Najim Lawal
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Dallas, TX, United States
Toptal member since June 25, 2021
Najim is a cloud solution architect with over six years of experience in information technologies. He's an expert in designing and deploying scalable, highly available, secured, and fault-tolerant systems. Najim can lift an existing on-premise application to the cloud with experiences in technologies like microservices, Azure blob API, ECS, Kubernetes, cloud formation, and Terraform.
Portfolio
Experience
- Cloud Architecture - 7 years
- DevOps - 6 years
- Docker - 5 years
- Python - 5 years
- Networks - 5 years
- CI/CD Pipelines - 5 years
- Terraform - 5 years
- Java - 4 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Windows, Azure Virtual Networks, Azure Files, Kubernetes, Microservices, Docker, Azure, Azure Active Directory, Azure Blob Storage API, Cloud Architecture
The most amazing...
...things I've developed are cloud-native architectures, monolithic architectures, and event-driven serverless solutions.
Work Experience
Cybersecurity SIEM/SOAR Engineer
Footright LLC
- Researched emerging cyber threats to recommend appropriate countermeasures.
- Implemented security measures such as firewalls, encryption technologies, and authentication systems to protect critical information assets and conducted vulnerability scans on servers and workstations.
- Analyzed network traffic data, system logs, intrusion detection alerts, and other sources to identify potential security issues.
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer | Azure Technical Trainer
Microsoft
- Helped several clients build, deploy, and manage their custom web apps using various popular native tools and programming languages.
- Used the Azure Pricing Calculator and the total cost of ownership (TCO) framework to help clients reach a consumption-based pricing structure that allows large enterprises to manage their IT budgets better.
- Designed storage architecture to help businesses own and operate on-premises data storage equipment, reducing upfront costs and consistent overhead.
Azure Cloud Architect
CTDI
- Developed an eCommerce application using a microservices architecture. Each microservice was built to focus on a single business capability, such as the shopping cart, search, and customer review.
- Built solutions and ideal architectures for organizations that do not have to worry about maintaining a server.
- Helped develop solutions for organizations into cloud security, big data, and mobility, helping organizations scale and grow with 50% revenue.
Cloud Administrator
Creative Edge Innovative Services
- Helped Creative Edge Innovative Services reduce the processing time six-fold and increase the delivery of customer quotes by almost 30%.
- Helped the organization cut IT capital expenditure and operational costs by 70% and 50%, respectively, while delivering a highly available, low-latency IT service with AWS.
- Built an agile infrastructure platform that allowed Creative Edge Innovative Services to reduce development and testing environment costs by 75%.
Data Analyst
Creative Edge Innovative Services
- Built key-value stores with embedded systems, URL shorteners, configuration data, application variables and flags for web applications, state information, and data represented by a dictionary or hash to enable speed, scalability, and flexibility.
- Maintained the database by the service provider, as organizations only charged for usage of service. I made it cost-effective and zeroed upkeep, but with data stewardship and potential network limitations.
- Built databases, schema-on-read, schema-on-write, SQL and NoSQL, and ETL processes to help with data transformation.
Experience
News Application
Migration to the Cloud
Escalation Manager
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Urban Planning
Federal University of Technology Minna - Minna, Nigeria
Certifications
Microsoft Security Operations Analyst SC-200
Microsoft
AWS Certified Solutions Architect
AWS
AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions
Microsoft
Certified YugabyteDB Developer
Yugabyte University
Microsoft Global Hackathon
Microsoft
AZ 900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service
Cybrary
CyberArk Certified Trustee
CyberArk
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Azure Blob Storage API, Jenkins Pipeline
Tools
Terraform, AWS IAM, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Network Security Groups, Git, GCP Security, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Ansible, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Logging, Amazon CloudWatch, Microsoft Power BI, Sentinel, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Google Compute Engine (GCE), AWS CLI, IBM QRadar
Languages
Bash, Java, Excel VBA, Python, Kusto Query Language (KQL)
Paradigms
DevOps, DevSecOps, Microservices, Azure DevOps
Platforms
Windows, Linux, Kubernetes, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Amazon EC2, Azure Synapse, Azure PaaS, Azure IaaS, Azure Marketplace, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
Azure Storage, Azure Active Directory, Azure Cloud Services, Google Cloud Storage, JSON, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Azure Blobs, Azure SQL, Azure Queue Storage, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Industry Expertise
Network Security
Frameworks
Windows PowerShell
Other
Firewalls, IT Security, Azure Virtual Networks, Architecture, Billing & Collections, Cost Management, Cost Modeling, Cost Analysis, Cloud Architecture, AWS Certified Solution Architect, CI/CD Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), AWS DevOps, Threat Modeling, VPC, Networks, Azure Files, Cost Estimation, Security Architecture Assessment, Cloud Storage, IP Networks, Monitoring, YugabyteDB, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Single Sign-on (SSO), IT Governance, Group Policy, Server Backups, Cloud Services, Migration, Modernization, Cost Reduction & Optimization (Cost-down), Microsoft Defender XDR, Malware Analysis, NIST, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP), IoC, IDS/IPS, Cloud Engineering, Cloud Security, Cyber Defense, Forensic Investigation, Threat Analytics, Cyber Threat Hunting, Web Application Firewall (WAF), Amazon GuardDuty, Open-source Intelligence (OSINT), Endpoint Security, Incident Response, SIEM
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