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Kenneth Nwankwo

Senior DevOps & Platform Engineer · AI engineering · Founder, SoundTechWorks

Summary

Senior DevOps and platform engineer with 9 years of experience designing, building and operating production infrastructure across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and on-premises data centres. I have run Kubernetes platforms with 100+ microservices, built DevSecOps pipelines that stopped 200+ critical vulnerabilities before production, and kept mission-critical systems above 99.9% uptime, including national tax services processing 50,000+ transactions a day. Certified AWS Solutions Architect and Azure DevOps Engineer. Today I also build with AI, from agents and MCP servers to AI features in web and mobile products, and lead SoundTechWorks, a senior engineering studio.

Experience

Senior DevOps Engineer · Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS)

Mar 2026 – Present · Full-time · On-site, Abuja

Platform and DevOps engineering for the national revenue platform: Kubernetes, GitOps delivery, security scanning and observability for tax services used across Nigeria.

Lead DevOps Engineer · AspaceLife Technology

May 2025 – Present · Part-time · Remote

Cloud strategy and platform engineering for a technology company running 17+ microservices on Google Cloud.

  • Migrated 30+ microservices from traditional hosting to Google Cloud with Terraform-provisioned GKE and Compute Engine: 99.9% reliability and 35% lower infrastructure cost.
  • Runs the production GKE platform with autoscaling node pools, Istio and resource quotas, serving peaks of 100,000+ daily active users.
  • Built CI/CD on GitHub Actions and GitLab CI with Semgrep, Trivy and Gitleaks, blocking 50+ critical vulnerabilities before production.
  • Operates highly available Solr, Neo4j, Kafka and ScyllaDB on GKE with disruption budgets and automated backups.
  • Cut monthly cloud spend by 30% through right-sizing and spot node pools without missing SLAs.

Founder & CEO · NaijaRent (Kordex Solutions Ltd)

Mar 2026 – Present · Abuja

Rental marketplace for Nigeria: website, iOS and Android apps, and a WhatsApp assistant for finding homes.

  • Leads product, engineering and operations; designed and runs the platform end to end.
  • Shipped iOS and Android apps through App Store and Google Play review, with a self-hosted CI/CD pipeline.
  • Built a WhatsApp bot and MCP server so renters can search listings by chatting, plus automatic listing moderation.

Founder & Principal Engineer · SoundTechWorks

Feb 2026 – Present · Abuja · Remote

Senior engineering studio for DevOps, platform, AI and software work. Clients hire us for projects, monthly retainers and urgent production fixes.

  • Delivers cloud platforms, CI/CD, security assessments, web and mobile products, and AI assistants for clients in Nigeria and abroad.
  • Built the studio’s own booking platform on Cloudflare Workers and D1, with branded email, structured data and automated deploys.

DevOps Engineer (Contract) · Damisie Limited

Sep 2026 – Present · Remote

Cloud infrastructure as code, CI/CD and environment strategy for a software platform, from development through staging to production.

Senior Full-Stack & Platform Engineer (Contract) · Trust Based Mobility

Aug 2026 – Present · Remote

Full-stack and platform engineering for an online health-education company: web and mobile apps, APIs, automation and cloud infrastructure.

Senior DevOps Engineer (Contract) · iRecharge

Mar 2026 – May 2026 · Remote

Cloud infrastructure and delivery-pipeline engagement for a payments and utilities platform.

Senior DevOps Engineer (Contract) · Reboot Monkey

Feb 2025 – Oct 2025 · Remote

Infrastructure for a managed-services provider specialising in bare-metal and hybrid cloud.

  • Cut server provisioning from 4 hours to 30 minutes by automating PXE installs with Foreman for 50+ Dell PowerEdge servers.
  • Moved workloads from Docker Compose to RKE2 Kubernetes with KubeVirt, running VMs and containers side by side; 60% better utilisation.
  • Deployed a 10+ node Ceph cluster (replication factor 3) and GitOps with ArgoCD, reducing deployment errors by 90%.
  • Built Prometheus, Grafana and Loki observability with SLO dashboards and Falco runtime security, cutting time to detect by 70%.

Lead DevOps Engineer & CTO Project Lead · Easyspend.cc

Nov 2024 – Oct 2025 · Remote

Technical strategy and infrastructure for a fintech platform with 100,000+ daily active users.

  • Set architecture and infrastructure strategy with the executive team as CTO project lead.
  • Built the SiliCash app infrastructure on DigitalOcean with Terraform and launched it on the App Store and Google Play.
  • Cut CI/CD cycle time by 70% for React Native and web apps; added disaster recovery, point-in-time database restores and encryption at rest.

DevOps Engineer · Aitech

Feb 2024 – May 2025

CI/CD and cloud platforms for 20+ applications.

  • Standardised deployments across 20+ applications with GitHub Actions, improving consistency by 50%.
  • Built ELK, Prometheus and Grafana monitoring for 70% faster detection and resolution.
  • Mentored 5 junior DevOps engineers on Kubernetes, CI/CD and automation.

DevOps Engineer (Contract) · Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) (via PSIT)

Apr 2024 – Apr 2025 · Abuja

Led DevOps for the national tax processing platform: 25+ microservices on on-premises Kubernetes.

  • Architected and ran production RKE2 clusters for tax processing, the citizen portal, payments and reporting.
  • Delivered all 25+ services through ArgoCD GitOps with environment promotion and fast rollbacks.
  • Kept the platform at 99.9% uptime for 50,000+ daily transactions with autoscaling and automated failover.
  • Introduced HashiCorp Vault with dynamic credentials and a Semgrep, Gitleaks and Trivy pipeline across every service.

System Administrator · Colenco Consulting Ltd.

Oct 2021 – Jan 2024

IT infrastructure, cloud migration and security operations for a consulting firm.

  • Reduced unplanned downtime by 40% with proactive Nagios monitoring.
  • Migrated 100+ users to Office 365 with zero data loss; cut successful phishing by 70% with MFA and training.

SecDevOps Specialist · Jonafoon Nig. Ltd.

Sep 2017 – Aug 2021

Security operations and infrastructure support for enterprise clients.

  • Reduced mean time to resolution by 30% with ITIL-aligned incident workflows; 95% client satisfaction.
  • Ran vulnerability assessments and infrastructure audits to keep clients compliant.

Selected projects

National tax platform on on-premises Kubernetes · Nigeria Revenue Service

25+ microservices handling 50,000+ transactions a day at 99.9% uptime. GitOps promotion from dev to production with audit-ready history and one-step rollbacks.

RKE2 · ArgoCD · Vault · GitLab CI · Kafka · ScyllaDB

Google Cloud migration and platform · AspaceLife Technology

30+ services moved off traditional hosting with zero-drift, multi-environment Terraform. 35% lower infrastructure cost and 30% lower monthly spend through right-sizing and spot pools.

GKE · Terraform · Istio · Helm · Kustomize

SiliCash fintech app · Easyspend.cc

Full infrastructure for a consumer fintech app, live on the App Store and Google Play. Staged rollouts, security scanning and sub-second API responses at 99.9% availability.

DigitalOcean · Terraform · Kubernetes · PostgreSQL · React Native CI/CD

NaijaRent · Own product

A rental marketplace with web, iOS and Android apps and a WhatsApp assistant. Listings pass automatic moderation; renters can search by chatting.

Web · React Native · WhatsApp Business API · MCP · Self-hosted CI

Bare-metal provisioning and hybrid Kubernetes · Reboot Monkey

50+ servers provisioned automatically in 30 minutes each instead of 4 hours. Containers and virtual machines on one Kubernetes platform with distributed Ceph storage.

Foreman PXE · RKE2 · KubeVirt · Ceph · ArgoCD

Billy AI WhatsApp assistant · Infrastructure lead

Event-driven processing for a WhatsApp bot that reads documents with OCR. Workload identity, network policies and tracing for reliable, low-latency replies.

GCP · GKE · Terraform · Cloud Vision OCR

Skills

Cloud
AWS (EC2, ECS/Fargate, RDS, S3, Lambda, CloudFront, Route 53), Google Cloud (GKE, Compute Engine, Cloud DNS), Azure, Cloudflare (Workers, D1), DigitalOcean
Containers
Kubernetes (GKE, RKE2, KubeVirt), AWS ECS, Docker, Helm, Kustomize, Istio
Delivery
GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD, Atlantis, self-hosted runners, Expo EAS
Infrastructure as code
Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, Packer
Observability
Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK, OpenTelemetry, SLI/SLO dashboards
Security
DevSecOps, Semgrep, Trivy, Gitleaks, HashiCorp Vault, Falco, Keycloak, WireGuard
Data
PostgreSQL, Supabase, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, ScyllaDB, Solr, Neo4j, Ceph
AI engineering
Claude and OpenAI APIs, AI agents, MCP servers, retrieval over documents, AI-assisted delivery
Languages
Python, Bash, TypeScript, HCL, YAML

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate · Amazon Web Services, 2025
  • Azure DevOps Engineer Expert · Microsoft, 2025
  • Certified Aviatrix Engineer (Multi-Cloud) · Aviatrix, 2024
  • Cloud Architect (Azure) Nanodegree · Udacity, 2024
  • Terraform on Google Cloud · Google Cloud skill badge, 2025
  • GKE Cost Optimization · Google Cloud skill badge, 2025
  • Google Cloud Networking · Google Cloud skill badge, 2025
  • Google Cloud Fundamentals · Google Cloud, 2024

Education

  • MSc Cyber Security Science · Federal University of Technology, Minna, 2021
  • BSc Physics · Federal University of Technology, Owerri, 2011

Research

  • “Sinkhole attack detection in wireless sensor networks using enhanced ant colony optimization” · IEEE Nigeria Computer Chapter Conference, 2019
  • “Soft computing approach for sinkhole attack classification in wireless sensor networks” · Book chapter, Futuristic Trends in Network and Communication Technologies, 2021