Ali Al-Charakh, Developer in Auckland, New Zealand
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Ali Al-Charakh

Verified Expert  in Engineering

DevOps Engineer and Software Developer

Auckland, New Zealand

Toptal member since June 27, 2022

Bio

Ali is a highly skilled principal engineer with experience in cloud computing, infrastructure as code, Linux, CI/CD, and cloud compliance. He can bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to any organization. With a proven track record of successful project delivery, he is well-equipped to tackle complex challenges and deliver results that drive business success. Ali's passion for technology and commitment to staying at the forefront of industry trends makes him an invaluable asset to any team.

Portfolio

Westpac New Zealand
Kubernetes, Kubernetes Operations (kOps), GitOps, Azure Design...
Pano AI, Inc
Kubernetes, Cloud Engineering, CI/CD Pipelines, GitHub, Terraform, Java...
Westpac New Zealand
AWS, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Linux, Kubernetes...

Experience

Availability

Full-time

Preferred Environment

Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Kubernetes, Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Security, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Docker, Microservices, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps)

The most amazing...

...add-ons I've developed were for Kubernetes that made the onboarding of developers a streamlined process.

Work Experience

Principal DevOps Engineer

2019 - PRESENT
Westpac New Zealand
  • Enabled engineering and development teams by introducing and integrating DevOps best practices and toolsets, reducing overhead in daily development tasks, and reducing features release cycles.
  • Designed and built reusable services deployment patterns to help engineering teams use and migrate to the cloud faster, ensuring compliance and security.
  • Enabled the faster and wide adoption of containerization and microservices by designing and implementing on-premise multi-tenant containerization platforms using upstream Kubernetes (Kubernetes as a Service model).
  • Built and developed Westpac platform engineering chapter practices for cloud adaption and migration.
  • Designed and implemented cloud compliance and security using automation (compliance as code).
  • Reduced infrastructure complexity by developing and implementing platforms that help teams consume infrastructure as code.
Technologies: Kubernetes, Kubernetes Operations (kOps), GitOps, Azure Design, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Terraform, System Security, Consul, Python, Automation, Immutable Infrastructure, Docker, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Agile Development, Amazon S3, AWS Security Token Service (STS), AWS, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Team Leadership, React.js, CI/CD Pipelines, AWS ELB, AWS RDS, AWS IAM, AWS, Monitoring, DevOps, AWS DevOps, Scripting, Container Orchestration, Serverless Architecture, AWS, AWS, Cloud Security, Architecture, Web Services

DevOps and Kubernetes Engineer

2022 - 2023
Pano AI, Inc
  • Migrated the infrastructure build to an IaC pipeline utilizing Terraform and Github Actions.
  • Fixed application stability issues related to the GCP Kubernetes build that reduced downtime and made the infrastructure reliable, which allowed developers to consume clusters across multiple environments as a service.
  • Built the necessary framework for observability to ensure a one-time incident response, reducing the MTTR and increasing the SLA.
Technologies: Kubernetes, Cloud Engineering, CI/CD Pipelines, GitHub, Terraform, Java, Stackdriver, Docker, Helm, Prometheus, Kubernetes HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA), GitHub Actions, Google Cloud Development

Chapter Lead

2021 - 2022
Westpac New Zealand
  • Built Westpac Cloud team capabilities to enable cloud adoption, improve and advocate for best practices in platform engineering, to enable teams to deliver faster and safer.
  • Added cloud infra automation—compliance as code—which enabled Westpac to host 20+ applications, including ML workloads in AWS.
  • Built team capacity by mentoring, and educating team members with different levels of skills, allowing Westpac to create grounds for the Platform Engineering chapter.
Technologies: AWS, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Linux, Kubernetes, Microservices Architecture, Platform Engineering

DevOps Engineer

2016 - 2019
IBM
  • Enabled customers to consume on- and off-premise compute resources based on computing requirements and cost optimization by designing and building hybrid cloud infrastructure utilizing OpenStack, VMware, and Kernel-based virtual machines hypervisors.
  • Enabled engineering and development teams by introducing and integrating DevOps best practices. Reduced overhead in daily development tasks reducing feature release cycles.
  • Reduced infrastructure complexity by developing and implementing platforms that help teams consume infrastructure as code.
  • Introduced software-defined networking and storage by adding flexibility and ease of integration to the infrastructure and providing on-demand API-driven network functions and storage.
  • Developed Kubernetes operators and providers that integrate with existing infrastructure creating a less complicated and more efficient deployment.
Technologies: Kubernetes, Linux, Chef, Terraform, Automation, Immutable Infrastructure, Docker, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Agile Development, Amazon S3, CI/CD Pipelines, AWS ELB, AWS RDS, AWS IAM, AWS, Monitoring, Scripting, Container Orchestration, Cloud Security, Web Services

System Engineer

2015 - 2016
Spark New Zealand
  • Reduced patching time and overhead by automating the applications stack patching.
  • Worked on BAU support for Spark clients and Spark’s service delivery platform Linux, VMware, and Citrix support.
  • Oversaw the migration of proxies to bluecoats, and automated the log extraction process for compliance and security reporting.
Technologies: Linux, Citrix, IT Support, Automation, CI/CD Pipelines, Monitoring, Scripting

Operations Team Lead

2011 - 2015
Fanoos Telecom
  • Designed and deployed enterprise infrastructure stack including hardware, storage, backup/recovery solutions, and the services software stack.
  • Lowered cost and vendor dependency by introducing an enterprise strategy to adopt, utilize, and customize open-source solutions.
  • Reduced operational and customization costs by designing and introducing in-house billing and CDR mediation systems that provided flexible business support systems which met the business requirements.
  • Decreased compute footprint by 45% through rightsizing and optimizing the deployed applications.
Technologies: Linux, Automation, Agile Development, IT Operations Management (ITOM), Monitoring

Cloud Compliance as Code

Used a combination of AWS control tower, AWS CloudFormation, and Terraform. I was able to achieve the required AWS compliance (enforcing, alerting, and remediation) for an AWS organization with compliance as code allowing to add/update compliance configuration via pull requests.

Kubernetes as a Service

Designed and maintained a Kubernetes platform for development teams to use. I included the development of add-ons and operators that helped with on-boarding, authentication, and masking the infrastructure complexity so teams could consume infrastructure as Kubernetes native resources.

Hybrid Cloud Network Infrastructure

Designed and built AWS hybrid infra using the hub and spoke model with Firewall appliance, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, AWS security groups, and AWS Site-to-Site VPN. This project enabled faster and more transparent cloud migration and enabled teams to achieve hybrid architecture in their application designs.
JANUARY 2023 - PRESENT

AWS Certified Security Speciality

Amazon Web Services

JANUARY 2023 - PRESENT

AWS Solutions Architect Associate

Amazon Web Services

APRIL 2022 - PRESENT

JSNAD: OpenJS Node.js Application Developer

Linux Founadation

DECEMBER 2021 - PRESENT

Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate

Microsoft

MAY 2021 - PRESENT

Amazon Web Services SysOps Administrator Associate

Amazon Web Services

JULY 2020 - PRESENT

Amazon Web Services Developer - Associate

Amazon Web Services

JULY 2019 - PRESENT

Certified Kubernetes Administrator

Linux Foundation

JUNE 2018 - PRESENT

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer

Linux Foundation

Libraries/APIs

Node.js, React.js

Tools

Terraform, Chef, AWS IAM, AWS, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), AWS ELB, AWS, AWS, System Security, Jenkins, GitHub, Helm, Kubernetes HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA)

Languages

Python, Python, Go, Java

Paradigms

Automation, Agile Development, DevOps, Microservices Development, Serverless Architecture, Microservices Architecture

Platforms

Linux, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS ALB, AWS Security Token Service (STS), AWS, Azure Design, Citrix, AWS NLB, Cloud Engineering, AWS IoT

Storage

Amazon S3, Google Cloud Development

Other

AWS Cloud, Networking, Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Immutable Infrastructure, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, GitOps, AWS RDS, AWS DevOps, Container Orchestration, Consul, CI/CD Pipelines, Team Leadership, Cloud Security, Monitoring, Scripting, Architecture, Web Services, IT Support, Kubernetes Operations (kOps), AWS Transit Gateway, Direct Connect (DC), Palo Alto Networks, IT Operations Management (ITOM), System Security, Stackdriver, Prometheus, GitHub Actions, Cloud Infrastructure, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Platform Engineering

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