Thilina Balasooriya
Verified Expert in Engineering
Systems Engineer, DevOps, and Software Developer
Colombo, Western Province, Sri Lanka
Toptal member since March 10, 2022
Thilina is a professional systems and DevOps engineer with extensive experience in production-grade systems on various cloud and on-premise platforms. He's passionate about cloud-native technologies, Linux, networking, and DevOps practices and enjoys working with high-caliber teams to build simple solutions for complex technical problems. Thilina has a bachelor's degree in computer systems, a postgraduate diploma in cybersecurity, and holds RHCSA, CCNA, and AWS-SAA certifications.
Portfolio
Experience
- Linux - 8 years
- AWS Certified Solution Architect - 6 years
- Cloud Infrastructure - 6 years
- Kubernetes - 5 years
- DevOps - 5 years
- Terraform - 4 years
- Git - 4 years
- Networks - 3 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, DevOps, Git, Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Argo CD, GitLab CI/CD, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), Python, GitLab, DigitalOcean, Django, Next.js, JavaScript, Shell Scripting, Amazon Route 53, Amazon EC2
The most amazing...
...thing I've developed is a fully automated pipeline to deploy and manage the entire IT infrastructure on AWS for a large-scale organization.
Work Experience
DevOps Architect
Freelance
- Designed a comprehensive CI/CD tool set with GitHub Actions to build and deploy the applications to AWS.
- Built the AWS deployment architecture to host the front-end and back-end application stack and automated test suites.
- Designed the Git release process with proper branching and versioning strategy.
Senior AWS DevOps Engineer
Blanknetwork
- Improved the architecture of the existing deployment.
- Dockerized the applications and integrated them with CI/CD pipelines.
- Assisted the team in cost-optimizing the AWS infrastructure.
DevOps Engineer
Scratch Engine
- Designed and developed the AWS infrastructure with CloudFormation templates.
- Developed the CI/CD pipelines to build and deploy applications.
- Set up the Prometheus and Grafana-based monitoring stack.
- Assisted the development team in troubleshooting and accelerating the development process.
Senior DevOps Engineer
Chakray
- Developed IAC templates and CI/CD pipelines for production-grade deployments.
- Deployed and managed Kubernetes clusters with client application stacks.
- Assisted and consulted customers to resolve their DevOps requirement efficiently.
Senior Systems Engineer
WSO2
- Collaborated with WSO2 solution architects to onboard customers to WSO2 Managed Services.
- Designed and developed IaC templates and pipelines to automate WSO2 deployments on AWS.
- Deployed reliable, scalable, and highly available WSO2 application stacks on AWS.
- Mentored and onboarded junior engineers to the team.
DevOps Engineer
Ovinway
- Managed, automated, and cost-optimized the company's AWS infrastructure.
- Migrated legacy VM-based environments to AWS and Kubernetes native stacks and gained the full advantage of AWS managed services.
- Built the DevOps culture within the company and assisted the dev teams to fully utilize modern DevOps tools.
- Implemented end-to-end CI/CD pipelines and assisted the development and QA teams in speeding up the process.
- Established monitoring and alerting systems for proactive troubleshooting.
- Managed production releases and ensured the reliability of production systems.
Associate Systems Engineer
hSenid Mobile Solutions
- Configured production-grade clusters on Red Hat-based systems with high availability.
- Implemented the hSenid Mobile application stack on customer data centers.
- Collaborated with clients to gather feedback and improvement suggestions for the solutions.
- Implemented monitoring and alerting systems for the application stack for proactive troubleshooting.
Experience
Secure Base AMI Builder for AWS
https://medium.com/cloud-life/building-a-cis-hardened-ami-on-aws-for-free-87b482b52ccbBy default, the tool is configured according to the CIS Level 1 standards, and the users are allowed to change the configurations freely to match their custom security requirements.
The project comes with an open-source Git repository, a comprehensive README file, and a detailed user guide (blog post) for the users to get started with.
Well-organized CloudFormation Framework
https://medium.com/cloud-life/organize-cloudformation-templates-with-external-parameters-file-7998098f1b8dThis allows users to easily develop complex AWS CloudFormation templates with modular architecture and re-use them in multiple environments by customizing just the external parameter files.
The project comes with an open-source Git repository, a comprehensive README file, and a detailed user guide through a blog post for the users to get started.
Education
Postgraduate Diploma in Cybersecurity
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology - Colombo, Sri Lanka
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems and Networks
Curtin University - Perth, Australia
Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
AWS
Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
Red Hat
Cisco Certified Network Associate
Cisco
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, Jenkins Pipeline, Node.js, React
Tools
Git, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon EKS, Jenkins, Helm, Amazon CloudFront CDN, AWS IAM, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), GitLab, AWS Fargate, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon CloudWatch, OpenVPN, GitLab CI/CD, Apache Tomcat, Grafana, Nagios, Ansible, NGINX, Puppet, VPN, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Kibana, Java Application Servers, Packer, ELK (Elastic Stack), GitHub, AWS Service Catalog, CircleCI
Languages
Bash Script, Bash, SQL, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, C++
Frameworks
AWS HA, Django, Flutter, Next.js
Paradigms
DevOps, DevSecOps, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI)
Platforms
Linux, Red Hat Linux, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2, Icinga2, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Blockchain, DigitalOcean, Blockchain Platforms, Apache Kafka, Ethereum
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon EFS, Amazon Aurora, Databases, MySQL, Datadog, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud, Elasticsearch, Amazon DynamoDB
Other
System Administration, Cloud Infrastructure, CI/CD Pipelines, Architecture, APIs, API Gateways, Linux Administration, Networking, AWS DevOps, Load Balancers, AWS Certified Solution Architect, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), AWS Cloud Architecture, Technical Consulting, Serverless, Amazon RDS, System Migration, Autoscaling, Shell Scripting, AWS NAT Gateway, IT Support, Monorepos, Amazon Route 53, Distributed Systems, Networks, TCP/IP, SSL, Transport Layer Security (TLS), Computer Networking, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR), Argo CD, Prometheus, MySQL DBA, Monitoring, Amazon API Gateway, Leadership, Cost Analysis, Pricing, Cloudflare, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Security, HAProxy, Application Security, Web Security, Operating Systems, Programming, Computer Security, Risk Management, Digital Forensics, Cisco, AWS CodePipeline, GitHub Actions, IPFS
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring