Gaurav Kohli, Developer in Amsterdam, Netherlands
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Gaurav Kohli

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Toptal member since November 9, 2018

Expertise
DevOpsJavaAWSSpringSQLSpring BootHadoopPerlJavaScriptDockerAWS SolutionsApache Airflow
Bio

Since 2006, Gaurav has worked in software development as a developer, DevOps engineer, scrum master, senior consultant, and product owner, and in those years, he has worked in a number of different domains, such as eCommerce, travel, and online advertisement. While working at Booking.com, he managed the ticketing back-end system for our customer service executives: the system is used to handle phone calls and emails for their million-plus customers and partners.

Portfolio

Athlon
Terraform, Terragrunt, AWS CloudFormation, CI/CD Pipelines
Fleetonomy
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Redis, Elasticsearch, Consul, Ansible, Terraform...
Booking.com
Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL, JPA, Git, JUnit, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform...

Experience

  • Java - 10 years
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 6 years
  • Spring - 5 years
  • Big Data - 5 years
  • Terraform - 5 years
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - 3 years
  • Kubernetes - 2 years
  • AWS Certified Solution Architect - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, DevOps, Terraform, Terragrunt, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Argo CD, Helm, Kubernetes

The most amazing...

...thing I've spearheaded was the migration of legacy workloads to containerized microservices on AWS, modernizing the infrastructure at Athlon International.

Work Experience

Lead AWS DevOps Consultant

2021 - PRESENT
Athlon
  • Devised and deployed CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment workflows across development, acceptance, and production.
  • Promoted and advocated for best practices in infrastructure as code (IaC) and automation.
  • Automated the provisioning and scaling of infrastructure resources utilizing Terraform and Terragrunt.
  • Collaborated closely with multidisciplinary teams to ensure technical solutions are aligned with business objectives.
  • Enhanced resource utilization and cost-effectiveness, leading to a 35% reduction in cloud expenditures.
  • Implemented various cost optimization strategies such as compute savings plans, reserved instances, and right-sizing resources, resulting in significant savings.
  • Guided cross-functional teams in resolving intricate technical challenges.
  • Deployed container security solutions, including image scanning and runtime protection mechanisms.
  • Mentored and coached junior engineers while facilitating knowledge-sharing sessions within the team.
Technologies: Terraform, Terragrunt, AWS CloudFormation, CI/CD Pipelines

DevOps Engineer

2019 - 2021
Fleetonomy
  • Acted as a cloud solution architect, designing and provisioning AWS cloud infrastructures and optimizing costs by right-sizing and choosing the appropriate cloud technologies.
  • Designed and implemented the architecture for a disaster recovery cluster.
  • Managed and supported the microservice architecture-based deployment on multiple cloud providers.
  • Conducted optimization to reduce the cost of the production cluster by 50%.
  • Increased application deployment velocity by building CI/CD pipelines, allowing teams to run ad-hoc environments based on Git branches and Argo CD.
  • Led the migration of the front end to CloudFront and Lambda-based solutions.
  • Consolidated IaC (infrastructure as code) and Kubernetes resources across teams.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Redis, Elasticsearch, Consul, Ansible, Terraform, CircleCI, Python, Helm, Kubernetes, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), DevOps Engineer, VPN, Infrastructure, Security, Load Testing

Senior Developer | Team Lead

2017 - 2019
Booking.com
  • Led the general data protection regulation (GDPR) efforts for the customer service (CS) and tech/product departments.
  • Identified challenges within the department and later worked with the product team in tackling them.
  • Spearheaded data ownership and management within the department.
  • Acted as the big data ambassador for the entire customer service department and coordinated the set up of a big data community within the customer service (CS) department.
  • Supported and answered all data infrastructure related questions and topics.
  • Guided different teams in the builds of reliable data pipelines.
  • Evaluated possible solutions to replace Red Box recorders for voice tracks.
  • Introduced Druid as a real-time OLAP engine to the department.
  • Provided technical and commercial direction to team.
  • Mentored team members in their craft and soft skills.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL, JPA, Git, JUnit, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Druid.io, Oozie, Spark, Apache Hive, Big Data, MySQL, Hadoop, Perl, Java, Infrastructure

Development Team lead

2013 - 2017
Booking.com
  • Managed the rollout of 2.0 version of Ticketing, a system where agents logged in their work.
  • Took over the role of product owner for a while and led to the project of Ticketing.
  • Facilitated a close collaboration between the agent routing and the Ticketing teams.
  • Built a bridge between the analyst community and the developer who generated data for the CS department.
  • Restructured the process of doing regular one-on-one meetings with team members.
  • Headed the agent's workshop around Ticketing's phase 2.0 in order to understand how they used new flows.
  • Automated many simple procedures followed by CS executives to speed up the issue handling.
  • Worked with the CS forecasting team to build better forecasting models.
  • Created a real-time data ticketing pipeline in Kafka to be consumed by an analyst and a data scientist.
  • Explored Druid as a platform for a real-time ad-hoc analysis of CS data.
  • Introduced Druid technology for a machine-learning-scaling track.
  • Granted access to the open source community a Perl plugin for Druid.
  • Facilitated the Druid adoption in the company while working with a business reporting team to get them started with Druid.
  • Developed a CS inbound driver insightsdashboard in Druid.
  • Was awarded a "Bloody Helpful" award within the CS department for three consecutive quarters.
Technologies: SQL, Hadoop, Apache Hive, Perl

Back-end Developer

2012 - 2013
eBuddy.com (Amsterdam)
  • Developed an eBuddy XMS internet scale mobile messaging platform.
  • Worked as part of a cross-functional Agile team, developing all aspects of the product.
  • Researched upon various solution possibilities to a problem and then implemented it.
Technologies: Servlet, Hibernate, Jenkins, JUnit, Mockito, Spring, MySQL, Java

Senior Consultant

2011 - 2012
Xebia (Amsterdam)
  • Conducted requirement gathering and interacted with the users.
  • Developed custom Atlassian plugins in Jira/Confluence for team’s specific requirements.
  • Consulted on Agile tool selection to help the product and operations teams get aligned with Scrum and Kanban.
  • Advised and helped the sales and marketing teams to move their workflow management in Jira.
  • Created and implemented upgrades and rollout plans for various Atlassian products.
  • Evangelized various teams, in Gumtree (Australia), Kijiji (Italy), and Mobile.de (Germany), into using ECG’s Atlassian tool ecosystem.
Technologies: Jira, Atlassian, Java

Consultant | Scrum Master

2009 - 2011
Xebia (India)
  • Built the back end, handling all of the data and enrichment processes.
  • Designed and implemented user stories.
  • Wrote unit and functional tests.
  • Contributed to the planning, iteration kickoffs, and retrospectives.
  • Coordinated the backlog creation and regular prioritization of stories in the backlog with the product owner.
Technologies: Servlet, Git, Hibernate, SQL, Spring Integration, Spring, JUnit, Java

Senior Developer

2007 - 2009
GlobalLogic
  • Contributed to the creation of the entire Acteva application (three modules) on a J2EE stack which eventually replaced the old Acteva ColdFusion-based application.
  • Developed a class module which included concepts such as instructor, training venue, and attachments.
  • Built a report module for the generation of money-related event reports and the list of attendees.
  • Created a refund module which handled the entire refund request made by the attendees of the event.
Technologies: Apache Tomcat, JPA, JUnit, SQL, Seam, Java

Developer

2006 - 2007
GlobalLogic
  • Developed a reporting module for the transactional database of OpenAds.
  • Built a generic report module for generating basic reports based on filters and parameters.
  • Developed a forecasting module which included revenue and revenue forecasting of their campaigns.
  • Created a module for generating unique user reports and CPM (cost per million) campaign tracker reports.
Technologies: Apache Tomcat, JPA, JUnit, SQL, Seam, Java

Perl Client for Druid.io

https://github.com/gauravkohli/Druid
At Booking.com, we heavily use Perl for development so I wrote this Perl client for Druid.io (a high-performance analytics data store for event-driven data). By using this, it becomes really easy to get data from the Druid store.

Rules with Drools

https://www.slideshare.net/falcondot/rules-with-drools-9995827
Here, you can see the slides I used when I presented Drools, a business rule management system at a conference called OSS Camps in 2009.

Data Engineering on the Google Cloud Platform

https://www.credential.net/4wt52jwt
This is an introduction to designing and building data processing systems on the Google Cloud Platform. Participants will learn how to design data processing systems, build end-to-end data pipelines, analyze data and carry out machine learning. The course covers structured, unstructured, and streaming data.

Breaking with Relational DBMS and Dating with Hbase

In 2010, I gave a presentation on a comparison between HBase and a relational DBMS (database management system) at the IndicThreads.com conference.
2002 - 2006

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering

Indian Institute of Information Technology - Allahabad, India

MARCH 2020 - MARCH 2023

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate

AWS

JANUARY 2020 - JANUARY 2023

AWS Developer Associate

Amazon Web Services

DECEMBER 2019 - DECEMBER 2022

GCP Associate Cloud Engineer

GCP

JULY 2019 - JULY 2022

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

AWS

JANUARY 2013 - PRESENT

DataStax Certified Cassandra Developer

DataStax

Libraries/APIs

Apache Lucene, Terragrunt

Tools

VPN, Terminal, Servlet, Atlassian, Jira, Apache Tomcat, Helm, CircleCI, Ansible, Google Cloud Composer, Jenkins, Oozie, Apache Airflow, Cloud Dataflow, Google Cloud Dataproc, GitLab CI/CD, GitLab, GitHub, IntelliJ IDEA, Docker Hub, Git, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK)

Languages

Java, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, Python, HTML

Frameworks

Spring, Mockito, Spring Security, Spring Boot, Bootstrap, Angular, Hadoop, Spark, JPA, Spring Integration, JUnit, Apache Struts 2, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Apache Spark, Hibernate, Seam

Paradigms

DevOps, Test-driven Development (TDD), Kanban, Continuous Integration (CI), REST, Continuous Delivery (CD), Unit Testing, Agile Software Development, Clean Code, Load Testing

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, MacOS, Android, Kubernetes, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Storage

Apache Hive, Redis, Druid.io, MySQL, Elasticsearch, SQL CE

Other

DevOps Engineer, Infrastructure, Consul, Big Data, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Streaming Data, Ajax, AWS DevOps, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Security, Argo CD, CI/CD Pipelines

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