.roberts@learningunix.net  
      4 (417) 342-1868  
      5 
      6 Hiring Manager  
      7 Ozark-AG  
      8 
      9 Dear Hiring Manager,
     10 
     11 I'm applying for the IT Director position at Ozark-AG. The role covers the full technology function
     12 for a multi-site company, from help desk to infrastructure to vendor management and disaster
     13 recovery. That scope matches how I think about IT work and what I've been building toward.
     14 
     15 My professional title is in software quality assurance, not IT. I want to be upfront about that.
     16 What I can point to is what I've actually built and maintained outside of that role. I run a
     17 Proxmox VE homelab with KVM virtual machines and LXC containers. I manage ZFS storage with
     18 automated replication and backup pipelines targeting both local and remote destinations. I have a
     19 public-facing cloud server I provisioned with OpenTofu and configured end-to-end with Ansible:
     20 nginx as a reverse proxy, Gitea running in Docker for self-hosted Git, and fail2ban with firewall
     21 rules for security hardening. Everything is documented and provisioned through Ansible so the
     22 environment is repeatable and recoverable.
     23 
     24 That last part is deliberate. I design for recovery, not just uptime. Backup and disaster recovery
     25 are built into how I run infrastructure, not added after the fact. For a company managing
     26 technology across multiple locations, that orientation matters.
     27 
     28 There are two gaps I want to name directly. First, my hands-on experience is Linux-heavy. I hold
     29 a CompTIA A+ which covers Windows fundamentals, but I do not have enterprise Windows
     30 administration experience in Active Directory, Group Policy, or similar tools. If your environment is Windows-centric, that
     31 would require ramp-up time on my part. Second, I haven't managed vendor relationships at a
     32 company level. I've selected and integrated third-party services for my own infrastructure, but
     33 that is not the same as negotiating contracts or managing SLAs.
     34 
     35 What I bring is someone who will own the full scope of the role, build documented and repeatable
     36 systems, apply automation where it reduces risk and overhead, and learn what I don't already know
     37 methodically. My certifications and the work at learningunix.net reflect that habit.
     38 
     39 I'd welcome a conversation about whether my background fits what Ozark-AG needs. Thank you for
     40 your time.
     41 
     42 Sincerely,  
     43 Chris Roberts