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Open to freelance & contract engagements

Cloud, DevOps & Platform Engineering that scales.

I help startups and enterprises design, build and run cloud-native platforms — from multi-account AWS & Azure landing zones and Kubernetes platforms to GitOps pipelines, observability and cost optimization. 12+ years turning complex infrastructure into reliable, self-service paved paths that developers love.

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Netherlands · available across Europe (remote)

Years in cloud & infrastructure
12+ Years in cloud & infrastructure
Annual licensing costs cut
$200K+ Annual licensing costs cut
Faster incident troubleshooting
40% Faster incident troubleshooting
Of events/day observed at scale
Billions Of events/day observed at scale
What I do

Consulting services

End-to-end platform capability — from cloud foundations to the developer experience on top. Engage me for a focused project or as an embedded platform lead.

Cloud Architecture & Migration

Well-architected AWS & Azure foundations — multi-account landing zones, governance and large-scale migrations.

  • AWS Control Tower & Account Factory for Terraform (AFT)
  • Multi-account governance, guardrails & least-privilege IAM
  • On-prem → cloud and hybrid migrations with zero-downtime cutovers
  • Disaster recovery & high-availability across regions

Platform Engineering

Kubernetes platforms and self-service “paved paths” that let developers ship safely and fast.

  • Production Kubernetes on EKS, AKS, Rancher & on-prem
  • Multi-tenant clusters with Kyverno policy & Cilium networking
  • Reusable Helm charts and golden-path templates
  • GitOps delivery with ArgoCD and developer self-service

DevOps & CI/CD Automation

Everything-as-code: fast, repeatable pipelines and infrastructure automation that remove toil.

  • Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, Ansible, Packer & Bicep
  • CI/CD on GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins & CircleCI
  • Pipeline modernization — cut a 6-step release flow to 2
  • Ephemeral preview environments provisioned in minutes, not days

Observability & Reliability

End-to-end visibility into logs, metrics and traces — so teams find and fix issues in minutes.

  • OpenTelemetry instrumentation across logs, metrics & traces
  • Elastic (ELK), Grafana LGTM, Prometheus & Datadog platforms
  • Pipelines ingesting billions of events per day with zero log loss
  • SRE practices that cut troubleshooting time by ~40%

DevSecOps & Cloud Security

Security baked into the platform — compliant by default, without slowing teams down.

  • Least-privilege IAM and secrets management with HashiCorp Vault
  • Vulnerability scanning with Amazon Inspector & GuardDuty
  • Threat detection with Elastic SIEM and Sysdig
  • Regulatory compliance — delivered with zero breach incidents

Cloud Cost Optimization (FinOps)

Right-size and rationalize spend — proven six-figure savings without sacrificing reliability.

  • Spot & reserved-instance strategy and CPU/memory right-sizing
  • Tooling & licensing consolidation — saved $200K+/yr in fees
  • 40% reduction in cloud consumption via optimization
  • Cost visibility and accountability built into the platform
Toolbox

Technical expertise

Battle-tested across regulated finance, security and SaaS — on AWS, Azure, on-prem and hybrid.

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • Azure
  • OpenStack
  • VMware
  • Linux
  • Akamai CDN

Containers & Orchestration

  • Kubernetes
  • Amazon EKS
  • Azure AKS
  • Docker
  • Helm
  • Amazon ECS
  • Rancher
  • ArgoCD

IaC & Automation

  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Packer
  • Bicep
  • CloudFormation
  • Python
  • Bash
  • PowerShell

CI/CD

  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI
  • Jenkins
  • CircleCI
  • Azure DevOps
  • Artifactory

Observability

  • OpenTelemetry
  • Elasticsearch (ELK)
  • Grafana LGTM
  • Prometheus
  • Datadog
  • Kafka

Security & Governance

  • HashiCorp Vault
  • AWS IAM
  • GuardDuty
  • Amazon Inspector
  • Elastic SIEM
  • Okta ASA
  • Sysdig
  • Kyverno
Track record

Experience

12+ years delivering platform and reliability work for banks, security vendors and high-growth SaaS — most recently leading teams and owning observability at scale.

  1. Tech Lead — Observability Platforms · Saxo Bank

    May 2023 — Oct 2025

    Netherlands

    • Led a team of six engineers across Kubernetes, cloud automation and CI/CD.
    • Consolidated monitoring from Dynatrace to Elastic — $200K/yr in licensing savings.
    • Integrated OpenTelemetry across logs, metrics and traces — 40% faster troubleshooting.
    • Moved Elastic to ECK on Kubernetes — 50% faster provisioning, 20% lower cost.
    • Cut cloud & licensing spend 40% via spot adoption and CPU/memory optimization.

  2. Senior Platform Engineer · TMNL

    Nov 2021 — Apr 2023

    Netherlands

    • Migrated AWS multi-account setup to Control Tower & AFT — security warnings down 50%.
    • Achieved full regulatory compliance with zero breach incidents over eight months.
    • Rolled out Datadog org-wide — support inquiries down 80%.
    • Migrated Azure DevOps repos and CI pipelines to GitHub.

  3. Site Reliability Engineering Lead · ReaQta (an IBM company)

    Feb 2021 — Oct 2021

    Netherlands

    • Moved legacy systems to EKS & Rancher — 60% faster deployments.
    • Branch-based ephemeral environments with ArgoCD & GitLab CI — days to minutes.
    • Built Loki/Prometheus/Grafana observability — 90% fewer support requests.
    • Multi-tenant clusters on-prem, EKS & AKS with Kyverno, Cilium and Vault.

  4. DevOps / SRE Engineer · Bloomreach

    Apr 2018 — Jan 2021

    Amsterdam · Bangalore

    • Automated multi-region AWS infrastructure & DR with Terraform and Ansible.
    • Migrated EMR workloads to VPCs — 50% lower execution time and cost.
    • Reserved & spot strategy delivering $100K+ in annual savings.
    • Orchestrated migration to EKS with Terraform.

  5. Senior Integration Engineer (DevOps) · Tech Mahindra

    May 2016 — Apr 2018

    Bangalore

    • Automated deployment on OpenStack & VMware with Ansible — lead time down to ~5 minutes.

  6. Integration Engineer · Ericsson

    Dec 2012 — May 2016

    Bangalore

    • SME for Ericsson Charging System nodes and Cisco routers across 17 countries.
    • Automated routine operations with Python & Shell — 30% less manual work.

Certifications

Let’s talk

Have a platform challenge?

Whether you’re standing up a cloud foundation, scaling Kubernetes, taming your cloud bill or hiring a freelance platform lead — I’d love to hear about it.

Email [email protected] LinkedIn in/santoshghegde

Netherlands · available across Europe (remote)

I typically reply within one business day.