Ibrahim Nowshad
Email . Website . LinkedIn . GitHub . Telegram . Mastodon
Passion to apply technology to solve problems, flexibility to thrive in a fast paced collaborative environment, excellent communication skills.
eCommerce/digital infrastructure leader, led mission-critical distributed Linux-platform server and performance teams to handle exponential growth.
Experience across multiple industries, including: eCommerce, media, retail, software consultancies. Leading local, regional and global platform and server infrastructure engineering and architecture teams and projects. Executed project-based technical roles across India, Europe and S.E. Asia.
Previously, held Taiwan 🇹🇼 Employment Gold Card holder (but never lived in Taiwan), currently based in Chennai 🇮🇳
❗️ Key Points:
- Distributed Internet/Linux/Unix systems architecture; system performance; reliability, resilience and recovery; security hardening, monitoring and observability.
- Infrastructure-as-Code system configuration and server management automation, scripting/programming, GitOps/DevSecOps/ChatOps CI/CD deployment.
- Disaster Recovery failover experience, due to: extreme weather (hurricane); whole-datacentre power/cooling failures; security incidents. Post-mortem improvement.
- System internals and observability, metrics, monitoring & alerting.
- TCP/IP protocol suite filtering, analysis and fault diagnosis.
- Data centre selection, implementation, cloud integration, migration, decommission.
Trusted advisor working across various geographies with inclusive multi-cultural teams. Growing teams from managing several Linux system networks in a small cloud environment, to a large cloud and physical server estate in datacentres across India and SE Asia. Interview, select, lead and develop engineering teams; mentor, set and evaluate goals and KPIs.
👨🏻💻 Technical Skills
- Cloud Platforms: AWS (VPC, EC2, IAM, S3, Route 53, RDS), GCP, Oracle Cloud
- Containerization: Docker, Kubernetes, Container Orchestration, Helm, Portainer
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Puppet, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD
- Monitoring & Logging: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Wazuh
- Security: Zero Trust Architecture, IAM, SSO, OpenID Connect
- Networking: VPC, DNS Management, Load Balancing, CDN
- Programming: Shell Scripting, Python, Infrastructure Automation
- IDE: VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf
👨🏻💻 Engineering Experience
Cloud Solutions Architect - Freelance @ Various Clients and Personal Projects (Aug 2023 - till date)
- Architected and implemented secure cloud infrastructure solutions focusing on high availability and disaster recovery
- Designed and deployed containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes for improved scalability
- Implemented automated CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD for streamlined deployments
- Implemented automated SSL certificate management using ACME protocol and Cloudflare DNS, reducing manual intervention by 100% during certificate renewal
- Implemented zero-trust architecture for internal services, through Traefik
- Established identity management solutions using Zitadel for SSO and OpenID Connect
- Technologies used: Kubernetes, Docker, Jira, Confluence, Cloudflare, Gitlab CI/CD, Hugo, Jekyll, GitHub Actions, Git, OpenID Connect, IdP, SSO, Zitadel, Tailscale, Puppet, Proxmox.
Manager - Cloud Infrastructure @ Cult.Sport (Feb 2023 - Aug 2023)
eCommerce for smart fitness products, sportswear, at‑home workout equipment and bicycles
- Architected and implemented highly available cloud infrastructure achieving 99.5% uptime through containerized deployments and automated failover mechanisms
- Established comprehensive monitoring and alerting system using Prometheus and Grafana, reducing incident response time by 35%
- Implemented infrastructure as code practices for automated resource provisioning and configurations management
- Led cloud migrations initiatives, successfully transitioning legacy applications to containerized microservices architecture
- Designed and implemented disaster recovery and backup solutions ensuring business continuity
- Technologies used: Docker, Portainer, Jira, Confluence, Git, Bind9, Wazuh, Jenkins, SAML, Nessus, Puppet, Proxmox, Palo Alto, Cisco.
Technology Manager - Cloud Security and Infrastructure @ Lazada (Jan 2020 - Jan 2023)
South East Asia’s eCommerce incubated by Rocket Internet and acquired by Alibaba Group
- Led cloud infrastructure modernization to support scalability for up to 1 billion customers.
- Designed and implemented on-premise Kubernetes clusters, improving load management, performance, and reliability.
- Collaborated with business and technical teams to define downtime metrics, reliability targets, and SLAs.
- Modernized data center networking by adopting the RFC 7938 approach, reducing network-related incidents by 4x.
- Architected a centralized logging and event processing system, handling 6+ million events per minute.
- Strengthened security posture by implementing internal PKI, 802.1X network authentication, and centralized identity management.
- Integrated GitLab CI/CD pipelines to automate deployments and improve development workflows.
- Utilized Jira for Agile project management, tracking infrastructure improvements, security enhancements, and cloud migrations.
- Technologies used: AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, Route 53), Jira, Confluence, Git, Bind9, SAML, Nessus, Puppet, SQL, Nessus, Carbon Black, Symantec.
Technical Project Manager - Technology and Products @ Alibaba Cloud (Mar 2018 - Jan 2020)
Alicloud provides reliable and secure cloud computing and data processing capabilities as a part of its online solutions.
- Led the construction of a highly available and resilient Datacenter (Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud) for Lazada and Alicloud in APAC, exceeding industry standards for uptime and disaster recovery. Achieved 99.99% uptime SLA.
- Optimized network deployment speed by 100% (from 100 to 200 network switches/day) through innovative rack design and automation initiatives using Device42 and Racktables. Reduced resource requirements and minimized deployment disruption while increasing network scalability.
- Successfully executed large-scale network projects (USD 7M) involving intricate cabling upgrades and expansions, ensuring uninterrupted service delivery. Completed projects on time and within budget, contributing to the expansion of Alicloud’s Availability Zones (AZs), Content Delivery Network (Alicloud CDN) in APAC.
- Implemented rolling deployments and automated failover to minimize downtime during critical network changes.
- Managed projects effectively using methodologies like Scrum, Kanban and Gantt charts, alongside collaboration tools like Jira, Confluence and Gitlab to ensure smooth project coordination and execution.
- Technologies used: Jira, Confluence, Racktables, Device42, Git, Lark, Aone, GitLab, Cacti, AWS, Route53, IAM, RDS, EC2, Puppet.
Lead Cloud Infrastructure Engineer @ Versé (Jun 2016 - Mar 2018)
Regional news aggregator in India through mobile app dailyhunt
Lead Network Engineer - IT Infrastructure @ Myntra (Apr 2014 - Jul 2016)
Fashion e‐tailer of India, acquired by Flipkart and Walmart
- Led and mentorship of a high-performing network engineering team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles. Increased operational efficiency by 25%.
- Optimized network operations by implementing automated monitoring, incident response procedures, and knowledge-sharing initiatives. Achieved a 99.99% uptime rate.
- Implemented best practices for predictive maintenance and inventory management, reducing surplus equipment by 20% for optimized resource allocation.
- Designed and secured a highly reliable, performant, and secure platform infrastructure prioritizing continuous monitoring, automation, and disaster recovery. Minimized service disruptions and exceeded SLAs.
- Collaborated with technical leadership to define the platform roadmap and resource allocation plans, aligning infrastructure with SRE principles and scaling needs.
- Technologies used: Jira, Confluence, Git, Slack, Kibana, Ruckus, Fortinet, Cisco, Exinda, Extreme Networks, VMWare, CentOS, Redhat, Bash.
🚀 Other Positions Held
Senior Systems Engineer @ Café Coffee Day (Jan 2012 - Apr 2014)
Junior Network Engineer @ iTech India (Oct 2010 - Jan 2012)
🎓 Education
B.Tech in Information Technology, First Class
Anna University - Chennai, India (2007 - 2010)
Couse Work: Analysis of Password Login Phishing-Based Protocols for Security Improvements or 2FA Auth with JSP and MSSQL. This project was based on IEEE 2009 and published in the International Conference on Emerging Technologies. Link to the paper
Diploma in Information Technology, First Class (Honors)
State Board of Technical Education - Chennai, India (2004 - 2007)
Course Work: ‘Information about my Institution’ - Basic HTML and MSSQL website with student registration online
📚 Certifications
(Cloud Native Cloud Foundation - CNCF) Kubernetes Administrator (In-progress)
(Google Cloud Platform - GCP) Professional Cloud Architect (In-progress)
(Google Cloud Platform - GCP) Cloud Digital Leader
(Aviatrix) Multicloud Network Associate
(Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - OCI) Foundations Associate (1Z0-1085-24)
(Schneider) Data Center Certified Associate Exam Development Path
(Cybrary) Nessus Fundamentals, Manage a Network Infrastructure
(Rackspace) CloudU Rackspace
(VMware) Associate - Cloud, Data Center Virtualization and Workforce Mobility
(Microsoft) IT Professional, Technology Specialist, Solutions Associate