Cloud Engineer & Solution Architect with Security Clearance

ABDULMUIHEES USMAN

CLOUD ENGINEER SOLUTION ARCHITECT

United States **************@*****.*** +1-347-***-**** SECURITY CLEARANCE: ACTIVE SECRET

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Cloud Engineer & Solution Architect with an active Secret Clearance and a proven track record of designing and implementing scalable, secure cloud solutions across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Expertise in translating complex business requirements into robust, multi-cloud architectures. Leverages a strong foundation in systems engineering and mechanical disciplines from U.S. Navy training to deliver resilient and efficient infrastructure. Committed to optimizing cloud operations through Automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and industry best-practice security frameworks.

CORE SKILLS

Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, Lambda, CloudFormation, CloudWatch) Microsoft Azure (Virtual Machines, Blob Storage, VNet, Entra ID, Azure SQL, Azure Monitor, ARM/Bicep) GCP (Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, VPC, IAM, Cloud Functions, Cloud Monitoring) Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep) Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Architectures Disaster Recovery High Availability Solution Design: Technical Requirement Analysis System Architecture Design Cost Optimization Security Architecture Scalability Planning Cloud Migration Strategy Technical Documentation CI/CD & Automation: Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, AWS CodePipeline Configuration Management (Ansible) Scripting (Python, Bash) Monitoring & Networking: CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Cloud Monitoring, Prometheus, Grafana TCP/IP DNS VPN Load Balancing

(ALB/ELB, Azure Load Balancer) Network Security Firewalls Operating Systems: Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS) Windows Server Core Competencies: Agile Methodologies Cross-functional Collaboration Technical Leadership U.S. Navy (Active Reserve) PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

SOLUTION ARCHITECT MERKLE MAR 2024 – PRESENT

• Architect and deliver end-to-end cloud solutions on AWS, translating client business objectives into scalable, secure, and cost-effective technical architectures.

• Lead the design of complex, multi-account AWS environments using AWS Control Tower and Landing Zone best practices, ensuring adherence to Well-Architected Framework principles for security, reliability, and performance efficiency.

• Spearhead the modernization of client infrastructure by designing and implementing containerization strategies using Amazon EKS

(Kubernetes) and Docker, improving application deployment velocity by 30%.

• Develop and enforce infrastructure standardization by architecting reusable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) modules with Terraform, reducing environment provisioning time from weeks to days.

• Conduct architecture reviews and technical feasibility studies, providing critical recommendations on service selection, migration approaches, and integration patterns to mitigate risks and optimize cloud spend.

• Collaborate directly with client stakeholders and engineering teams to communicate architectural decisions, gather requirements, and ensure successful implementation of proposed solutions.

• Design and implement comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans, leveraging AWS services like Aurora Global Database and S3 Cross-Region Replication to achieve defined RPO/RTO objectives. CLOUD ENGINEER NETGEAR JAN 2022 – FEB 2024

• Engineered and maintained scalable, highly available Microsoft Azure infrastructure, managing core services including Azure Virtual Machines, Blob Storage, Virtual Network (VNet), Azure Active Directory (Entra ID), and Azure SQL Database to support global operations.

• Automated infrastructure provisioning and configuration management using Terraform, ARM/Bicep templates, and Ansible, reducing manual configuration errors by 40%.

• Implemented robust CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps and Azure Pipelines, automating build, test, and deployment processes to accelerate software delivery cycles.

• Optimized cloud resource utilization by monitoring performance in Azure Monitor and Log Analytics, implementing Virtual Machine Scale Sets and Auto-Scaling, reducing monthly infrastructure costs by 20%.

• Strengthened system security posture by enforcing RBAC, Network Security Groups (NSGs), Azure Policy, and Azure Key Vault, ensuring least-privilege access and compliance with internal standards.

• Participated in on-call rotation to troubleshoot critical production incidents, performing Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and implementing preventive measures to maintain 99.9% availability. JUNIOR CLOUD ENGINEER ACER AMERICA JAN 2021 – DEC 2022

• Assisted in the day-to-day management and monitoring of cloud-based infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), supporting senior engineers in maintenance and troubleshooting activities.

• Deployed and configured Compute Engine instances (Windows & Linux), utilizing Instance Templates and startup scripts to ensure standardized and consistent deployments.

• Supported migration of on-premises legacy applications to GCP, contributing to lift-and-shift initiatives using Migrate for Compute Engine and documenting the new cloud architecture.

• Implemented automated backup and recovery processes for critical data stored in Cloud Storage and persistent disks, leveraging Snapshot schedules to ensure data integrity and disaster recovery readiness.

• Maintained detailed documentation of system configurations, operational procedures, and network topologies, improving knowledge transfer and overall team efficiency.

PROJECTS

Multi-Tier High-Availability Architecture on AWS

• Designed and deployed a scalable, fault-tolerant web application architecture on AWS utilizing Auto Scaling groups, Application Load Balancer (ALB), and RDS Multi-AZ.

• Implemented infrastructure entirely with Terraform to ensure version control and repeatable deployments across staging and production environments.

• Configured Amazon CloudFront as a CDN and AWS WAF to protect against common web exploits, enhancing both performance and security posture.

Serverless Data Processing Pipeline

• Architected a serverless solution to process real-time streaming data using AWS Kinesis, triggering AWS Lambda functions for data transformation and enrichment.

• Integrated the pipeline with Amazon S3 for data lake storage and Amazon Athena for serverless querying, enabling analytics without managing underlying infrastructure.

• Implemented Infrastructure as Code using the AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) to define and provision the serverless application components.

Disaster Recovery Simulation for Legacy Application

• Developed a comprehensive "pilot light" disaster recovery strategy for a critical on-premises application, using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to replicate data and servers to a separate AWS region.

• Automated the failover and failback procedures with AWS Systems Manager runbooks, drastically reducing recovery time objectives

(RTO) during a simulated disaster drill.

• Documented the full architecture and recovery process, providing the operations team with a clear, actionable runbook for real-world scenarios.

End-to-End CI/CD Pipeline on AWS

• Built a secure, fully automated CI/CD pipeline using AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy to streamline application deployments to an EC2 instance fleet.

• Integrated Amazon SNS for automated build and deployment notifications, providing immediate feedback to the development team.

• Incorporated a testing stage within the pipeline that automatically ran unit and integration tests, ensuring only validated code was promoted to production.

EDUCATION

University of Houston

Bachelor of Science in System Engineering

U.S. Navy – Surface Warfare Engineering School Command (SWESC), Great Lakes, IL Basic Engineering Common Core (BECC) Gas Turbine Systems Technician (GSM) – Mechanical “A” School 2023 CERTIFICATIONS

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

• AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

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