Pavel Zelensky, Developer in Tallinn, Estonia
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Pavel Zelensky

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Bio

Pavel is a self-driven professional with more than 15 years of experience who wants to make more outstanding contributions and enjoy the involvement and results of his work. He has a comprehensive background in building and managing cloud and on-premise IT infrastructures. Pavel also has a broad view of different aspects of IT, including planning, automating, and implementing deployments for various applications and creating infrastructure as a code using different toolsets.

Portfolio

Platacard
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Cloudflare, Kubernetes...
Vivid Money
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache Kafka, Containers, Ansible, Go...
Paxful
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Elasticsearch, Apache Kafka, Ansible, Docker, Go...

Experience

  • Networking - 16 years
  • Enterprise Architecture - 14 years
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 8 years
  • Terraform - 6 years
  • Docker - 6 years
  • Containers - 6 years
  • Kubernetes - 5 years
  • Istio - 3 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, GoLand, iTerm2, PyCharm, Slack

The most amazing...

...thing I've built is IT infrastructure for a new bank in 2007. Five years later, this customer insisted on assigning me as an architect to their next project.

Work Experience

Head of Infrastructure

2022 - PRESENT
Platacard
  • Assembled and managed a talented infrastructure team, fostering collaboration with the engineering team to deliver on critical project milestones. Promoted a culture of continuous improvement and effective cross-functional communication.
  • Led the design and implementation of the infrastructure architecture for a fintech platform.
  • Contributed to the infrastructure team, established development environments, set up clusters, databases, CI/CD pipelines via GitLab, and implemented monitoring and alerting systems, enabling the engineering team to start development with a platform.
  • Directed the infrastructure team’s collaboration with the engineering team to bring a fintech product to market within seven months.
  • Ensured infrastructure readiness, scalability, and security while coordinating with engineers to meet tight deadlines and high-quality standards.
  • Created a strategic roadmap for infrastructure development that aligned with product goals and growth objectives. Focused on scalability, security, and cost-efficiency while supporting the eng team’s evolving requirements and future enhancements.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Cloudflare, Kubernetes, Kubernetes Operators, Istio, VictoriaMetrics, Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, Cassandra

Cloud Infrastructure Owner

2019 - 2024
Vivid Money
  • Developed and built the AWS base infrastructure from scratch.
  • Implemented all the tooling needed for developers.
  • Integrated a monitoring and notification system based on Prom, VM, and PD.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache Kafka, Containers, Ansible, Go, Enterprise Architecture, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, Istio

Platform Team Lead

2019 - 2020
Paxful
  • Brought Kubernetes culture to the company. Assisted engineering teams in developing Kubernetes native applications.
  • Automated different processes to improve time to market for new services with Kubernetes operators and plenty of Terraform code.
  • Trained the team and spent hours preparing workshops and demos for knowledge-sharing sessions.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Elasticsearch, Apache Kafka, Ansible, Docker, Go, Istio, Kubernetes, Terraform

SaaSOps Chief Architect

2018 - 2019
Aurea
  • Enforced the change management process for products I've been in charge of.
  • Migrated products to Kubernetes from Docker containers running on servers. The main goal achieved was an increased product availability level.
  • Dockerized the products. It was a challenging task to migrate applications as-is to Docker containers.
  • Implemented different initiatives related to cost optimization for existing products.
Technologies: Ansible, Containers, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Apache Kafka, Enterprise Architecture, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Apache Solr, Apache Lucene

SaaSOps SME

2018 - 2018
Aurea
  • Developed automated deployments for some products and performed migration to Kubernetes for them.
  • Decreased time-to-solve for different reoccurring issues by implementing automation, helping to resolve them.
  • Created solutions for issues due to Docker bugs that save a lot of time and help avoid outages.
  • Insisted on starting data migration for one of the supported products. It helped us retain big customers.
  • Became a top performer while still having time to help other team members when they were facing issues.
Technologies: Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Apache Kafka, Apache Solr, Apache Lucene

DevOps Engineer

2017 - 2018
Aurea
  • Improved support level to match SLA for products.
  • Developed different automations to be used for shortening downtime during MWs.
  • Started to act as a mentor for other team members;
Technologies: Linux, Docker, Ansible, Kubernetes, Terraform, Puppet, Apache Solr, GitLab CI/CD, Cassandra, MongoDB, PostgreSQL

Cloud Infrastructure Architect | Team Lead

2012 - 2017
Jet Info Systems International
  • Created several cloud-based DR sites for customer's infrastructure;
  • Built different solutions leveraging cloud infrastructures such as capacity on-demand, traffic localization, core enterprise infrastructure, and elastic infrastructure for enterprise solutions.
  • Planned and implemented migration to cloud-based VDC for customer's infrastructure.
  • Implemented several projects building distributed datacenters with no SPOF followed by migration for all customers systems into it.
  • Performed load testing and PoC for software-defined storage.
  • Conducted DC preparation for the achievement of the Certified SAP Hosting Provider status.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, OpenStack, Linux, Solaris, Ceph, GlusterFS, Chef, Ansible, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), Oracle VM Manager, Hyper-V, Docker, OpenShift, VMware, VSAN Technology, Citrix, Hadoop, NetApp, Dell EMC, HDS

Solution Designer

2005 - 2007
Jet Info Systems International
  • Developed and implemented server infrastructure, network, and SAN for Tinkoff Bank, which started its operations in March 2007.
  • Acted as a solution designer on the first complex project for the company that involved different company departments.
  • Got promoted pretty fast to a new role because of my outstanding contributions.
Technologies: Ansible, Solaris, Linux, Cisco, Hardware, Servers, SAN Switches, Storage

Operations Manager

2005 - 2005
Yandex
  • Implemented task and incident management according to ITSM. Implemented CMDB.
  • Introduced a solution for managing an engineering team that consisted of stakeholders who were founders of the company.
  • Got to the decision that it's not the company I want to work for.
Technologies: Linux, Jira, IT Projects, Microsoft Word

Operations Manager

2003 - 2005
IBS
  • Established datacenter operations according to ITSM methodology.
  • Implemented incident and task management based on SupportWizard software solution.
.
  • Implemented alert and monitoring system based on SiteScope software solution, now HPE SiteScope.
  • Brought to production a new facility for the data center.
Technologies: Solaris, FreeBSD, Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, Linux, Cluster, Cisco Switches, Cisco Routers

Systems Administrator

2001 - 2003
IBS
  • Developed various automations to improve SLA for services.
  • Engineered new services to be provisioned for customers in SaaS mode.
  • Improved monitoring system implementing modules for custom monitors.
Technologies: Solaris, FreeBSD, Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, Linux, Cisco Switches, Cisco Routers

Experience

Cloud Infrastructure for a Mobile Banking App

http://vivid.money
AWS-based infrastructure for the mobile banking application back end. It had separate environments for development and production and Kubernetes clusters with service mesh (Istio). Implemented all needed tooling for developers, including CI/CD platform, repositories, databases, Kafka clusters, and multi-regional solutions.

Education

1995 - 2000

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Moscow State University of Electronic Technologies - Moscow, Russia

Skills

Libraries/APIs

Apache Lucene

Tools

Istio, Terraform, Ansible, GoLand, PyCharm, Slack, Apache Solr, Puppet, GitLab CI/CD, Chef, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), Oracle VM Manager, Hyper-V, VMware, Dell EMC, Veritas Cluster Server, Jira, Microsoft Word, Sendmail, Postfix, Cluster, Kubernetes Operators, VictoriaMetrics

Platforms

Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Linux, Apache Kafka, MacOS, Azure, OpenStack, Solaris, OpenShift, Citrix, FreeBSD

Storage

Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, Ceph, GlusterFS, NetApp, Veritas Volume Manager

Languages

Python, Go

Frameworks

Hadoop

Other

Solution Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Networking, Containers, Telecom Business Support Systems (BSS), iTerm2, VSAN Technology, HDS, NetBackup, SAN Brocade, Cisco Routers, Cisco Switches, Cisco, Servers, SAN Switches, Storage, IT Projects, Qmail, Computer Networking, Hardware, Cloudflare

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