Lead Devops Cloud Engineer

Marius Akaninyene Utong

*** ***** ***, *********, *** York 14613 585-***-**** *********@*****.*** www.linkedin.com/in/akaninyene-utong-36a961131

Profile

I have over 10 years of expertise in DevOps Engineer/Cloud Engineer and Architect and System Administrator, I excel in ensuring the reliability, availability, and peak performance of complex, large-scale systems. My broad skill set includes rigorous testing practices, in-depth knowledge of AWS, GCP and Azure, and proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and Helm for Kubernetes orchestration. I specialize in observability tools like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Monitor, Grafana, and Prometheus for meticulous system monitoring. Proficient in Helm, I streamline infrastructure management, leveraging automation with Ansible, Bash, and Python. As a Cloud Engineer/DevOps Engineer I designs, implements, manages, and maintains cloud infrastructure, services, and solutions, ensuring efficient data storage and adherence to security policies, often working with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP With a talent for problem-solving and exceptional communication, I'm poised to excel and ensuring top-notch system performance and resilience. Experience

Lead DevOps /Cloud Manager Teknowledge (Microsoft Vendor) Remote November 2021 – January 2025

• Design, implement, and manage continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment

(CD) pipelines using Azure DevOps,AWS and GCP

• Automate the build, test, and deployment processes to improve development efficiency.

• Administer source code repositories using version control systems such as Git within Azure DevOps, AWS and GCP.

• Implement branching strategies and enforce code review processes.

• Configure and manage build pipelines to compile, build, and package applications.

• Automate the deployment of applications to various environments, including development, testing, and production.

• Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices using tools like Terraform for consistent and repeatable infrastructure deployment.

• Manage configuration settings for different environments and ensure consistency between development, testing, and production environments.

• Collaborate with development teams to understand their requirements and integrate CI/CD practices into the development workflow.

• Integrate automated testing processes into the CI/CD pipeline to ensure code quality and identify issues early in the development cycle.

• Integrate monitoring and logging tools into the CI/CD pipeline to capture and analyze application and deployment metrics.

• Implement security practices within the CI/CD pipeline, including static code analysis and vulnerability scanning.

• Ensure that security measures are integrated into the deployment process.

• Design, deploy, and manage Kubernetes clusters on Azure using Azure Kubernetes Service

(AKS), EKS, GKE.

• Ensure high availability, scalability, and reliability of Kubernetes clusters.

• Manage containerized applications using Kubernetes orchestration features.

• Define and deploy pod specifications, replication controllers, services, and other Kubernetes objects.

• Implement and optimize CI/CD pipelines for deploying containerized applications to Kubernetes clusters.

• Set up monitoring solutions like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Monitor, Grafana, and Prometheus for tracking the performance and health of Kubernetes clusters.

• Configure and manage networking components within Kubernetes, such as services, ingresses, and network policies.

• Integrate Kubernetes clusters with other Azure services, such as Azure Active Directory, Azure Container Registry and AWS Container Registry, Azure and AWS Storage.

• Design, implement, and manage Azure, AWS, GCP infrastructure solutions, ensuring scalability, reliability, and high availability.

• Create and maintain virtual machines, storage accounts, and networking components in Azure, AWS and GCP.

• Manage and version artifacts generated during the build process using Azure, AWS, GCP Artifacts or similar tools.

• Maintain documentation for CI/CD processes, including pipeline configurations, deployment procedures, and troubleshooting guides.

• Coordinate and manage release schedules in collaboration with development, testing, and operations teams.

• Implement and manage release gates to ensure the quality of deployments.

• Continuously evaluate and enhance CI/CD processes for efficiency and reliability.

• Implementing DevSecOps best practice:

Vulnerabilities - CVE, CVSS,NVD

Git hooks - Talisman

Testing : Mutation, Integration

Scans: Dependency checks, Trivy (images), OPA ConfTest(Docker file), Kubesec(K8) SAST: SonarQube, Microfocus Fortify

DAST: OWASP ZAP-Web Application

Deploy to K8 Namespaces: Deployment, Rollout Status Kubernetes Security: CIS Benchmarking, Testing, Limits ISTLO Service Mesh: Installation, Kiali,MTLS, Metrics Monitoring: Kube-Scan, Falco, Falco UI,Falco Slack,GCP Monitor, Grafana, and Prometheus

Helm

Basic Notification: SLACK, Email, Legacy App Notification Escalation Devops/Cloud Linux Engineer Teknowledge (Microsoft Vendor) Remote June 2020 – November 2021

• Responsible for installing and maintaining the Linux server Distributions operating systems and various Linux applications and services such as Apache, TomCat, Kerberos, LDAP, MySQL, Pacemaker, Bash, Python, Ansible.

• Responsible for supporting setting up shared storage.

• Engages in high level complex problem-solving solutions across multiple infrastructures; feedback methods to Product Team

• Consistently delivers high excellent experiences to customers.

• Brings internally escalated customer cases to resolution through advanced high-level problem solving, assertive communication and collaboration.

• Proactively and consistently mentorship program for support engineers: active coaching.

• Coordinating support tasks and tickets management: ICM, Pg Escalations.

• Acts as a 1st point of contact for escalations

• Work with Team managers reinforcing process adherence and compliance.

• Aids new engineer during their nesting period.

• Closely overviewing team’s performance and to promotes growth in the team’s technical

• capabilities and enhances high level quality of support and boosts overall team’s productivity.

• Helps identify difficult topics and knowledge gaps on the team.

• Constantly provide managers feedback about team’s performance and be

• Evaluate systems and upgrades for appropriateness.

• Assist in the design, implementation, and maintenance of complex solutions.

• Coordinate activities with other technical personnel as appropriate.

• Develop and analyze complex system standards, thresholds, and recommendations to maximize system performance.

• Responsible for maintaining all server-side Security Certificates to ensure compliance with the cyber security policy.

• Develop Document strategies to manage the frequency of installations of the support package releases and patch.

Cloud Support Engineer Teknowledge Nigeria (Microsoft Vendor) Remote June 2019 – May 2020

• Microsoft Azure, AWS, GCP: Storage, Virtual Machine Scaleset, Fileshare, Virtual Machine Deployment, Sql, Encryption, Azure Active Directory Domain Services

• Linux (Redhat, Centos,Ubuntu,Suse): Storage, Virtual Machine Scaleset, Fileshare, Virtual Machine Deployment, Sql, Encryption, Azure Active Directory Domain Services

• Act as the advanced technical contact for troubleshooting customer issues

• Deliver advanced technical troubleshooting and problem-solving solutions for corporate customers including issues escalated to the highest level of management

• Collaborate with domain experts (SMEs) and escalation managers when additional support is needed

• Manage critical issues by setting customer expectations, devise and implement action plans and professionally communicate measures to all parties involved

• Seek supplemental training to improve performance and develop a specialization Strength

• Strong research, problem-solving and troubleshooting skills

• Ability to work well independently and as part of a team

• Excellent customer service skills

• Responsible for the security posture and implementing patches of Linux assets during weekly maintenance windows (off-hours).

• Monitor system maintenance and provide technical recommendations for enhancement.

• Thorough understanding and workings of Server protocols including, NTP, SMTP, SFTP.

• Provide technical know-how to internal and external personnel on highly complex system administration and installation processes.

• Share knowledge and provide guidance to less experienced personnel.

• Thorough understanding and workings of incident handling protocols, personally identifiable information, Server network procedures, and information handling.

• Provide immediate response to break-fix

• As a customer-facing support engineer, my role is providing phone and email-based technical support to corporate customers while ensuring ticket resolution and customer satisfaction

Drilex System Inc, Nigeria November 2016 – May 2019 Devops Engineer/Architect Linux Admin

• Proactively maintain and develop all Linux infrastructure technology to maintain a 24x7x365 uptime service

• Enhance client's application performance by successful migration of a monolithic to Micro-Service architecture running on a large-scale AKS cluster.

• Established strong standards and processes around DevOps. automation and deployment for all

• Demonstrated leadership qualities as the primary contact and technical leader with the clients I worked with, leading the technical direction and conversation of each project I was assigned to.

• Achieved over 50% improvement in deployment time by optimizing container docker images and using smaller images (alpine), base images, and muti stage Dockerfiles.

• Enhanced security of all pipelines by integrating DevSecOps practices and tools into pipelines for every project I worked on.

• Observability as a code, using terraform to create Datadog dashboards and alerts to monitored channels.

• Develop automation for incident response.

• Assess the production readiness of services.

• Define and track operational metrics for production performance, reliability, scalability and availability.

• Architect, develop and maintain shared services and tools to improve reliability and reduce toil across the organization.

• Conducted discovery sessions to analyze the existing state of client environments and create reports to suggest solutions to issues found.

• Created CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps for large-scale environment deployment.

• Managed large scale customer Cloud infrastructure and deployment of our application for global multinationals clients.

• Improved infrastructure deployment time by over 50% by using Infrastructure as Code tools such as terraform and cloud formation.

• Delivered the infrastructure using the Azure Kubernetes services to host a containerized version of our application while ensuring a highlight available and fault-tolerant environment.

Scotexs Systems Inc, Nigeria January 2010 – October 2016 Systems Administrator

• Proactively maintain and develop all Linux infrastructure technology to maintain a 24x7x365 uptime service

• Engineering of systems administration-related solutions for various project and operational needs

• Maintain best practices on managing systems and services across all environments

• Fault finding, analysis and of logging information for reporting of performance exceptions

• Proactively monitoring system performance and capacity planning

• Manage, coordinate, and implement software upgrades, patches, hot fixes on servers, workstations, and network hardware

• Create and modify scripts or applications to perform tasks

• Provide input on ways to improve the stability, security, efficiency, and scalability of the environment

• Collaborate with other teams and team members to develop automation strategies and deployment processes

• In depth knowledge of Linux: RedHat, CentOS, Debian, etc.

• Hands on experience with MySQL and/or MariaDB

• Familiarity with VMWare and SAN management and concepts

• Expert in Shell, Perl, and/or Python scripting

• Solid knowledge of protocols such as DNS, HTTP, LDAP, SMTP and SNMP

• Strong problem solving and communication skills

• Configured systems for TCP/IP Networking with the existing Local Area Network. Set up SSH and SCP features on UNIX hosts.

• Coordinated with customers to develop ITIL process strategies for design.

• Monitored mapping of customer issues and developed appropriate solutions.

• Troubleshoot production servers to resolve issues related to web applications, Sendmail, disk space, file system, DNS and network connectivity.

• Hands on experience in physical to virtual machine conversions and virtual machines

• Worked with Enterprise Security Manager to get Security certification for servers before moving them in to production.

• Developed Cronjobs and Shell Scripts for automating administration tasks like file system management, process management, Server reboots etc.

• Installed and configured Redhat Server, Upgraded, patched, and installed Linux operating systems.

• Worked with EMC SAN to acquire storage and to set up Veritas/LVM file systems.

• Worked with Oracle DBAs to restore Oracle Instance and Build Oracle RAC Cluster.

• Worked on creating Virtual machines using VMware.

• Monitored system performance and Kernel tuning to enhance system performance.

• Provided 24/7 on-call support on a weekly basis.

• Worked with Enterprise Security Manager to get security certification for servers before moving them to production.

• Installed and configured domain wide mail systems utilizing Postfix with multi subnet and a single relay host for internal mail forwarding, all external mails were handled by Sendmail and SMTP.

• Performed post build activities like setting up, backup interface/NIC bonding/LACP Bonding/Loading additional Packages/ Joining the server to Active Directory. Education

B.SC in Computer Science University of Calabar, Nigeria Certifications

• Microsoft Certified Trainer, Credential ID 3877627

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate, Credential ID: H801-2168

• AWS Administrator Certifications

• LFCS: Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator, Credential ID LF-g11nzipwkh.

• Microsoft Azure Linux Specialist (AZLS)

• Microsoft Azure Linux Foundation (AZLF)

• IT Infrastructure Library

Skills & Abilities

• DevOps: Azure DevOps, AWS, GCP, Argo CD, Git, Docker, Kubernetes

• Cloud Technologies: Azure, AWS, GCP

• Operating Systems: Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS,SUSE, Redhat) and Windows Server

• Scripting: PowerShell, Bash

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Ansible, ARM Templates

• Monitoring and Logging: Azure Monitor, AWS Cloud Watch, Prometheus, Grafana.

• Networking: Azure, AWS, GCP Virtual Network, VPN, ExpressRoute

• Security: Azure Security Center, IAM, SSL/TLS

• Databases: Azure SQL Database, MySQL, HBase

• Control Systems: Git, GitHub, Azure Git

• CI/CD Pipelines: Azure DevOps, AWS, GCP, GitHub, Travis-CI, Jenkins

• Scripting Language: Python, JSON, YAML, Bash, XML, CLI and Shell scripting.

• Docker: Docker-files, Docker-Compose, Kubernetes and working with Docker containers, Splunk,

• Management Tools: Terraform, ARM, Ansible and continuous learning on AWS CloudFormation, Splunk

• IIS Management: Windows, Linux VMware and UNIX platforms

• Distributed Computing; Three- tier architecture, Client-Server architecture, Peer to Peer architecture, N-tier architecture.

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