Ismail L.

About Me

Ismail is a DevOps and Site Reliability Engineer with 10+ years of work experience automating and scaling cloud infrastructure. He started his career in networks and server management and has worked for well-established companies like Ericsson, Huawei, and McAfee. With a strong background in infrastructure engineering, Ismail is dedicated to optimizing software development processes, improving systems' reliability, and ensuring seamless deployment and operations. He is an AWS, Cisco, and Red Hat Certified professional keen on working with systems architecture and diverse DevOps and SRE tools.

Backend

Database

SQL Database Optimization SQL Performance

DevOps

Terraform Amazon CloudWatch Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Jenkins DevOps Kubernetes Amazon Web Services (AWS) Azure Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Docker Cloud Services AWS DevOps AWS NAT Gateway

Other

Bash Ansible Amazon EKS VmWare Chef OpenVPN Splunk AppDynamics Grafana Packer KVM/Qemu Nagios Linux Microservices Amazon EC2 Load Balancers Networking Amazon RDS Monitoring Security Dashboard Development Technical Documentation Firewalls Networks SSL WireGuard Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Argo CD IOPS DataDog Network Security

Work history

Zapier
Zapier
Site Reliability Engineer
2022 - Present (3 years)
Remote
  • Working with the development team to architect and deploy new services.

  • Collaborating with development teams to define and implement efficient CI/CD pipelines using Docker BuilderKit and dependency caching, reducing deployment time by 40%.

  • Collaborating with cross-functional teams enforcing resource tagging and leveraging Goldilocks and OpenCost to reduce cloud cost by 20%.

  • Helping teams adopt IaC framework for Prometheus/Datadog SLI and SLOs using Kubernetes Operators pattern.

  • Assisting developers with infrastructure-related issues and helping set up monitoring and alerting.

  • Building templates and patterns for new services using Helm charts, Terraform modules, and Python.

  • Leading incident response efforts, investigating critical issues, and implementing preventive measures to minimize system downtime.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) SRECI/CD Pipelines DockerInfrastructure as Code (IaC) IaCPrometheusDataDogKubernetes Operations (Kops) KubernetesInfrastructureInfrastructure Monitoring NKS Helm ChartsHelmTerraformPythonIncident Response
McAfee
McAfee
DevOps Engineer
2021 - 2022 (1 year)
Remote
  • Provisioned and deployed 4,000+ VPN servers on-prem and multiple clouds in 50+ countries.

  • Created and deployed tools and scripts using Python, Bash, and Ansible.

  • Implemented CI/CD using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Argo CD.

  • Managed Kubernetes EKS and ECS clusters including application Dockerization and Helm templating.

  • Investigated issues with services and APIs written in Python, Node.js, and Scala.

  • Managed centralized logging and metric collection using ELK, Splunk, Prometheus, and Grafana.

DevOpsDevOps Engineer VPNPythonBashBash Script AnsibleCI/CD GitHub Actions GitLab CIArgo CD KubernetesEKSAWS EKSEKS Cluster Autoscaling EKS Cluster Autoscaling Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) DockerHelmNode.jsScalaAPIsELK (Elastic Stack) ELK StackSplunkPrometheusGrafana
Rogers Communications
Rogers Communications
Infrastructure Specialist
2019 - 2020 (1 year)
Remote
  • Managed production infrastructure servers and services running in AWS and Azure.

  • Managed GitHub CI/CD pipelines and Terraform workflows in Atlantis and Terraform Cloud.

  • Automated resource deployment and configuration management using Terraform, Argo CD, and Ansible.

  • Migrated EKS Kubernetes from IAM-based authentication to OIDC using Azure AD.

  • Migrated Kubernetes Secrets from SOPS-based on AWS KMS to HashiCorp Vault.

InfrastructureAWSAzure GithubCI/CD Pipelines TerraformAtlantis Configuration ManagementArgo CD AutomationAWS EKSKubernetesIdentity & Access Management (IAM) IAMOpenID Connect (OIDC) Azure Active DirectorySecret Management AWS Secrets Manager AWS Key Management Service (KMS) HashiCorp
Huawei
Huawei
Infrastructure Engineer
2015 - 2018 (3 years)
Remote
  • Managed a fleet of Linux servers and network resources.

  • Managed and configured web servers (Apache, Nginx), LDAP, Jenkins, Kafka, and database servers.

  • Deployed Docker Containers and managed a private Docker image registry.

  • Performed automation and configuration management using Bash, Python, and Ansible.

  • Performed security audits, backups, DR tests, patching, and other compliance activities.

Linux Servers Network Infrastructure Web Servers ApacheNginxLDAPJenkinsKafkaDockerAutomationConfiguration ManagementBashPythonAnsibleSecurity Audits
Ericsson
Ericsson
Field Maintenance Engineer
2013 - 2015 (2 years)
Remote
  • Implemented ATM to the IP migration of microwave short-haul radios.

  • Managed production servers and network devices, including firewalls.

  • Engaged in security audits and analysis of existing and new devices.

Support & Maintenance Security Audits Firewalls Servers Network Infrastructure LinuxBashPythonNagios

Showcase

VPN Service
VPN Service
  • Managed infrastructure provisioning for a vast network of over 5,000 servers across 50 countries for VPN service

  • Deployed robust monitoring systems and efficient pipelines for seamless back-end application and database integration

  • Ensured optimal performance and maintenance of the VPN servers

Education

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (Expires Jan 2027); Certified Kubernetes Administrator (Expires Apr 2026).
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (Expires Jan 2027); Certified Kubernetes Administrator (Expires Apr 2026).
The Linux Foundation
2023 - 2024 (1 year)
AWS Solutions Architect Associate (Expired Dec 2023)
AWS Solutions Architect Associate (Expired Dec 2023)
Amazon Web Services
2020 - 2020
IT Infrastructure Management (Graduate Certificate)
IT Infrastructure Management (Graduate Certificate)
Humber College - Canada
2018 - 2019 (1 year)
BSc Electronic and Electrical Engineering
BSc Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Obafemi Awolowo University - Ile-Ife, Nigeria
2008 - 2012 (4 years)