Mar 2024 – May 2025 · 1 yr 2 mos · Remote

• ⭐️ We are Data Chefs, a group of data specialists cooking the best recipes for our clients. For companies that have lots of scattered data, no time for (more?) trial and error and no need to be convinced further with the "Data is the new oil" shiny slides, we just deliver data platform and machine learning products that will be used by real people for real goals.
• ⭐️ We demystify (big) data and simplify information as we learned: there is always a human in the loop. Without organisational change and support, even the best recipes won't move the needle.
• ⭐️ We are AWS experts who begin from our clients' unique (and not always big) data requirements, then translate them to the fastest achievable solution using AWS services. We never start from or make a salad of AWS services just because we know them very well.
• ⭐️ While many consultancies are excited with lots of opportunities and are focused on headcount growth, we chose to be like a unique, cosy restaurant with limited tables, chefs who know and are willing to know every client, and always deliver the best experience as we value their trust in us above and beyond any growth metric.
• ⭐️ We believe in building a safe home here, where all chefs come with an owner mindset, have a say in building this company together, the place and people they chose to spend the best hours of life there and with.

Nov 2022 – Mar 2024 · 1 yr 4 mos · Remote

• I was part of the Infra team doing all kinds of DevOps, Support, Operations, Security, cost-saving initiatives and building golden paths for developers with the AWS CDK.

Jun 2022 – Nov 2022 · 5 mos

• I was the first member of the innovation team and later managed a small team of developers. Working closely with product, design and defining the roadmap; both technical and non-technical. This position saw me wearing all the hats including Engineering Manager to get the product launched.
• The project I mainly focused on was a social media ROI tool. I integrated with all the major platforms; LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. This was done with a serverless AWS Lambda TS architecture using a Postgres DB with some DynamoDB.

Oct 2021 – Nov 2022 · 1 yr 1 mo

Nov 2020 – Oct 2021 · 11 mos · Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

• I did a mix of DevOps, SRE and Architecting. I migrated the initial 13 microservices Serverless Framework project to the CDK and then moved everything from Ireland to South Africa.
• I worked with Gitlab to implement CI/CD, managed AWS accounts, bastion hosts, and basic cloud security for ShipLogic and the holding company uAfrica. A lot of my work included fine-tuning Postgress, SQL queries, identifying and fixing bad performing code. I also created and implemented Redis caching for high-volume code paths + championed monitoring and observability with CloudWatch and Raygun.

Sep 2019 – Nov 2020 · 1 yr 2 mos

• All of our projects are consultancy based and that had me hands on doing RFP, POC and technical specification documents. I was the AWS Lead in the company, assisting many other teams and projects that involve any AWS services.
• I worked on a logistics app, that was backed by AWS serverless technology. I architected a YouTube look-alike platform (serverless hybrid) for one of the major banks in South Africa. I worked closely with our team in the US on a project for MIT. Laying groundwork and guiding the team on how to build a Microservice based system with AWS Lambda communicating back to on-prem Oracle and LDAP systems.

Aug 2018 – Sep 2019 · 1 yr 1 mo

• I found myself contributing in SysOps, DevOps and the BI team. I helped maintain and develop code for the on-prem servers which were running MySQL DBs, Redis and a big Elastic Search cluster.
• I was also the lead dev on a Google RCS (basically SMS v2.0) project which granted me and my team a place in the Google stand showcasing RCS at MWC2019 in Barcelona. While in between working on the core PHP systems which included frontend with AngularJS and Vue2.

Jan 2017 – Jul 2018 · 1 yr 6 mos · City of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

• My team and I maintained a legacy Java CMS and were tasked with migrating by rewriting the main code base to serverless first, still being backward compatible with the legacy system. At the same time maintaining and developing 30+ Mobile apps which uses the legacy + new systems. Lots of databases, APIs, microservices, reverse engineering, AWS services, PHP, Cordova, Ionic and NodeJS was involved.

Aug 2016 – Dec 2016 · 4 mos · City of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa