01About

DevOps Engineer, 8 years in infra — started from helpdesk, ended up owning multi-account cloud architecture. Did enterprise: a Russian GDS at Amadeus scale, 500+ VMs, mission-critical 24/7. Did startup: sole DevOps, built everything from scratch. Now: 25+ EKS clusters across multiple regions, GitOps via ArgoCD + FluxCD.

I put backups before features and runbooks before alerts. If I need a tool and it doesn't exist, I write it — FastAPI dashboards, Alertmanager webhooks, CLIs. It goes into version control, gets a container and a Helm chart. That's just how I work.

years in infra
8
k8s clusters managed
25
VMs migrated
500+
core API uptime
99.9%

02Stack

Kubernetes & GitOps
Kubernetes · k3s · k0s · Docker · FluxCD · Argo CD · Helm · Kustomize · Karpenter
IaC, CI/CD & Automation
Terraform · Ansible · GitLab CI/CD · GitHub Actions · Kaniko · n8n · Linux
Cloud Platforms
AWS · EKS · EC2 · VPC · IAM · ECR · ALB · Route53 · Yandex Cloud · MWS · Yandex Managed Kubernetes · Managed PostgreSQL · Managed Redis · Object Storage · CDN · Load BalancerYandex Cloud & MWS — Russian-market equivalents of AWS / GCP
Architecture & FinOps
Solution Architecture · Multi-Account AWS · FinOps · Cost Optimization · IAM · Cross-Region DR
Observability
Prometheus · Grafana · VictoriaMetrics · VictoriaLogs · OpenTelemetry · Vector · ELK · Loki · Sentry · Zabbix
Security & Secrets
Vault · ESO · cert-manager · SealedSecrets · Trivy · SonarQube · Keycloak · Sonatype Nexus
Networking & Ingress
Nginx · HAProxy · Traefik · APISIX · Cilium · Linkerd · MetalLB · WireGuard
Data & Messaging
PostgreSQL · MySQL · ClickHouse · StarRocks · YDB · MongoDB · Cassandra · Redis · Kafka · Strimzi · RabbitMQ · MinIO · S3
Development
Python · FastAPI · Bash · .NET · PHP · JavaScript · Go

03Experience

Jul 2026 – Present

Finstar Financial Group

Senior Cloud InfraDevOps Engineer

Fintech lending group live in Vietnam, the Philippines, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Europe — each product (risk engine, communication platform, API gateway, DWH, KYC/scoring) on its own AWS EKS cluster. Own the reference architecture: 25+ clusters across multiple regions — 100% Terraform + the shared Helm library chart, GitOps via ArgoCD and FluxCD, no manual console work.

  • Own the AWS/EKS reference architecture: 25+ clusters across multiple regions, one per product/environment, 100% provisioned via Terraform, GitOps via ArgoCD and FluxCD, zero manual console work
  • Built a new production EKS cluster from zero for the Africa DWH team — networking, cross-account IAM, ArgoCD bootstrap — then added StarRocks with its load balancer, DNS and security groups
  • Rolled out the Linkerd service mesh to new namespaces via Terraform across two regions (Africa and Europe)
  • FinOps: Karpenter consolidation policies and node-class rightsizing keep compute spend flat as the fleet grows past 25 clusters
  • Added graceful shutdown to the shared Helm library chart — terminationGracePeriodSeconds + lifecycle hooks — shipping to 10+ clusters, documented in the platform's autoscaling/RBAC/secrets/jobs guides every dev team works from
  • Built and maintain an internal Kubernetes dashboard (FastAPI + vanilla JS) — workloads, RBAC, real disk usage, ingress health checks — dev teams' daily driver instead of kubectl

Kubernetes · AWS EKS · FinOps · Solution Architecture · Terraform · ArgoCD · FluxCD · Karpenter · Linkerd · Vault · External Secrets Operator · Keycloak · Kafka · Strimzi · ClickHouse · StarRocks · YDB · PostgreSQL · GitLab CI/CD · Kaniko · SonarQube · Sonatype Nexus · VictoriaMetrics · OpenTelemetry

Aug 2022 – Present · 4+ yrs

Sirena-Travel group

InfraDevOps Engineer

Four years at Sirena-Travel, across three products. I ran the full infrastructure at each: cloud, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, and tooling.

Red Rose Traveltech EU division 2026

B2B corporate-travel platform for the European market — built the whole cloud from scratch.

  • All Yandex Cloud infra in Terraform — VPC, managed Postgres/Redis, S3, DNS, CDN, load balancers. 100% IaC, no console clicks
  • GitLab CI/CD per service: test → build → Helm deploy → promotion gates with auto-rollback — commit to prod in under 5 min
  • Prometheus + Grafana wired to SLO targets, alerts via Alertmanager, TLS from cert-manager — 99.9%+ on the booking APIs
  • Automated recurring ops with n8n: partner onboarding, SLA alerts, Terraform drift — no manual work needed

MixVel agent GDS division 2025 – 2026

Agent-facing real-time GDS with its own GDS code — built the GitOps platform from scratch.

  • FluxCD v2 hub-and-spoke: one hub reconciles five spokes via SealedSecrets — no kubectl apply in prod
  • 3-layer Kustomize (base / overlays / per-env) — 90%+ config shared, zero drift; k3s + Cilium on-prem, Yandex Managed Kubernetes, APISIX
  • Whole data layer as HelmReleases — Kafka, RabbitMQ, Cassandra, ClickHouse, MongoDB, Redis, MinIO; new cluster in 30 min via Ansible
  • kube-prometheus-stack, Victoria Logs, ELK, OpenTelemetry; Vault + Trivy Operator; −20% compute by rightsizing pods
  • Wrote the team's daily tooling — env-view, abot, trivy-to-sonarqube, confluence-publisher — all Helm-packaged

Sirena-Travel parent GDS 2022 – 2026

Russian GDS at Amadeus/Sabre scale — 500+ VMs, polyglot (Java, Python, PHP, .NET, C++), 24/7.

  • Moved from bare VMs to containers — XEN/libvirt → Docker Swarm → Kubernetes, 500+ nodes, +40% utilisation, no downtime
  • CI/CD from scratch for every stack — deploys from hours to under 10 min
  • Promotion gates + auto-rollback cut bad-deploy incidents by 65%; on-call with runbooks — MTTR 120 → 20 min
  • Prometheus on 500+ nodes, 30+ dashboards; Ansible config (zero drift); zero-downtime quarterly OS patching

Kubernetes · FluxCD v2 · Kustomize · Terraform · Ansible · GitLab CI/CD · Cilium · APISIX · Kafka · Vault · Prometheus · Grafana · Yandex Cloud

Feb 2020 – Aug 2022 · 2 yrs 7 mos

ADV/web-engineering

Middle Sysadmin / Junior DevOps Engineer

Ran hybrid infra for web apps on Proxmox and VMware ESXi — introduced Docker and Kubernetes. Set up CI/CD with GitLab CI and Jenkins, managed config with Ansible, replaced Zabbix with Grafana/Prometheus. Automated routine tasks in Bash/Python and kept the hardware running — MikroTik/HP/DELL/SuperMicro.

Proxmox · VMware ESXi · Docker · Kubernetes · Ansible · GitLab CI · Jenkins · Zabbix · Grafana

Nov 2018 – Feb 2020 · 1 yr 4 mos

TenderTech

Junior / Middle Sysadmin

Where it started — sysadmin and user support (Windows/Linux, MS Office, 1C), accounts in AD/Atlassian/GitLab. Ran Proxmox VMs (Nginx, PHP-FPM) and kept the office hardware running — SuperMicro/DELL/MikroTik, AXIS/UniFi.

Proxmox · Linux · Nginx · PHP-FPM · Active Directory · MikroTik · SuperMicro

04Projects & contract work

2026

MTS contract

DevOps Engineer

MTS crypto/fintech division — blockchain settlement (VED) and two B2C exchanges. Deployed 8 environments on bare kubeadm, GitOps with ArgoCD, and a shared GitLab CI library (Kaniko, Trivy + OPA policy, SonarQube, Semgrep). Ansible managed the full cluster lifecycle; Kafka via Strimzi, secrets in Vault, node access over WireGuard.

Kubernetes · kubeadm · ArgoCD · Terraform · Ansible · GitLab CI · Strimzi · Vault

2024 – 2025

Flowerave contract

DevOps Engineer

Ticketing startup, sole engineer on infra — built it from an empty account. Full IaC on Yandex Cloud, k8s, self-hosted GitLab. Postgres backups with WAL archiving (RPO < 1 hr, RTO < 30 min), env provisioning from 3 days down to 30 min. 15 months, zero data loss.

Terraform · Kubernetes · GitLab CI · Yandex Cloud · Sentry · ELK · PostgreSQL

2023 – Present

antonnovikov.com

Personal site & homelab

Site and homelab on a single VPS (k0s, Prague). FastAPI + Jinja2 behind APISIX, per-host TLS from Let's Encrypt via cert-manager, a private Docker registry, WireGuard and IKEv2, HTTP/SOCKS5/Shadowsocks proxies with health checks, one-command deploys (build → push → rollout). Full observability — metrics, logs, alerts, dashboards — within ~452 MiB of memory requests. A dozen more services run on the same VPS, ~€130/year all-in.

k0s · FastAPI · APISIX · cert-manager · WireGuard · Litestream

2026 – Present

Weblog & Cheatsheet

Technical write-ups from real infrastructure — FluxCD, observability, security, self-hosting; not rewrites of docs, but real solutions from production. Plus a working cheatsheet: 1600+ commands across 100+ tools (kubectl, helm, terraform, vault, linux and more), published and maintained.

Kubernetes · Observability · Security · Self-hosting