A Small Training Shop with a Narrow Focus
We've been teaching sysadmins since 2011. We're still in Portland. We're still small on purpose.
Our Story
Ironclad Ops Academy started in 2011 in a rented conference room off Burnside Street. Hal Ingersoll — still our lead instructor — had spent 15 years as a sysadmin in healthcare and financial services, and he kept seeing the same problem: the people responsible for keeping systems running had never been trained on the specific requirements of their industry. They were good at IT in general but unprepared for the compliance, documentation, and operational standards their sector demanded. So he started teaching, one cohort at a time.
The first year we ran six cohorts, all healthcare-focused, all in the Portland metro area. Word spread through the local IT community, and by 2014 we'd added financial services and manufacturing tracks. We moved into the Pearl District office we still work from today and brought on two more instructors. The growth was slow — intentionally. We'd rather run 20 good cohorts per year than 50 mediocre ones.
Thirteen years later, the mission hasn't changed: give system administrators the industry-specific skills their employers need but nobody else is teaching. We've graduated over 1,100 professionals, served 38 organizations across the Pacific Northwest, and maintained a 4.8 average rating from our alumni. We're not trying to be the biggest training operation in the country. We're trying to be the one that actually prepares your team for what they'll face on Monday morning.
What We Stand For
Industry First
Generic training produces generic skills. Every course we run is built around the specific compliance framework, uptime expectation, and operational reality of a particular industry. If we can't tie the material to something your team will actually encounter, we don't teach it.
Hands-On Always
Half of every session is lab work. Participants configure real systems, run simulated audits, and troubleshoot failures in environments that mirror what they'll face at work. We don't do slide decks with bullet points and call it training.
Small Cohorts
Every cohort is capped at 12 participants. That's not a marketing talking point — it's a constraint we impose because anything larger means the instructor can't give individual attention during lab sessions. It limits how fast we can grow. We're fine with that.
Honest Feedback
Every participant gets a written assessment at the end of their cohort. We tell them what they're good at and where they need to improve. It's not always comfortable, but it's more useful than a certificate that says "completed" and nothing else.
The Team
Four people. That's the whole operation.
Hal Ingersoll
Founder & Lead Instructor
Hal spent 15 years as a sysadmin in healthcare and financial services before founding Ironclad Ops in 2011. He still teaches at least half the cohorts each year and writes most of the lab exercises. He's the reason the healthcare track exists — he lived that compliance world for a decade and built the curriculum from firsthand experience.
Rachel Park
Senior Instructor
Rachel joined in 2016 after a career in manufacturing IT. She leads the manufacturing and logistics track and co-teaches the general IT operations cohorts.
David Fuentes
Instructor & Lab Engineer
David builds and maintains every lab environment we use. He also teaches the financial services track. Before joining us in 2019, he spent eight years managing infrastructure for a regional bank, where he went through six SOX audits — four clean, two with findings he personally fixed.
Amy Kessler
Operations Manager
Amy handles scheduling, enrollment, billing, and everything else that isn't instruction. She's been with us since 2014.
A Note on Availability
We're a small operation. We run about 20 cohorts per year, which means we sometimes have a 6–8 week waitlist for popular tracks. We'd rather keep groups small than scale too fast. If your timeline is tight, reach out early so we can work together on scheduling. And if we're booked, we'll tell you — we won't string you along with vague timelines.
Want to Work with Us?
Tell us about your team and what you're looking for. We'll get back to you within two business days with availability and pricing.
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