Rafał Gołąb

DevOps Engineer & Cloud Architect

Experienced DevOps Engineer and Cloud Architect with over 20 years of professional IT experience. I am a strong advocate of Dev*Ops methodologies and the Everything as Code (EaaC) approach, specializing in AWS and Google Cloud Platform. I excel at building and maintaining scalable, secure, and highly available infrastructure while leading cross-functional teams and mentoring junior engineers.

Krakow, Poland

Technical Skills

A curated snapshot of day-to-day tools and platforms I use to design, build and operate secure, scalable cloud infrastructure.

Cloud Platforms

  • AWS
    Expert
  • Google Cloud Platform
    Advanced
  • DigitalOcean
    Intermediate
  • Azure
    Beginner
  • OpenStack
    Beginner

Containerization & Orchestration

  • Docker
    Expert
  • Kubernetes
    Expert
  • Docker Compose
    Advanced
  • Helm
    Advanced
  • Kustomize
    Intermediate

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

  • Terraform
    Expert
  • Ansible
    Expert
  • Packer
    Advanced
  • CloudFormation
    Intermediate
  • Terragrunt
    Intermediate
  • Pulumi
    Beginner

CI/CD & GitOps

  • GitLab CI
    Expert
  • Jenkins
    Advanced
  • GitHub Actions
    Advanced
  • ArgoCD
    Advanced
  • n8n
    Advanced
  • Make
    Advanced
  • Azure DevOps
    Intermediate
  • CircleCI
    Intermediate
  • Tekton
    Beginner

Programming & Scripting

  • Bash
    Advanced
  • Python
    Advanced
  • PHP
    Intermediate
  • JavaScript/TypeScript
    Intermediate
  • Go
    Beginner
  • Java
    Beginner
  • C/C++
    Beginner
  • PowerShell
    Beginner

Databases

  • MySQL
    Advanced
  • PostgreSQL
    Advanced
  • Cassandra
    Advanced
  • MongoDB
    Intermediate
  • Qdrant
    Intermediate
  • Airtable
    Advanced
  • Baserow
    Advanced
  • InfluxDB
    Beginner

Data Engineering

  • Apache Airflow
    Intermediate
  • Google DataFlow
    Intermediate
  • Google DataProc
    Intermediate
  • Apache Spark
    Beginner
  • Apache Beam
    Beginner

Testing & Quality Assurance

  • pytest
    Advanced
  • SonarQube
    Intermediate
  • Selenium
    Intermediate
  • Playwright
    Beginner

Code Quality & Linting

  • ESLint
    Intermediate
  • Prettier
    Intermediate
  • Black
    Intermediate
  • Flake8
    Intermediate
  • SonarLint
    Beginner

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus
    Advanced
  • Grafana
    Advanced
  • Tempo
    Advanced
  • Mimir
    Intermediate
  • Cortex
    Beginner
  • Thanos
    Beginner

Logging & Tracing

  • Elastic Stack
    Advanced
  • Loki
    Advanced
  • AWS CloudWatch
    Advanced
  • Google Cloud Logging/Stackdriver
    Intermediate
  • Datadog
    Beginner
  • New Relic
    Beginner

Security & Compliance

  • HashiCorp Vault
    Advanced
  • OWASP
    Advanced
  • Kyverno
    Advanced
  • OpenPolicyAgent
    Intermediate
  • Trivy
    Intermediate
  • Checkov
    Intermediate
  • TFSec
    Intermediate

Service Mesh & Networking

  • Cilium
    Advanced
  • Istio
    Intermediate
  • HAproxy
    Intermediate

Message Queues & Caching

  • Redis
    Advanced
  • AWS SQS
    Intermediate
  • Google Pub/Sub
    Intermediate
  • AWS EventBridge
    Intermediate
  • Apache Kafka
    Beginner
  • RabbitMQ
    Beginner

Virtualization & Infrastructure

  • VMware
    Intermediate
  • KVM
    Intermediate
  • Xen
    Intermediate
  • OpenVZ
    Intermediate

AI/ML & Cloud Services

  • AWS Connect
    Intermediate
  • AWS Polly
    Intermediate
  • AWS Lex
    Intermediate
  • AWS Transcribe
    Intermediate
  • AWS Bedrock
    Intermediate

AI Tools & Development

  • Cursor
    Advanced
  • Cloud Code
    Intermediate
  • RAG Systems
    Intermediate
  • GitHub Copilot
    Intermediate
  • LangChain
    Beginner

Project Management & Tools

  • JIRA
    Advanced
  • GitLab
    Advanced
  • Agile
    Intermediate
  • SCRUM
    Intermediate
  • SAFe
    Beginner
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Expert

Offer

I help companies build secure, efficient and scalable cloud platforms. Below are the areas where I most often support.

Cloud architecture & migrations

Design cloud architecture and perform secure migrations to AWS/GCP. Optimize costs and build highly available, scalable environments.

  • Well-Architected Review
  • Landing Zone
  • IaC (Terraform)
  • Cost & security guardrails

Platform Engineering / Kubernetes

Build internal developer platforms on Kubernetes and GitOps, enabling self-service and standardization.

  • K8s, EKS/GKE
  • Helm / Argo CD
  • Multi-tenant
  • Observability

DevSecOps

Automate security across the SDLC: scanning, secrets, compliance and policies.

  • SAST/DAST/Dependency
  • Secrets management (Vault)
  • OPA/Policy as Code
  • SBOM & supply chain

SRE & reliability

Design for SLO/SLA, observability and production reliability.

  • SLO/SLA
  • Incident response
  • Proactive monitoring
  • Chaos & Disaster Recovery

CI/CD & automation

Effective delivery pipelines focused on quality, security and deployment speed.

  • GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Jenkins
  • Testing & quality gates
  • Canary/Blue-Green
  • Release management

Training & advisory

Workshops and mentoring for teams. Knowledge transfer and best practices in cloud and DevOps.

  • Tailored curriculum
  • Hands-on
  • Code/Infra reviews
  • Maturity roadmap

I worked with

Projects That Made a Difference

Cloud Migration Platform

Lead DevOps Engineer

Led the migration of monolithic applications to microservices architecture on AWS

Technologies:

AWSKubernetesDockerTerraformJenkinsGitLab CI

Key Outcomes:

  • Reduced infrastructure costs by 40%
  • Improved deployment frequency from monthly to daily
  • Achieved 99.99% uptime SLA

DevSecOps Pipeline Implementation

DevSecOps Architect

Designed and implemented comprehensive DevSecOps pipeline for financial services platform

Technologies:

Azure DevOpsSonarQubeOWASP ZAPVaultPrometheusGrafana

Key Outcomes:

  • Reduced security vulnerabilities by 85%
  • Automated 95% of security testing
  • Decreased mean time to resolution by 60%

Kubernetes Platform Engineering

Platform Engineer

Built and maintained multi-tenant Kubernetes platform for 50+ development teams

Technologies:

KubernetesIstioArgoCDHelmPrometheusELK Stack

Key Outcomes:

  • Enabled self-service deployment for all teams
  • Reduced resource utilization by 35%
  • Implemented zero-downtime deployments

Professional Certifications

Industry-recognized certifications that validate my expertise in cloud platforms, container orchestration, and infrastructure automation technologies.

HC

HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate

Issuer:HashiCorp
Obtained:June 2023
GCP

Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect

Issuer:Google Cloud
Obtained:March 2021
AWS

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

Issuer:Amazon Web Services
Obtained:Invalid Date
CNCF

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

Issuer:Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Obtained:Invalid Date

Education

My academic background in computer science and engineering, with a focus on information technologies and project management.

Postgraduate Studies, Project Management

2014 - 2015

AGH University of Science and Technology

PhD Student, Metal Engineering and Industrial Informatics

2010 - 2014

AGH University of Science and Technology

Master of Science in Engineering, Modeling and Information Technologies

2005 - 2010

AGH University of Science and Technology

MSc. Eng.

Get In Touch

Let's Connect

I'm always interested in discussing new opportunities, challenging projects, or how I can help your team achieve its DevOps and cloud infrastructure goals.

contact@rgolab.com
Krakow, Poland

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