2025 TLP Year in Review

2025 marked the 4th anniversary of the Technical Leadership Program (TLP), defined by record-breaking content production and expanded outreach and visibility. Under the guidance of the Technical Leadership Directorate (TLD), the program successfully bridged the gap between engineering talent and corporate strategy, delivering tangible value in employee retention, thought leadership, and business development support.

In 2025, the TLP achieved its highest engagement to date, with 18 members successfully completing all program goals and bonuses ranging from 5-6% of employees’ annual salaries. The program produced 22 blogs (a new record), 18 presentations, and 26 certifications completed or renewed. By fostering a culture of cross-contract collaboration and technical and leadership excellence, TLP continues to be a cornerstone of SMS’s commitment to its people and its mission.

2025 Program Highlights

• Participation: 18 TLP members (including TLDs) and 20 Tech Club members.
• Content Production: Produced 22 blogs for sms.com, the program’s best year for content.
• Strategic Impact: Contributors helped shape the SMS AI Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and improved TLP marketing/recruiting materials.
• Incentives: Bonuses paid out in November, ranging from 5-6% of employees salaries.

Strategic Impact & Growth

In 2025, TLP expanded its membership footprint across 10 different contracts/teams, further embedding itself across the company. Key achievements in this area included:

• Innovation Labs: Executed on the Chief Technical Officer’s (CTO) initiatives, including the deployment of FreeIPA, n8n, and Langflow instances in the SMS Lab, providing members with cutting-edge platforms for experimentation.
• Recruiting Integration: Worked closely with the Recruiting team to integrate TLP into the candidate lifecycle, ensuring every potential hire understands the benefit of SMS’s commitment to internal growth.
• Public Presence: Launched a dedicated TLP section on the SMS.com/culture website and a comprehensive TLP program overview blog to externally showcase our commitment to employee development.
• Job Market Visibility: Updated job posting profiles to highlight TLP as a key differentiator and benefit for top technical talent.
• Training Infrastructure: Expanded our DEAL (Drop Everything And Learn) Learning Path in Udemy, providing more access to curated educational content for all members.

Key Events & Sessions

All Hands Presentations

All Hands presentations remained a core part of the TLP in 2025, giving participants an opportunity to share expertise and strengthen their communication skills.

• January: Kickoff, Goals, and Notion
• February: Communicating Tech
• March: Kubernetes Backup and Restore & Introduction to RMF
• April: Aria Operations Manager
• May: Using AI to Create AWS Solutions & AI Fundamentals
• July: Azure Arc & Bootc
• August: CI/CD Pipelines
• September: GPU Benchmarks & AI Coding Agents
• October: Terraform Alternatives & AI for Beginners

Weekly Whiteboards

Weekly sessions provided a platform for technical deep dives and troubleshooting. In 2025, we held over 30 whiteboarding sessions covering a diverse range of topics:

Infrastructure, Platforms & Operations

• Cloudflare Tunnel Targets
• VMware Lessons Learned
• Virtualization Hosts Interface Drops & GPU Oversubscription
• Secure Remote Access with Cloudflare & AWS Solutioning
• Liqid Composable Infrastructure Vendor Demo

Security, Identity & Compliance

• Bridging OIDC to Legacy Authentication
• Secure Remote Work
• Phishing Incident Response
• Keycloak with Kubernetes & NGINX Ingress
• Risk Management Framework (RMF)
• ECS Container CVEs

AI & Innovation

• Hugging Face MCP Agent Application
• Hugging Face SmolAgent Framework
• Deploying Adam AI Agent
• Notion Agents
• LiteLLM & Notion SP Integration
• AI Chatbot Demo
• OpenCode & LMStudio
• UI TARS & Claude Code
• Fine-tuning Stable Diffusion with LoRAs

Developer Tools, Automation & Workflow

• Building a Web App using Cursor AI
• TMUX
• Automating File Formatting
• DaC with Mermaid & Drawio
• History of Web Apps

Content & Professional Development

Published Blogs

The 2025 blog slate reflected the full range of the TLP, demonstrating leadership and technical expertise. Collectively, these posts translated real experience into outward-facing thought leadership that reinforced SMS’s culture of innovation, learning, and excellence.

• AI Chips: Past, Present and Future
• AI’s Double-Edged Sword: Innovation, Risk, and Responsibility
• Automating Root Password Rotation using Red Hat Satellite, Ansible, and HashiCorp Vault
• AWS EKS Upgrades: Don’t Pay the Price for Outdated Clusters
• Building a Local Red Hat Lab for Learning and Testing: From Idea to Environment
• Deploying AWS Client VPN with Okta using Terraform
• Evaluating Privileged Access Management as a Core Security Control
• Getting Started with Langflow AI: Effortlessly Build Your Own AI Chatbot without Code!
• GCP Landing Zone 101: What It Is, Why You Need It, and How to Build One
• Next.js on AWS: How to Choose between ECS, Amplify and Lambda
• High Availability in an Illumio Environment
• Leading vs. Following: Innovations in Reasoning AI
• Leveraging EKS Add-Ons to Use Pod Identity (3 Part Series)
• Extending Kubernetes with Kyverno
• How Zero Trust and the New CSRMC is Transforming the DoD’s RMF
• The Accelerated AI Arms Race in Cybersecurity
• The Benefits of Knowledge Management
• The Importance of Layer One Troubleshooting
• The Spiderweb Effect: Why We Can’t Predict Technology’s Real Impact
• The Technical Leadership Program: Driving Innovation and Excellence at SMS

Training & Certifications

Training and certification progress remained a core part of the TLP in 2025, with participants investing in both deep technical expertise and broader professional development. Across cloud, security, AI, networking, and platform tools, these achievements reflected the program’s emphasis on continuous learning and practical growth.

• Cloud (AWS/Azure): AWS CP, AWS SAP, Azure Administrator, Azure Architect
• Kubernetes: CKA, CKS, CKAD
• AI: Cisco (DCAIE), DeepLearning.AI, Hugging Face SmolAgents
• Security: ISC2 CISSP, CompTIA Security+, Illumio
• Networking: CCIE Renewal (x3), CCNP, SD-WAN, Observability
• Misc: RHEL, Nutanix, Notion, ITIL4

2025 TLP Survey Feedback

We closed out the year by collecting feedback from participants to help shape the future of the program. The results highlight the program’s success in fostering collaboration and professional growth while pointing to areas for improvement in 2026.

Key Wins

• Collaboration: Participants cited TLP as a vital space for breaking down silos and exposing engineers to perspectives and technologies they wouldn’t encounter on their specific contracts.
• Skill Development: Writing blogs and delivering presentations were recognized as highly effective tools for building confidence and sharpening communication & technical skills.
• Incentives: The TIP bonus was overwhelmingly positive, validating leadership’s commitment to recognizing extra effort.

Areas for Improvement (2026 Focus)

• Program Administration: Implement a more structured operating model with staged milestones and interim checkpoints, and clarified rating criteria to improve consistency, transparency, and scalability.
• Cross-Program Collaboration: Room for growth in cross-contract communication, collaboration, and program awareness. Plans for more program outreach, peer guide training, and organized contract education whiteboard discussions.
• Increase Organization Value: We will strengthen the Business Development (BD) impact of TLP deliverables by aligning goals to upcoming proposals, making completed deliverables easy for capture teams to find and reuse, and tightening feedback loops between Engineering and BD.