Mikhail Janowski
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Toptal member since May 9, 2022
Mikhail is a skilled DevOps and Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience in the technology industry, particularly the Cloud, DevOps, and SRE spaces. He enjoys planning and implementation, drawing on ideas from various sources for inspiration. This allows him to understand the advantages and limitations of the systems he works with while keeping the long-term business goals in mind. Mikhail also enjoys leading and mentoring people.
Portfolio
Experience
- Amazon EC2 - 6 years
- Amazon RDS - 5 years
- Ansible - 5 years
- Kubernetes - 4 years
- AWS CloudFormation - 4 years
- AWS Lambda - 4 years
- Node.js - 2 years
- Terraform - 1 year
Availability
Preferred Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS CloudFormation, Terraform
The most amazing...
...thing I've developed is a Web3 platform built with Vue and hosted on AWS. It uses AWS Lambda and CloudFront and is integrated with an Ethereum smart contract.
Work Experience
Infrastructure Engineer
Gartner
- Designed, implemented, and maintained robust, scalable infrastructure solutions. Leveraged AWS for optimal cloud architecture and orchestrated containers with Kubernetes.
- Employed Terraform for streamlined infrastructure as code (IaC).
- Optimized CI/CD workflows, fostering collaboration between development and operations teams.
Chief Technology Officer
Regent Renewables
- Developed a blockchain-based crowdfunding app for renewable energy projects.
- Deployed the app to AWS using the Serverless Framework, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS Lambda.
- Set up a CI/CD pipeline that deploys the app to multiple environments.
- Integrated a single sign-on solution for user authentication.
- Integrated a know-your-customer service into the app for user verification.
Director of Cloud Infrastructure
2U
- Managed the DevOps team of five engineers at 2U Cape Town. This included ensuring that all cloud infrastructure for the GetSmarter brand and other 2U systems was stable, scalable, and secure.
- Migrated about 30 online campus environments as well as many microservices to Kubernetes. We had hundreds of pods running on three different clusters.
- Configured deployment pipelines to meet the needs of three development teams and one data team. In total, there were about 15 applications and 30 engineers.
- Migrated all our monitoring and logging from New Relic to Datadog.
Head of Web Infrastructure
GetSmarter
- Managed the servers for internal and customer-facing business applications, such as CRM systems, marketing websites, and virtual learning environments.
- Migrated four large servers to AWS using Ansible and redesigned applications to use various AWS services.
- Set up the CI/CD processes for the PHP and Moodle application to AWS using Codeship.
Software Developer
GetSmarter
- Developed the new Moodle themes and plugins for the company's virtual learning environment.
- Set up CI/CD pipelines using Codeship for Moodle applications.
- Built the CI/CD pipelines using Codeship for Ruby on Rails applications.
- Constructed the test-driven development (TDD) process for Ruby on Rails applications.
Experience
University of Oxford Online Campus
https://oxford.onlinecampus.getsmarter.com/GetSmarter eCommerce Site
https://www.getsmarter.com/Metaview Web3 Site
Education
Honours Degree in Information Systems
University of Cape Town - Cape Town, South Africa
Certifications
Blockchain Technologies: Business Innovation and Application
MIT Sloan School of Management
MBA Essentials
London School of Economics and Political Science
Big Data and Social Analytics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, Vue, Web3.js
Tools
AWS CloudFormation, Ansible, Moodle, NGINX, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Docker Hub, GitLab, Codeship, Terraform, GitHub, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Amazon EKS, Helm, AWS IAM, GitLab CI/CD, Traefik, MongoDB Atlas, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Languages
PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Bash, Solidity, Ruby, Python
Paradigms
Agile Software Development, DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment, Azure DevOps, Management
Platforms
Kubernetes, Docker, Amazon EC2, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Buildkite, AWS Lambda, Heroku, CentOS, New Relic, Jupyter Notebook, Blockchain, Linux, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
Datadog, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MySQL, Amazon EFS, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
Frameworks
Express.js, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Serverless Framework, Truffle
Industry Expertise
E-learning
Other
Amazon RDS, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD Pipelines, System Administration, DNS, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), IT Infrastructure, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), AWS DevOps, DevOps Engineer, Fintech, Serverless, Architecture, Security, Learning Management Systems (LMS), API Gateways, SSL Certificates, Business Analysis, Ethers.js, Ethereum Smart Contracts, Machine Learning, Innovation, Business Administration, Big Data, Data Analytics, Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)
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