In his first leadership function, Sharpley was a Director of Security Operations in the U.S. Air Force. Afterwards, he became the Deputy Inspector General for Investigations and Inspections at the United States Department of Energy.[5]
He then became Deputy Inspector General for Investigations at the Federal Housing Finance Authority[6] and Deputy Special Inspector General for Investigations[7] for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP). In this capacity, he was responsible for the coordination of combined teams of special agents, investigators, analysts, and attorney advisors who as experienced financial and corporate fraud investigators conducted criminal investigations into persons in or out of government who misused or even stole TARP funds.[8] He was part of an investigation into the collapse of a proposed partnership between Colonial BancGroup, Florida's sixth-largest bank, and a mortgage lender, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, based in Ocala, Florida, that could have brought the entities more than $500 million in federal bailout money.[9]
Central Intelligence Agency
Since July 2012 he has been Deputy Inspector General at the CIA,[10] becoming for a surprisingly long time the acting successor of Inspector GeneralDavid Buckley[11] who retired in January 2015,[12] as Shirley Woodward, nominated by President Barack Obama in June 2016, was pending her Senate approval.[13]
In 2016, Sharpley uploaded a report about the CIA's earlier torture practices to the office's internal computer network and then destroyed the hard disk, following standard protocol. Another employee then inadvertently deleted the software copy from the server.[14]
On January 3, 2017, without having held any hearing, the outgoing Senate sent Woodward's nomination back to the President,[15] enabling Sharpley to stay Acting Inspector General. On September 5, 2017, new President Donald Trump nominated him to the post;[4] in October 2017, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing on Sharpley's nomination.[16] After failing to receive further consideration in the Senate, President Trump withdrew the nomination on July 23, 2018.[4]
Sharpley left as acting inspector general of the CIA in August 2018.[17]
Private sector
In January 2019, he was named managing director of the federal practice at the data management services provider Next Phase Solutions, LLC