Cover Note

I’m Aurelian (aka Oreo), a self-taught SRE/DevOps Specialist working for EvBox with experience in all aspects of the modern technology stack. Everything I know is from solving real-world problems at work and building my own lab at home, which I’m incredibly passionate about. My goal is to keep learning and expand my skill set since every new tool, language or system I master empowers me to face bigger and more complex problems in the future.

Experiences

SRE/Cloud Engineer

EvBox | Amsterdam
2022 -

  • Own the implementation and hosting of HashiCorp Vault.
  • Design and implement MTLS for inter cluster Authorization using Vault PKI and Certman.
  • Perform as a scrum master.
  • Contribute to infrastructure as code (IaC), written in Terraform HCL.
  • Design API Gateway solutions using Kubernetes native solutions.
  • Created simple Kubernetes operators.
  • Create GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
  • Implement Manifest driven IaC using config connector and ArgoCD.
  • Design and implement MTLS for inter cluster Authorization using Vault PKI and Cert Manager.
  • Create strategies to migrate away from static credentials.
  • Contribute to GCP cloud implementation.

Site Reliability Engineer

SprintHive | Cape Town
2019 - 2022

  • Own the infrastructure as code (IaC), written in Terraform HCL.
  • Maintain multiple Kubernetes clusters on-site and in the cloud.
  • Architect multi-cloud infrastructure in Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS.
  • Create application Helm Charts.
  • Write technical documentation
  • Develop Go utilities to assist engineers.
  • Collaborating with multiple engineering teams asynchronously.
  • Maintain Kong (Nginx) ingress controllers and integrations with Google HTTPS Load Balancers.
  • Own COE’s (Correction of Error) documents.
  • Use tools such as the HashiCorp Vault to handle secret management.
  • Create operational Dashboards in Grafana and Kibana (Elasticsearch)
  • Manage Prometheus deployments.
  • Define SLO (service-level objective) for services.
  • Maintain infrastructure responsible for the dynamic creation of SSL certificates.
  • Take part in both Red and Blue teams during game days.

Acting Software Development Engineer

Amazon Web Services | Remote
2019 - 2019

  • Contribute to the development of an existing Java case management system.
  • Automation parsing and classification of abuse email notifications into pre classified cases.
  • Creation of Continuous deployment pipelines.
  • Work in Java, Python, Ruby.
  • Create Design Documents for new features.
  • The deployment and maintenance of Linux hosts.

Technical Customer Support Specialist

Amazon Web Services | Cape Town
2016 - 2019

  • Built Automation to process 14% of email messages per week, reducing the need for extra staff.
  • Built Scripts in Python, Java and JS to eliminate repetitive work for Anti Abuse agents.
  • In recognition of my scripting skills and subject expertise, I was sent to Seattle to work with the EC2 Core Team.
  • Deployed and created serverless tooling to run data analysis on security trends using data from SQL and other data sources.
  • Built early warning systems to identify malicious actors affecting AWS users.
  • Built reporting systems to consolidate customer feedback into actionable data.
  • Collaborate with various remote and local teams to make improvements.
  • Worked all escalated case types - List bombing, DDoS, Bad Actors, Third-Party Blacklisting, Law/Government Enforcement requests, etc.
  • First responder in high-impact security/abuse events to secure or mitigate the impact
  • Creating of Standard Operating Procedures, best practices and tooling improvements.

IT support Manager

HX Systems | Somerset West
2015 - 2016

  • Ownership of internal IT infrastructure.
  • Ownership of the core network, built on MikroTik and Ubiquiti hardware.
  • Provide direct support to the Technical Director.
  • Management of Customer service desk.
  • Architecture of a WISP (wireless Internet service provider) network.
  • Evaluates vendor supplied software.
  • Moving bare-metal hosting to a virtual system powered by VMWare.
  • Remain on continuous standby for network failures.

Field Technican

HX Systems | Somerset West
2013 - 2015

On call technician operating as a general IT specialist supporting home and SME customers with network infrastructure and server deployments.

Projects

Personal blog and documentation To improve my writing skills and share the knowledge I have gained from the community, I have created a simple web page to publish my thoughts and guides.
Shuttleworth Tech Infrastrcture A very simple IaC(Infrastructure as code) manifest written in Terraform HCL that defines various resources that make up Shuttleworth Techs public infra stack.
My Resume Just a simple resume created using a GoLang project called Hugo, built and hosted using Gitlabs CI-CD tooling. The best thing is it’s both free and zero maintenance.
HomeLab A Kubernetes cluster running on common consumer hardware that hosts a variouse experiments and my home media stack.

Skills & Technology

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Config Connector)

Containerization (kubernetes, Docker)

Cloud Architecture (Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, Azure)

Continuous Deployment (Helm, Ansible, Kubernetes)

Scripting and Automation (Shell/Bash, Golang, Python)

API Gateway, Ingress and Mesh networking (Nginx, Kong, Traefik, Apigee, Ambassador)

Secret & Certificate Managment (Vault, PKI, Cet-Manager, Lets Encrypt)

Continuous Integration (Gitlab CI, Github Actions)