Curriculum Vitae

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Summary

Cloud Platform & DevSecOps Engineer with 4+ years of experience across enterprise finance, fintech, NGO, media, and freelance analytics/data work. I build and operate Azure infrastructure, AKS platforms, CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines, observability stacks, and cost-optimization workflows, with recent work expanding into AI infrastructure and enterprise AI enablement. In 2026, I am running a public AKS AI Infrastructure Lab program (~80 labs / ~84 posts) to document production-aligned Kubernetes, GPU serving, RAG, autoscaling, reliability, and FinOps patterns.

2026 Build Program (Public)

AI Infrastructure Lab Curriculum 2026 — a 45-week AKS-based lab program focused on Kubernetes internals, GPU model serving (vLLM/Triton), RAG systems, KEDA/HPA autoscaling, observability, chaos testing, and FinOps.

  • ~80 labs, 1–2 days each, namespace-isolated, instrumented, measurable, teardown-friendly
  • 2 posts/week cadence (~84 code-heavy posts): Monday infra concept + Thursday AI concept
  • Goal: publish reproducible evidence of AI infrastructure depth (not tutorial summaries)

Core Skills

CLOUD PLATFORM & KUBERNETES

  • Azure · AKS · VNets/Subnets · Azure Functions · Web Apps
  • Kubernetes operations · upgrades · scaling · Traefik ingress
  • Terraform IaC · multi-environment provisioning
  • Azure Front Door · Cloudflare failover patterns
  • Helm · Docker · Redis

DEVSECOPS, SRE & OBSERVABILITY

  • Azure DevOps CI/CD · GitHub Actions · ArgoCD (GitOps)
  • Trivy · Semgrep · Falco · Cosign
  • Prometheus · Grafana · Log Analytics · KQL
  • Incident response · DR planning · SLO-driven reliability
  • Kubecost · Azure Cost Management · FinOps reporting

DATA, ANALYTICS & AI SYSTEMS

  • Python · SQL · FastAPI · dbt
  • Data pipelines / ELT · Medallion architecture · DWH/Lakehouse
  • Azure AI Foundry · AI workflow integration + governance
  • RAG systems · pgvector · vector search patterns
  • Zoho Analytics · Tableau · Power BI

CURRENT LAB FOCUS (2026)

  • AKS GPU nodepools (T4/A100) · vLLM · Triton
  • KEDA/HPA autoscaling for LLM workloads
  • Qdrant / pgvector · RAG observability
  • Prometheus · Grafana · Loki for AI infra labs
  • Terraform + Helm lab automation

Experience

Cloud Platform & DevSecOps Engineer

Nov 2024 – Present

Old Mutual Group East Africa (via Invent Consulting)

  • Hands-on senior IC with de facto platform ownership across ~10 production AKS clusters supporting ~20 internal teams and ~5 vendor teams.
  • Built CI/CD + DevSecOps baseline from scratch across 9+ projects; reduced deployment TAT from ~8 hours (manual) to ~10 minutes dev->staging and ~2–5 minutes to prod after approvals.
  • Improved flagship platform reliability from ~90% to formal ~99.9% SLO/uptime and defined reusable DR blueprints (multi-AZ AKS, HA DBs, Cloudflare -> Azure Front Door failover).
  • Built and operate production Azure AI Foundry tooling for Risk/Compliance/Audit/Ops; improved workflow accuracy from ~80% target to ~95% with governance + observability controls.
  • Identified ~US$150K/year savings on a managed Azure subscription scope (~US$47K/month baseline), with ~US$30K/year already implemented.

Senior Data & AI Platform Engineer

Nov 2024 – Feb 2026

NCBA Bank — CarDuka Platform (via Invent Consulting)

  • Started with a V1 CI/CD enablement sprint (GitHub Actions deployment automation), then expanded into V2 data/AI/platform engineering for the marketplace rebuild.
  • Owned data architecture, pipelines, warehouse/lakehouse evolution, and DB operations across ~21 databases; expanded into AKS/Kubernetes debugging, observability, and autoscaling work with NCBA cloud/DevOps teams.
  • Built production/pilot AI and data features including valuation, Similar Cars, CLM/LTV, liquidity balancing, RAG-based review/search, KYC processing, and content moderation workflows.
  • Impact highlights: Similar Cars increased listing views ~3x; valuation engine improved pricing/listing accuracy ~13%; KYC pilot reduced verification TAT from ~24h to <1h.
  • Designed and secured approval for the reusable Azure architecture + CI/CD templates for the broader Duka marketplace roadmap through 2028.

Data Architect & Data Engineer

Jul 2024 – Feb 2025

World Relief (East & Central Africa) (via Invent Consulting)

  • Designed and delivered a Microsoft Fabric lakehouse + self-service data platform integrating 1,400+ datasets across 6+ countries.
  • Replaced manual Excel + R-script reporting workflows with automated daily pipelines, improving reporting/data turnaround from ~2 weeks to daily refreshes.
  • Shipped a production FastAPI self-service data API/platform on Azure Container Apps with Entra ID country-scoped RBAC and multi-format exports (Excel/CSV/TSV/JSON/XML).
  • Trained and onboarded teams in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda; handed over the production platform after funding cuts constrained wider rollout.

Data Lead & Data Engineer

Feb 2023 – Aug 2024

Yakwetu Online Limited

  • Joined as Data Engineer and progressed into Data Lead as the first data hire; built the data function and AWS analytics/data platform from scratch.
  • Built recommendation and watch analytics systems that increased transactions (~8%), reduced abandonment (~15%), and improved engagement/watch time.
  • Optimized ad campaign spend (~10% reduction) while bringing CPC below $0.03 and established Tableau reporting for revenue/content/campaign visibility.
  • Helped hire 5 interns (2 retained full-time) and established data SOPs for cataloging, taxonomy, schema management, and optimization.

Freelance Data Scientist

Jan 2022 – Feb 2023

Upwork & Fiverr (Independent)

  • Delivered short 2–3 month freelance projects across hospitality, logistics, and healthcare (predictive modeling, BI dashboards, and lightweight data warehousing).
  • Built predictive modeling workflows for a hotel franchise across 4 counties and fleet dashboards + predictive repairs planning for a logistics company.
  • Delivered miniature PostgreSQL + Tableau data warehouse/reporting setups for 2 clinic operations teams.
Full experience details →

Education

Bachelor of Science in Mechatronic Engineering

Dedan Kimathi University of Technology · May 2017 – May 2022

Completed campus in Dec 2021 · Graduated May 2022 · Automotive Mechatronics specialization.

Certificate in Data Science

Moringa School · Feb 2022 – Nov 2022 (Part-time)

Certificate in DevOps Engineering

Moringa School · Aug 2023 – Dec 2023 (Intensive)

Cloud Computing Program

ALX Africa · Jan 2024 – Jun 2024

Certifications

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