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DevOps Engineer & Cloud Architect

Rafał Gołąb

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.

contact@rgolab.comKrakow, 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

AWSGoogle Cloud PlatformDigitalOceanAzureOpenStack

Containerization & Orchestration

DockerKubernetesDocker ComposeHelmKustomize

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

TerraformAnsiblePackerCloudFormationTerragruntPulumi

CI/CD & GitOps

GitLab CIJenkinsGitHub ActionsArgoCDfluxcdn8nMakeAzure DevOpsCircleCITekton

Programming & Scripting

BashPythonPHPJavaScript/TypeScriptGoJavaC/C++PowerShell

Databases

MySQLPostgreSQLCassandraMongoDBQdrantAirtableBaserowInfluxDB

Data Engineering

Apache AirflowGoogle DataFlowGoogle DataProcApache SparkApache Beam

Testing & Quality Assurance

pytestSonarQubeSeleniumPlaywright

Code Quality & Linting

ESLintPrettierBlackFlake8SonarLint

Monitoring & Observability

PrometheusGrafanaTempoMimirCortexThanos

Logging & Tracing

Elastic StackLokiAWS CloudWatchGoogle Cloud Logging/StackdriverDatadogNew Relic

Security & Compliance

HashiCorp VaultOWASPKyvernoOpenPolicyAgentTrivyCheckovTFSec

Service Mesh & Networking

CiliumIstioHAproxy

Message Queues & Caching

RedisAWS SQSGoogle Pub/SubAWS EventBridgeApache KafkaRabbitMQ

Virtualization & Infrastructure

VMwareKVMXenOpenVZ

AI/ML & Cloud Services

AWS ConnectAWS PollyAWS LexAWS TranscribeAWS Bedrock

AI Tools & Development

CursorClaude CodeRAG SystemsGitHub CopilotLangChain

Project Management & Tools

JIRAGitLabAgileSCRUMSAFe
ExpertAdvancedIntermediateBeginner

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

Selected projects where I led infrastructure modernization and delivered measurable business impact.

AI-Powered Banking Contact Center

Lead DevOps & Solution Architect

Banking / Financial services

Serverless AI contact center replacing a legacy bank PBX with an LLM-driven conversational IVR.

AWS ConnectAWS LexAWS BedrockOpenAI WhisperOpenAI GPTTerraform
  • Replaced legacy PBX with serverless AI-powered contact center
  • First LLM-powered IVR in production for the bank
  • Self-service handling for majority of calls

Hardened Mail Platform on Kubernetes

Lead DevOps & Solution Architect

Public sector / Government

Hardened Kubernetes mail platform with a custom fleet-scale operator.

Kubernetes (RKE strict)Wolfi (distroless)KyvernoCiliumPythonHelm
  • Migrated legacy mail server to hardened Kubernetes platform
  • Defense-in-depth: rootless, distroless, no-shell images
  • Met government / CIS hardening requirements for production

Real-Money Online Gaming Platform

Lead DevOps & Solution Architect

Online gaming

Real-money online gaming platform on AWS with multi-region high-availability.

AWSEKSHelmArgoCDRedisTerraformGitLab CI
  • Maintained 99.9%+ uptime SLA for real-money gaming
  • Multi-region high-availability for low-latency gameplay
  • Auto-scaling for peak-hour traffic (weekends, sports events)

Multi-Exchange Crypto Trading Bots

Lead DevOps & Software Engineer

Crypto / fintech trading platform

Python trading bots integrating with multiple crypto exchanges concurrently.

DigitalOceanPythonAnsibleDockerTerraformGitLab CI
  • Built trading bots integrating multiple exchanges concurrently
  • 24/7/365 unattended trading operations with high reliability
  • Resilient design tolerating individual exchange API outages

On-Premise Sports Betting Platform

Lead DevOps & Solution Architect

Sports betting

Fully on-premise multi-cluster Kubernetes platform powering a sports betting operator.

Kubernetes (RKE / Rancher)Elastic StackHelmTerraformGitLab CI
  • Operated production sports betting platform fully on-premise
  • Multi-cluster Kubernetes in datacenter (bare-metal / VM)
  • End-to-end observability with Elastic Stack (logs, metrics, traces)

E-Bike IoT Telemetry Platform

Lead DevOps & Solution Architect

E-mobility / IoT

End-to-end IoT telemetry platform on GCP for an electric bike fleet — ingest, process, visualize.

GCPGKEPub/SubDataFlowBigQueryApache Airflow
  • Built end-to-end IoT telemetry platform on GCP
  • Real-time + batch processing pipeline (DataFlow + BigQuery)
  • Scaled to telemetry from thousands of connected bikes

Professional Certifications

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

AI_devs 4 Builders (Verify)

AI_devs
HC

HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate

HashiCorp
GCP

Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect

Google Cloud
AWS

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

Amazon Web Services
CNCF

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

Cloud Native Computing Foundation

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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