Karthick K

DevOps & Platform Automation Engineer

Karthick K · +91 9840585161 · kkzone@gmail.com · LinkedIn · GitHub · Chennai, India

Summary

Senior DevOps and Platform Automation Engineer with 15+ years building CI/CD, Kubernetes, and cloud-native tooling that cut infrastructure cost and release lead time. At Ericsson, I lead MLOps product automation, Kubernetes lifecycle management, and DevSecOps controls across delivery pipelines. Core focus areas are containerization and infrastructure-as-code on AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Certifications

  • CKA — Certified Kubernetes Administrator, The Linux Foundation (2020)
  • Automation with Ansible (D-407), Red Hat (2017)
  • RHCSA in Red Hat OpenStack, Red Hat (2019)

Experience

Ericsson Global Services — [2021 – Present]

Senior Infrastructure Automation Engineer

  • Cut direct infrastructure spend by 75%+ by replacing standalone Kubernetes clusters with k3s-based vClusters.
  • Reduced pipeline lead time by 25% through dynamic TLS certificate provisioning.
  • Lead MLOps product automation, uplifting dependencies and embedding security fixes upstream.
  • Own the Kubernetes API upgrade lifecycle and author Helm charts for releases and upgrades.
  • Building MLOps services for telecom providers, including an AI Gateway-as-a-Service that vendors use to route A2A, MCP, and LLM traffic securely and efficiently.
  • Strengthened security posture with Vault-based secret management and design-guideline policy gates in CI/CD.

CoreStack — [2019 – 2021]

Technical Lead – DevOps Automation Engineer

  • Cut per-application cloud cost by re-architecting a legacy monolith into containerized microservices on small cloud instances.
  • Reduced monthly compute spend by 75% (24,800 → 6,500 credits) with automated instance start/stop scheduling.
  • Automated deployments directly from Microsoft Teams via AIOps, shortening release cycles.
  • Built IaC and pipelines with Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and Ansible.
  • Shipped custom Go and Python automation tools on REST APIs and embedded audit controls with Chef InSpec.
  • Deployed services to Kubernetes through Argo CD application manifests.

Excelencia Consulting Ltd — [2016 – 2019]

Lead Consultant (Client: Syntax/CoreServices, ERP & Hosting)

  • Automated Oracle Cloud (OCI/OPC) VM provisioning and CIS-compliance remediation with Ansible.
  • Eliminated server-hardening cost across 10,000+ Linux hosts with a Bash/PHP self-service tool.
  • Automated Cisco ACI tenant creation via APIC APIs, ASA, and Palo Alto firewall rules.
  • Scheduled automated start/stop of servers, databases, and apps to optimize cloud spend.

Mphasis — [2012 – 2015]

Senior Principal Infrastructure Engineer (Client: Pegasus, Travel & Hospitality)

  • Built an OS upgrade/migration ecosystem to retire end-of-life hardware and move to modern infrastructure.
  • Automated manual server builds and monitoring for high availability of clustered Oracle and Informix databases.
  • Led Solaris Zones migration and managed VERITAS Storage Foundation (VCS/VXVM) upgrades.
  • Delivered VMware and standalone server builds across multiple hardware architectures.

Earlier Experience

Infrastructure and systems-administration roles across banking, media, and enterprise domains: IBM (Walt Disney, 2008–2010), TCS (Northern Trust, 2010–2012), and Dell (CitiBank, 2015–2016).

Technical Skills

  • Cloud: AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, VPC, IAM, CloudWatch, CloudFormation), Azure, GCP, OpenStack
  • Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, k3s, vCluster, Argo CD
  • IaC & Configuration: Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, ARM, Chef InSpec, Packer, Vault, Boundary, Vagrant
  • CI/CD & GitOps: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, AIOps, REST APIs
  • Languages: Python, Go, Bash/Shell
  • Security & Compliance: HashiCorp Vault, CIS Benchmark, DevSecOps, policy-as-code

Education

  • M.Tech, Computer Systems and Networking — Dr. M.G.R. University, Chennai (2003 – 2005)
  • B.Tech, Computer Science Engineering — University of Madras (1999 – 2003)