Chirag is available for hire
Hire ChiragChirag Kantharia
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Architect and Developer
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Toptal member since June 1, 2026
Bio
Chirag has 25+ years of experience in infrastructure development. He specializes in production-grade platform engineering and SRE for SaaS, enabling fast, confident shipping. He has delivered up to 99.95% uptime and reduced incidents by 83%, MTTR by 60%, cloud spend by 42%, and release time by 76%. Chirag has achieved SOC 2 Type II with zero audit findings and led teams, cross-functional initiatives, and budgets of up to $1.2 million.
Portfolio
Kipling Secure
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, GitHub
WorkSpan
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Jenkins, Python...
ZEDEDA
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Ansible, Python, Go...
Experience
- Python - 15 years
- Docker - 10 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 8 years
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - 8 years
- Terraform - 5 years
- Kubernetes - 5 years
- GitHub - 5 years
- Helm - 2 years
Preferred Environment
Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes
The most amazing...
...work I've done is bringing order to chaos via SLOs, incident management, toil automation, blameless post-mortems, and monitoring at multiple organizations.
Work Experience
Technical Leader, Production Engineering
2024 - 2026
Kipling Secure
- Architected production-grade multitenant EKS cluster implementing security best practices, including namespace isolation, RBAC, pod security policies, and network policies to support enterprise customer requirements.
- Established an AWS multi-account strategy with Identity Center (SSO), enabling centralized access management and security governance across development, staging, and production environments.
- Authored infrastructure-as-code using Terraform. Designed and standardized Helm chart templates for 20+ microservices, reducing configuration effort 90% (from 2 days to 4 hours per service).
- Built end-to-end GitOps infrastructure using FluxCD and GitHub Actions with comprehensive governance, including branch protections, security scanning, and CI/CD pipelines — reducing deployment time 67% (from 45 minutes to 15 minutes).
- Improved API performance 40% (a P99 latency reduction) through infrastructure optimization and resource allocation tuning.
- Established production readiness review framework incorporating security assessments, load testing, and observability requirements, preventing 8+ potential production incidents.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, GitHub
Principal Site Reliability Engineer
2022 - 2024
WorkSpan
- Grew the SRE team from 2 to 7 engineers. Owned hiring, performance reviews, and career development.
- Managed a $1.2 million infrastructure budget, delivering 42% cost reduction (from $1.2 million to $700,000 annually) through strategic optimization.
- Created and executed a reliability roadmap defining SRE best practices, including change management, release management, capacity planning, and developer productivity initiatives.
- Led release shepherding across engineering, product, and QA teams. Drove SOC2 Type II compliance initiative, enabling 30+ enterprise customer acquisitions.
- Evaluated and negotiated contracts for monitoring, security, and developer productivity tooling; conducted POCs and managed vendor relationships.
- Orchestrated complete infrastructure-as-code migration to Terraform across AWS and GCP environments, managing 200+ instances, reducing deployment errors 85%.
- Delivered $240,000 annual cost savings (a 32% reduction) through multicloud optimization, including automated resource cleanup, intelligent storage tiering, and compute rightsizing.
- Achieved 99.95% uptime SLA (up from 99.7%) through automated failover implementation, reducing customer-impacting incidents 83% (from 12 per year to 2 per year).
- Reduced MTTR 60% (from 90 minutes to 35 minutes) by authoring 40+ incident runbooks, establishing on-call rotations, and conducting quarterly disaster recovery drills. Improved RPO to 15 minutes and RTO to 1 hour.
- Created incident management processes and postmortem culture, improving team response coordination and reducing recurring incidents 70%.
Technologies: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Jenkins, Python, Terraform, Ansible, On-call, Incident Management, Release Management, Kubernetes, Google App Engine
Software Architect
2017 - 2021
ZEDEDA
- Designed platform architecture, including microservices orchestration layer; authored all infrastructure-as-code. Established disaster recovery mechanisms and monitoring/alerting standards.
- Scaled infrastructure 300% (50 to 150+ enterprise customers) using Terragrunt and Ansible automation, maintaining sub-5-minute deployment velocity.
- Engineered disaster recovery automation achieving 99.9% successful recovery, reducing RTO 88% (from 6 hours to 45 minutes).
- Implemented HashiCorp Vault secrets management, eliminating 100% of credential-related security incidents (from 6 per year to zero).
- Deployed Datadog APM across 25 microservices, reducing unplanned downtime 65% through proactive alerting and anomaly detection.
- Developed Go microservices handling 10,000+ concurrent IoT device connections with 99.9% message delivery and sub-100ms latency.
- Automated 80% of operational tasks, reducing weekly toil from 20 hours to 4 hours per engineer.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Ansible, Python, Go, Disaster Recovery (DR), SOC 2
Experience
Production Platform at an Early-stage AI Cybersecurity Startup
CHALLENGE
A small engineering team building an enterprise AI cybersecurity product for MSPs and SMEs needed a production-grade platform fast—without a dedicated infrastructure function.
SOLUTION
I architected a multitenant EKS cluster with namespace isolation, RBAC, and network policies. We built end-to-end GitOps using FluxCD and GitHub Actions with branch protections and security scanning. I then standardized Helm chart templates across 20+ microservices and authored all infrastructure-as-code in Terraform.
IMPACT
• Deployment time decreased 67%, from 45 minutes to 15 minutes
• Per-service configuration effort dropped 90%, from 2 days to 4 hours
• API P99 latency improved 40% through infrastructure tuning
• Production readiness framework prevented 8+ potential incidents before they reached users
A small engineering team building an enterprise AI cybersecurity product for MSPs and SMEs needed a production-grade platform fast—without a dedicated infrastructure function.
SOLUTION
I architected a multitenant EKS cluster with namespace isolation, RBAC, and network policies. We built end-to-end GitOps using FluxCD and GitHub Actions with branch protections and security scanning. I then standardized Helm chart templates across 20+ microservices and authored all infrastructure-as-code in Terraform.
IMPACT
• Deployment time decreased 67%, from 45 minutes to 15 minutes
• Per-service configuration effort dropped 90%, from 2 days to 4 hours
• API P99 latency improved 40% through infrastructure tuning
• Production readiness framework prevented 8+ potential incidents before they reached users
SRE Transformation & SOC 2 at a B2B SaaS Company
CHALLENGE
A 200-person B2B SaaS company processing $500+ million in annual partner transactions had grown past its informal operations practices. Reliability was inconsistent, cloud costs were climbing, and enterprise customers were asking for SOC 2.
SOLUTION
I built and led a 7-person SRE team from scratch. We migrated 200+ instances to Terraform across AWS and GCP and implemented automated failover, on-call rotations, 40+ incident runbooks, quarterly DR drills, and OpsGenie alerting. I drove SOC 2 Type II certification end-to-end.
IMPACT
• Infrastructure budget reduced 42%, from $1.2 million to $700,000 annually
• Uptime improved from 99.7% to 99.95%; customer-impacting incidents dropped 83%
• MTTR decreased 60%, from 90 minutes to 35 minutes; recovery point objective (RPO) 15 minutes, recovery time objective (RTO) 1 hour
• Deployment errors reduced 85% after IaC migration
• SOC 2 Type II was achieved with zero audit findings, unlocking 30+ enterprise customers
A 200-person B2B SaaS company processing $500+ million in annual partner transactions had grown past its informal operations practices. Reliability was inconsistent, cloud costs were climbing, and enterprise customers were asking for SOC 2.
SOLUTION
I built and led a 7-person SRE team from scratch. We migrated 200+ instances to Terraform across AWS and GCP and implemented automated failover, on-call rotations, 40+ incident runbooks, quarterly DR drills, and OpsGenie alerting. I drove SOC 2 Type II certification end-to-end.
IMPACT
• Infrastructure budget reduced 42%, from $1.2 million to $700,000 annually
• Uptime improved from 99.7% to 99.95%; customer-impacting incidents dropped 83%
• MTTR decreased 60%, from 90 minutes to 35 minutes; recovery point objective (RPO) 15 minutes, recovery time objective (RTO) 1 hour
• Deployment errors reduced 85% after IaC migration
• SOC 2 Type II was achieved with zero audit findings, unlocking 30+ enterprise customers
Cloud Platform & Edge Orchestration for an IoT Company
CHALLENGE
A global IoT platform needed to scale from 50 to 150+ enterprise customers while maintaining tight deployment velocity and hardening security across a large microservices footprint.
SOLUTION
I architected the full cloud platform and edge orchestration layer and authored all infrastructure-as-code using Terragrunt and Ansible. We deployed Datadog APM across 25 microservices, implemented HashiCorp Vault for secrets management, and engineered automated disaster recovery. We developed Go microservices handling high-concurrency IoT device connections.
IMPACT
• Scaled infrastructure 300% (from 50 to 150+ enterprise customers) with sub-5-minute deployment velocity maintained throughout
• RTO dropped 88% (from 6 hours to 45 minutes) via disaster recovery automation with 99.9% successful recovery rate
• Credential-related security incidents eliminated (from 6 per year to zero) after Vault rollout
• Unplanned downtime reduced 65% through Datadog APM proactive alerting
• Operational toil decreased 80% (from weekly per-engineer burden down from 20 hours to 4 hours)
A global IoT platform needed to scale from 50 to 150+ enterprise customers while maintaining tight deployment velocity and hardening security across a large microservices footprint.
SOLUTION
I architected the full cloud platform and edge orchestration layer and authored all infrastructure-as-code using Terragrunt and Ansible. We deployed Datadog APM across 25 microservices, implemented HashiCorp Vault for secrets management, and engineered automated disaster recovery. We developed Go microservices handling high-concurrency IoT device connections.
IMPACT
• Scaled infrastructure 300% (from 50 to 150+ enterprise customers) with sub-5-minute deployment velocity maintained throughout
• RTO dropped 88% (from 6 hours to 45 minutes) via disaster recovery automation with 99.9% successful recovery rate
• Credential-related security incidents eliminated (from 6 per year to zero) after Vault rollout
• Unplanned downtime reduced 65% through Datadog APM proactive alerting
• Operational toil decreased 80% (from weekly per-engineer burden down from 20 hours to 4 hours)
Education
1995 - 1999
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay - Mumbai, India
Certifications
MARCH 2026 - PRESENT
GitOps for Platform Engineering
PlatformEngineering.org
Skills
Tools
Terraform, Helm, GitHub, Jenkins, Ansible, Docker Compose, HashiCorp Vault
Languages
Python, Go
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Docker, Azure, Google App Engine, Opsgenie, Apache Kafka, Linux
Storage
PostgreSQL, Cassandra
Other
Operating Systems, Networking, Algorithms, On-call, Incident Management, Release Management, Disaster Recovery (DR), SOC 2, GitHub Actions, GitOps
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