Pedro is available for hire
Hire PedroPedro Lucas Farinha
Verified Expert in Engineering
DevOps Engineer and Developer
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Toptal member since April 29, 2022
Bio
Pedro is a DevOps engineer with over 10 years of experience developing and administering large enterprise production databases and middleware systems. He focuses on databases, middleware, security, virtualization, open-source technologies, and cloud computing. With his strong Unix and Linux skills, he excels in automating routine procedures through DevOps tools and tuning the performance of these systems. Pedro is a problem-solver looking for challenges and opportunities to learn and grow.
Portfolio
Smartex.AI
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Git, GitLab CI/CD, Rundeck, Tailscale, Scrum...
Freelance Clients
Amazon Web Services (AWS), SaltStack, CI/CD Pipelines, Databases, OpenVPN...
Siemens
Ansible, Oracle Database, OpenShift, GitLab CI/CD, Helm, CI/CD Pipelines...
Experience
- Oracle - 8 years
- Ansible - 6 years
- Java Performance Optimization - 6 years
- GitLab CI/CD - 4 years
- Grafana - 4 years
- Prometheus - 4 years
- Kubernetes - 3 years
- PostgreSQL - 2 years
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
Ansible, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Databases, Oracle Cloud, Argo CD, Helm, Teamwork, Collaboration, Terraform, GitHub Actions
The most amazing...
...implementation I did was optimizing the architecture of GitLab runners, achieving a 70% reduction in build times and an 80% reduction in costs.
Work Experience
Head of DevOps Engineering | Tech Support | Principal DevOps Engineer
2023 - PRESENT
Smartex.AI
- Led and mentored the DevOps and Tech Support teams in implementing new tools to streamline the company's productivity.
- Implemented a self-service web platform to help streamline the Tech Support team's repetitive tasks. Implemented Jira Service Desk with Opsgenie to manage incidents and on-call rotations.
- Mentored the team on the industry's best practices and implemented SLA and SLO concepts, fostering a culture of collaboration and goal achievement. This helped boost team morale and introduced the will for continuous improvement among members.
- Mentored a team of four DevOps engineers with different experience levels.
- Migrated a legacy OpenVPN infrastructure to a zero-trust solution, improving reliability in connecting to 1000+ IoT devices.
- Helped the team migrate cloud-based infrastructure to on-premises hardware using decommissioned infrastructure from leased hardware to clients. Reduced costs by 80% and speed by 70%.
- Deployed Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana for centralized logging management using on-premises hardware, significantly reducing costs with the cloud provider's logging solution.
- Deployed StackGres on EKS to migrate RDS databases to TimescaleDB.
- Implemented a Grafana, Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, and Telegraf monitoring solution for most of the company's IT infrastructure.
- Streamlined deployments with GitLab-CI/Terraform pipelines and Kubernetes (ArgoCD and Argo Workflows). Enhanced observability with Zabbix 7, Prometheus, and Grafana.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Git, GitLab CI/CD, Rundeck, Tailscale, Scrum, Kubernetes, Distributed Team Management, Mentorship & Coaching, Jira, Technical Hiring, StackGres, PostgreSQL, Self-managed Kubernetes, Kubernetes Operators, Argo CD, Telegraf, Grafana, Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, Proxmox, Ansible, SaltStack, Remote Work, FTP, Solution Architecture, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Infrastructure, Amazon EKS, VPN, Proxies, DevOps, Networking, Amazon RDS, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Argo Workflows, Unix Shell Scripting, Cloudflare, Cloud Architecture, Architecture, Database Architecture, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Monitoring, Amazon CloudWatch, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Scripting, SFTP, Scalable Architecture, Go, Virtualization, Cloud, LVM, RAID, AWS IAM, Amazon Aurora, AWS Cloud Architecture, OpenTofu
DevOps Engineer
2022 - PRESENT
Freelance Clients
- Developed an AWS Chatbot and Slack integration to improve the customer's developers' autonomy in interacting with AWS services.
- Delivered a CI/CD pipeline based on GitLab and SaltStack to manage SSH keys and harden 1300+ edge devices.
- Provided consulting services based on technical aspects of the customer's technical infrastructure (databases, security, and others).
- Presented cybersecurity training sessions to tech and non-technological employers of a startup company.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), SaltStack, CI/CD Pipelines, Databases, OpenVPN, Linux, Networking, Unix, IoT Security, IT Infrastructure, Bash, Cloudflare, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Kubernetes, FTP, Solution Architecture, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Infrastructure, Amazon EKS, VPN, Proxies, DevOps, Amazon RDS, Grafana, PostgreSQL, Unix Shell Scripting, Git, Remote Work, Cloud Architecture, Architecture, Database Architecture, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Amazon CloudWatch, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Scripting, SFTP, Scalable Architecture, Virtualization, Cloud, LVM, AWS IAM, AWS Cloud Architecture, OpenTofu
DevOps Engineer
2021 - 2023
Siemens
- Developed a CI/CD pipeline to deploy a critical legacy application in production servers without downtime.
- Contributed to identifying possible improvements to implement in an Oracle database that supports a critical legacy application.
- Developed a proof of concept in containerizing a legacy application and moved it to a Kubernetes platform.
Technologies: Ansible, Oracle Database, OpenShift, GitLab CI/CD, Helm, CI/CD Pipelines, Docker, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevOps, System Administration, Databases, Linux, PKI, Scrum, Bash, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Kubernetes, Solution Architecture, Infrastructure, VPN, Networking, Oracle, Unix Shell Scripting, Git, Mentorship & Coaching, Remote Work, Architecture, Database Architecture, Database Applications, Monitoring, Scripting, SFTP, Scalable Architecture
DevOps Engineer
2019 - 2021
Prozis.com
- Deployed several HA production PostgreSQL clusters using Docker containers with proven resiliency.
- Containerized several legacy applications and designed many GitLab CI pipelines for the company's internal applications.
- Deployed a Cloudera CDH 9-node cluster for production.
- Provided on-call support 24/7 for the systems that were under my responsibility.
Technologies: GitLab CI/CD, Docker, PostgreSQL, Ansible, Grafana, Prometheus, SQL, Java Performance Optimization, CI/CD Pipelines, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevOps, System Administration, Databases, Bash, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Solution Architecture, Infrastructure, Windows, VPN, Networking, Unix Shell Scripting, Git, Rundeck, Mentorship & Coaching, Remote Work, Architecture, Database Architecture, Monitoring, Scripting, SFTP, Scalable Architecture, Virtualization, LVM
Oracle Technical Consultant
2011 - 2019
Optimizer
- Deployed, administered and improved the performance of large Oracle infrastructures, mostly on the retail industry, e.g. Oracle DB, WebLogic, SOA Suite, incl. Oracle RAC and JVM tunning.
- Participated in various development projects, mainly on the PL/SQL programming language.
- Designed and implemented the technical infrastructure for integrating healthcare providers with a loyalty card benefits program in Portugal, adhering to the industry’s best practices.
Technologies: WebLogic, Oracle SOA Suite, Linux, PL/SQL, Oracle Database, Oracle GoldenGate, SQL, Java Performance Optimization, CI/CD Pipelines, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevOps, System Administration, Databases, Unix, Networking, IT Infrastructure, Ansible, Bash, FTP, Solution Architecture, Infrastructure, Windows, VPN, Proxies, Oracle, Unix Shell Scripting, Git, Rundeck, Mentorship & Coaching, Architecture, Database Architecture, Database Applications, Jenkins, Monitoring, Scripting, SFTP, System Integration, Scalable Architecture, Virtualization, LVM, RAID
Experience
Ephemeral Environments With ArgoCD
At a fast-growing startup, I implemented a complete Kubernetes architecture for microservices with ephemeral environments.
This automated setting up TLS certificates, managing DNS records, and automatically deploying refreshed databases to ensure consistent testing environments. This allowed developers to safely test new features in isolated environments, improving their productivity and ultimately saving costs on cloud resources by efficiently managing these ephemeral environments.
This automated setting up TLS certificates, managing DNS records, and automatically deploying refreshed databases to ensure consistent testing environments. This allowed developers to safely test new features in isolated environments, improving their productivity and ultimately saving costs on cloud resources by efficiently managing these ephemeral environments.
Reducing RDS Costs With EKS and StackGres
A rapidly expanding startup faced high infrastructure costs due to storing vast amounts of time-series data on RDS.
To address this, I deployed a Kubernetes cluster with TimescaleDB on StackGres, automating routine database tasks and ensuring high availability with automatic failovers. This solution significantly reduced costs compared to RDS and enabled the use of ephemeral databases for development purposes.
To address this, I deployed a Kubernetes cluster with TimescaleDB on StackGres, automating routine database tasks and ensuring high availability with automatic failovers. This solution significantly reduced costs compared to RDS and enabled the use of ephemeral databases for development purposes.
Optimizing Cloud Costs with On-premise Hardware for GitLab Pipelines
In a high-tech startup, expenses with GitLab runners on AWS were excessively high.
Using a collection of unused on-premise hardware, I designed and implemented a self-hosted build cluster using open-source technologies. This transition reduced infrastructure costs by over 80%. Additionally, I proposed the migration to an NVMe storage, further improving build efficiency by 20-30%. The entire initiative achieved a full return on investment within a month.
Using a collection of unused on-premise hardware, I designed and implemented a self-hosted build cluster using open-source technologies. This transition reduced infrastructure costs by over 80%. Additionally, I proposed the migration to an NVMe storage, further improving build efficiency by 20-30%. The entire initiative achieved a full return on investment within a month.
HA PostgreSQL Clusters on Demand
One of Europe's largest eCommerce retailers had to migrate their databases from a proprietary solution to PostgreSQL.
I designed the the whole architecture and delivered an automation to deploy ready-to-use PostgreSQL clusters, following GitOps principles. PostgreSQL clusters were defined as YAML files in a GitLab repo. Deployments were carried out by the GitLab runners using Ansible. This implementation included automatic backups (with Barman), as well as a stand-by replica, used to offload read requests from the primary instance or as a failover instance, which could be quickly promoted to primary in case of a hardware failure with near-zero data loss.
Monitoring and alarms were supported by Prometheus, Grafana, and AlertManager.
I designed the the whole architecture and delivered an automation to deploy ready-to-use PostgreSQL clusters, following GitOps principles. PostgreSQL clusters were defined as YAML files in a GitLab repo. Deployments were carried out by the GitLab runners using Ansible. This implementation included automatic backups (with Barman), as well as a stand-by replica, used to offload read requests from the primary instance or as a failover instance, which could be quickly promoted to primary in case of a hardware failure with near-zero data loss.
Monitoring and alarms were supported by Prometheus, Grafana, and AlertManager.
Education
2008 - 2011
Bachelor's Degree in Information Technologies
University of Minho - Guimarães, Portugal
Certifications
DECEMBER 2021 - PRESENT
DevOps on AWS: Release and Deploy
Coursera
DECEMBER 2021 - PRESENT
DevOps on AWS: Code, Build, and Test
Coursera
DECEMBER 2021 - PRESENT
DevOps on AWS
Coursera
AUGUST 2016 - PRESENT
Certificate in Advanced English
Cambridge University
JULY 2012 - PRESENT
Oracle PL/SQL Developer Certified Associate
Oracle
Skills
Tools
VPN, GitLab CI/CD, Oracle SOA Suite, Grafana, Helm, Terraform, Amazon EKS, Amazon CloudWatch, OpenTofu, Ansible, Oracle GoldenGate, SaltStack, OpenVPN, Git, Rundeck, Jira, Kubernetes Operators, Telegraf, VictoriaMetrics, GitLab Runner, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Jenkins, AWS IAM
Languages
Bash, SQL, Java, PHP, Go
Paradigms
DevOps, Java Performance Optimization, Scrum
Platforms
Oracle, Linux, Oracle Database, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Windows, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), OpenShift, Unix, StackGres, Proxmox
Storage
PL/SQL, Databases, Database Architecture, LVM, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle Cloud, Amazon Aurora
Other
WebLogic, Networking, Infrastructure, Architecture, Database Applications, Monitoring, Scripting, SFTP, System Integration, Scalable Architecture, Virtualization, Prometheus, Unix Shell Scripting, AWS DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), System Administration, Cloudflare, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Argo CD, FTP, Solution Architecture, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Proxies, Amazon RDS, Cloud Architecture, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Cloud, AWS Cloud Architecture, IoT Security, IT Infrastructure, PKI, IT Management, IT Project Management, Tailscale, Distributed Team Management, Mentorship & Coaching, Technical Hiring, Self-managed Kubernetes, Remote Work, GitHub Actions, Hardware, Argo Workflows, GitOps, Mentorship, Teamwork, Collaboration, RAID
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