Ales L.

As a freelance Senior DevOps Consultant at IBM for a European Union Agency, I operated in a highly secure, air-gapped environment, managing classified systems. I led automation and DevOps initiatives for a large-scale OpenShift platform with over 400 nodes, significantly enhancing deployment efficiency and GitOps adoption while utilising Ansible, Python, and Bash to ensure compliance with stringent security requirements.

- I spearheaded the automation of release and deployment workflows in a private cloud environment, drastically improving speed and reliability. My work involved migrating playbooks, roles, and templates from Ansible Tower to Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) while ensuring compliance with fully qualified collection names (FQCNs) and creating custom execution environments (EEs) for containerised automation.

- I implemented a GitOps Agent for AAP Controller Configuration as Code, enabling automated synchronisation of Ansible Controller objects based on repository configurations via GitHub webhooks. Additionally, I designed complex, multi-step operational workflows that covered environment cleanup, Helix cluster component recreation, Kafka topic management, and OpenShift object lifecycle management across approximately 100 environments.

- These automation enhancements reduced multi-day manual operations to just a few hours across multiple AAP clusters and OpenShift environments. I integrated the Ansible Automation Platform with Deliana (formerly Thycotic) Secret Server to enhance secure credential management.

- Moreover, I managed deployment tasks and platform troubleshooting. My collaboration with infrastructure and application teams focused on refining deployment procedures, developing interventions, and continuously improving automation coverage within the classified environment.

Stack: OpenShift | Ansible Automation Platform | ArgoCD | Helm | Kafka | Bash | Python | RHEL | VMware

Engaged as a freelance Senior Back End Developer at The Marcom Engine, where I spearheaded the design, development, and maintenance of scalable backend services utilising Node.js, Python, and microservices architecture. Successfully delivered a greenfield backend platform from the ground up while promoting software quality enhancements, testing best practices,

and implementing stringent coding standards across numerous projects. Collaborated effectively with DevOps teams and stakeholders to improve CI/ CD pipelines, documentation, and code review processes.

• Architected and implemented a greenfield backend application using Node.js and Python, resulting in a scalable and maintainable solution that aligns with business objectives.

• Ensured optimal performance, availability, and security by designing robust REST APIs, integrating best security practices, and enforcing API standards.

• Championed and executed a testing strategy that elevated code coverage across all projects to over 80% within three months, meeting quality benchmarks.

• Led initiatives to eliminate sensitive data from Git repositories, cleaning commit history and preventing credential leaks through BFG Repo-Cleaner and git filter-repo.

• Established and enforced code review guidelines and best practices to standardise code quality, enhance maintainability, and encourage knowledge sharing.

• Partnered with DevOps teams to optimise CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, SonarQube, and Nexus, ensuring continuous quality monitoring and seamless deployments.

• Integrated third-party services and APIs, working closely with partners to achieve seamless backend system integration.

• Mentored junior developers through rigorous code reviews, pair programming sessions, and technical guidance, promoting skill advancement and engineering excellence.

Contracted as a freelance Cloud Engineer at Graylog, I was instrumental in the transformation of Graylog into a scalable cloud-native platform. Working within the international Cloud Engineering team, we designed, automated, secured, and optimised infrastructure and operations across AWS, Kubernetes, and distributed systems. My leadership in DevOps automation, monitoring solutions, and infrastructure hardening ensured a reliable, secure, and efficient service delivery at Graylog.

• Architected and implemented infrastructure-as-code solutions using Terraform and Ansible to provision and manage AWS cloud resources, ensuring repeatability, scalability, and compliance.

• Engineered Ansible automation for OpenSearch (Amazon Elasticsearch) snapshot management, shard replication monitoring, and critical data protection workflows.

• Developed monitoring and alerting solutions using Prometheus and Grafana, including monitoring Elasticsearch/OpenSearch metrics and automating the detection of critical configuration issues.

• Led remediation efforts for security vulnerabilities, including log4j2 remote code execution (RCE) mitigation and verification of exploit exposure.

• Upgraded MongoDB (Percona fork) replica set cluster from version 3.6 to 4.4 using a custom Ansible playbook, enabling staged, in-place upgrades with zero downtime.

• Contributed to the migration of Graylog Cloud infrastructure from AWS EC2 to Kubernetes-based deployments using Argo Workflows, improving scalability and deployment consistency.

• Implemented, configured, and deployed an existing Okta Terraform module to automate the provisioning of Okta OAuth applications, user groups, API users, and initial admin users, enabling identity integration with Graylog instances.

• Reduced operational overhead by deprecating APT repositories, transitioning to direct deb package distribution via AWS S3 and GitHub assets.