Alejandro is available for hire
Hire AlejandroAlejandro Llanes
Verified Expert in Engineering
Cloud Architect and Developer
Rionegro - Antioquia, Colombia
Toptal member since June 26, 2026
Bio
Alejandro is a cloud architect and SRE with over 15 years of experience building secure, scalable infrastructure for fintech, government, and media sectors. He specializes in AWS, Kubernetes, and deep Linux administration to design high-availability environments. By combining this foundation with Rust, Python, and generative AI, Alejandro architects resilient, automated workflows that solve complex engineering challenges.
Portfolio
US clients, Remote
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Kubernetes
Lulo Bank
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, SonarQube, CircleCI, GitHub...
Alkanza US
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microservices, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)...
Experience
- Linux - 20 years
- PostgreSQL - 15 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 12 years
- CI/CD Pipelines - 11 years
- Terraform - 10 years
- Python - 10 years
- Kubernetes - 9 years
- Google Cloud - 8 years
Work Experience
GCP Senior Platform Engineer & SRE Consultant
2025 - 2026
US clients, Remote
- Led an AWS-to-Google Cloud migration covering GKE, managed databases, Memorystore and Redis, Cloud Functions, and API Gateway. Executed the cutover incrementally with no downtime, seeded by backup and restore, and kept in sync through DMS replication.
- Managed Amazon EKS with isolated DEV, STG, and PROD environments and a clear promotion path, replacing Docker on EC2. Ran delivery with GitLab CI and Terraform across a Python and Go stack using PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Redis, Firebase, and Stripe billing.
- Automated ephemeral per-tenant scanner infrastructure on GCP for AI-driven asset scanning and vulnerability discovery, provisioning about 300 VMs on demand—three per tenant across roughly 100 customers—using Python Cloud Functions behind API Gateway.
Technologies: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Kubernetes
DevOps & Infrastructure Lead
2020 - 2025
Lulo Bank
- Designed and implemented a DRP architecture that helped the company secure its banking license.
- Deployed self-hosted open-weight LLMs (vLLM, Ollama) on EKS GPU nodes, using FastAPI with an OpenAI-compatible gateway, Amazon Bedrock fallback, and RAG.
- Integrated OpenAI, Hugging Face, and DeepSeek into automated operational workflows using FastAPI and Docker, with LLM serving and AI automation on Kubernetes.
- Automated infrastructure deployment and promotion using Jenkins and Terraform.
- Assessed the cloud architecture using the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Validated security and compliance with Dome9 and Qualys. Analyzed code using SonarQube, Veracode, and Snyk.
- Designed the cloud infrastructure for AWS services, including ECS, EKS, Fargate, Batch, EC2, Lambdas, Kinesis, API Gateway, SES, SNS, and S3.
- Designed a multi-region replication schema with DynamoDB, MySQL Aurora, and S3.
- Designed a multi-region replication schema for EC2 instances using AWS CloudEndure.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, SonarQube, CircleCI, GitHub, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), OWASP, DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, GitHub Actions, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Identity & Access Management (IAM), Docker, Cloud, Python, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), AI Agents, AI Agent Orchestration, Agentic Deployment, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Agentic AI Systems, SQL, Large Language Models (LLMs), YAML, Cortex, Snowflake
Head of DevOps
2016 - 2019
Alkanza US
- Designed and implemented the architecture for migrating Docker Swarm services to a microservices platform on top of Kubernetes.
- Implemented the infrastructure for data pipelines using Apache Airflow, EMR, and Redshift.
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines from scratch, replacing the old manual makefiles stack.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microservices, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), AWS Glue, EMR, Amazon EKS, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon RDS, DocumentDB, Yarn Workspaces, Istio, Calico, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, etcd, RabbitMQ, Redis, Spark, Apache ZooKeeper, Docker, Rkt, LXC, Git, Subversion (SVN), Apache2, NGINX, HAProxy, Traefik, Puppet, Ansible, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, ELK stack, Kubernetes, DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Identity & Access Management (IAM), Cloud, Python, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), SQL, YAML
IT Administrator
2014 - 2016
Zürich de Occidente
- Automated administrative tasks with Puppet and implemented and administered vCenter. Designed and implemented the backup and disaster recovery plans for ESXi virtual machines.
- Automated the deployment to GlassFish application server clusters using Jenkins.
- Configured datacenter virtual networks for VMware clusters on top of HP blade servers and 3PAR storage.
Technologies: Puppet, vCenter, VMware, Linux, Fortinet, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Python, SQL, YAML
Project History
Production-grade Multi-region Kubernetes Architecture & AI-driven Operational Workflows
Designed, built, and automated a highly secure, scalable, and compliant cloud infrastructure to support a high-volume digital banking platform. The primary goal was to establish an enterprise-grade ecosystem that met stringent regulatory compliance standards while maintaining high availability and accelerating developer velocity.
The core architecture relied on AWS and GCP environments. I spearheaded the migration from legacy infrastructure to production-ready Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) clusters. To ensure maximum resilience and zero data loss, I designed a multi-region replication strategy utilizing Amazon Aurora and DynamoDB Global Tables, coupled with automated cross-region S3 replication.
To modernize operations, I integrated generative AI solutions (including OpenAI, Hugging Face, and DeepSeek) into automated workflows via FastAPI and Docker. These agents automated complex tasks like automated database analysis and live operational monitoring. The entire ecosystem was managed strictly via Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and deployed through GitOps pipelines utilizing Jenkins and GitHub Actions
The core architecture relied on AWS and GCP environments. I spearheaded the migration from legacy infrastructure to production-ready Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) clusters. To ensure maximum resilience and zero data loss, I designed a multi-region replication strategy utilizing Amazon Aurora and DynamoDB Global Tables, coupled with automated cross-region S3 replication.
To modernize operations, I integrated generative AI solutions (including OpenAI, Hugging Face, and DeepSeek) into automated workflows via FastAPI and Docker. These agents automated complex tasks like automated database analysis and live operational monitoring. The entire ecosystem was managed strictly via Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and deployed through GitOps pipelines utilizing Jenkins and GitHub Actions
Education
2003 - 2007
Engineer's Degree in Computer Systems and Networks
University of the Llanos - Villavicencio, Colombia
Certifications
SEPTEMBER 2026 - PRESENT
Snowflake University Platform Skills Badge
Snowflake
OCTOBER 2025 - OCTOBER 2027
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
The Linux Foundation
SEPTEMBER 2025 - SEPTEMBER 2027
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003)
HashiCorp
SEPTEMBER 2025 - SEPTEMBER 2027
Certified Kubernetes Administrator
The Linux Foundation
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, Snowpark
Tools
Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub, CircleCI, VMware, Jenkins, Helm, SnowSQL
Languages
YAML, Python, SQL, Java, Go, Snowflake
Paradigms
DevOps
Platforms
Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), Cortex
Storage
Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, MySQL
Other
CI/CD Pipelines, Cloud, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), GitHub Actions, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Agentic Deployment, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLMs), TCP/IP, Firewalls, System Programming, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), OWASP, Fortinet, AI Agents, AI Agent Orchestration, Agentic AI Systems, Snowsight
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