DevOps Engineer

Open to full-time
Bio

Abdul Rafay is a highly skilled AWS DevOps Engineer and Solutions Architect with extensive experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing complex cloud solutions across multiple industries. Specializing in AWS services, Abdul has successfully delivered robust infrastructure architectures, serverless data pipelines, and cost-effective cloud solutions for clients in the US, UK, EU, and Switzerland. His technical proficiency spans a wide range of technologies including Python, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and AWS CodePipeline, as well as databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and DynamoDB. Abdul's notable achievements include resolving critical production issues using advanced forensic techniques, optimizing cloud costs significantly by auditing and reconfiguring AWS environments, and contributing to open-source projects by diagnosing and resolving complex bugs. His approach to DevOps integrates comprehensive security measures, efficient infrastructure as code practices, and proactive cost management, ensuring high availability and performance of business-critical applications. Abdul holds a Bachelor in Applied Science from Oxford Brookes University, underpinning his practical expertise with a solid academic foundation in applied science.

Video Intro
Assessments
APPLICANT AVG · 49%ABDUL · 90%0255075100TopASSESSMENT SCORE (0–100)

General Coding and Video Assessment

(90/100)
  • Implement LRU Cache AlgorithmMedium
  • Design a High-Availability, Compliant EKS DeploymentMedium
  • Design a Scalable and Compliant SaaS Platform ArchitectureHard
Projects

Production AWS Environment — Mortgage Industry Document Processing Platform

Built the full AWS infrastructure for a mortgage-industry client's document-processing application, where users upload documents for automated OCR and downstream business-logic processing. ➜ Designed a VPC with public and private subnets: frontend EC2 instance deployed in the public subnet, backend EC2 instance isolated in the private subnet ➜ Configured an Application Load Balancer handling HTTPS with Route 53 for DNS, fronting the frontend/backend architecture ➜ Integrated S3 for document storage and AWS Textract for automated OCR processing ➜ Scoped IAM permissions to least-privilege across the environment, with Secrets Manager managing application credentials and KMS-backed encryption throughout ➜ Implemented layered S3 encryption combining client-side encryption before upload with S3 dual-layer server-side encryption for defense-in-depth document security

Forem Community Platform Deployment — Believe Incorporated (UK)

Deployed a production Forem community platform (the engine behind DEV.to) on DigitalOcean for Believe Incorporated, a UK health/legal tech company — selected from over 100 competing proposals. ➜ Navigated outdated upstream documentation and resolved cascading dependency version conflicts by reverting to pinned versions ➜ Engineered a cross-account DigitalOcean snapshot transfer to bypass client API key restrictions, provisioning on a personal account and migrating the snapshot ➜ Stabilised email configuration against a database-override bug by writing SMTP values directly via the Rails console ➜ Filed a detailed bug report (Ruby constant scoping issue) that was fixed and merged into forem:main by Forem's founder, benhalpern ➜ Installed Cockpit monitoring on a read-only Fedora CoreOS system via rpm-ostree, resolving a Traefik/nginx port conflict and configuring private-IP networking

AWS Infrastructure Audit & Cost Optimization — ChargeOnSite (US)

Engaged by ChargeOnSite, a B2B EV charging management SaaS platform running 21 ECS Fargate microservices across production, beta, and test environments, to audit and optimize their live AWS infrastructure. ➜ Wrote a Python/boto3 ECR lifecycle script eliminating 9,597 stale images (~3TB) across 9 repositories, reducing ECR cost from $89/month to ~$3/month (~$1,044/year saved) ➜ Configured an OpenSearch snapshot repository on S3 with KMS encryption, daily snapshots, and 14-day retention, resolving a dual-layer IAM/OpenSearch authentication conflict ➜ Assessed and successfully advised against a planned Lambda migration, correcting a client misconception about ECS Fargate billing that was driving the decision ➜ Independently produced an out-of-scope AWS cost analysis report on a $2,159/month bill, identifying ~$25,900/year in optimization opportunities across OpenSearch, DynamoDB, WorkSpaces, and public IPv4 charges ➜ Delivered a full internal system overview document covering all 21 services, CI/CD pipeline, and infrastructure architecture

RedAmon Security Automation Platform Deployment — Flexore Group (Cyprus)

Deployed and stabilised RedAmon, a containerised multi-service security automation platform (GVM/OpenVAS, Neo4j, PostgreSQL), on bare-metal infrastructure for Flexore Group Ltd — selected from over 100 competing proposals. ➜ Diagnosed a gvmd/PostgreSQL Unix socket race condition caused by incorrect Docker Compose dependency ordering (service_started vs service_healthy) ➜ Filed a detailed bug report on the official repository; fix was committed and merged by the maintainer within 4 days ➜ Designed an automated multi-stage container recovery system (restart → recreate → rebuild, bounded at 5 retries) with escalation to manual intervention ➜ Resolved a filesystem crisis by migrating a corrupted Windows-partitioned SSD setup to a clean partition ➜ Engineered a deterministic cron-based maintenance pipeline using env -i for environment-agnostic execution ➜ Maintained on retainer for ongoing platform stability

AWS S3 Cross-Account Backup Replication — DocLift (Switzerland)

Architected and fully automated cross-account AWS S3 replication for DocLift, a Swiss SaaS platform serving 8,000+ daily active users across enterprise clients including Novartis, Roche, Bayer, UBS, Johnson & Johnson, and Juventus. ➜ Scripted a 5-script Python/boto3 automation suite handling bucket pair discovery and creation across 173 bucket pairs, IAM replication role setup, versioning enablement, and cross-account replication rule configuration with delete propagation disabled ➜ Executed S3 Batch Operations backfill of 206,496 objects (~140GB) with post-replication size verification, completed in under 1 hour ➜ Resolved an AWS security team escalation by tightening IAM role scope to account-condition-level restrictions, coordinating directly with the AWS account manager following a recent security breach ➜ Deployed an EventBridge/CloudTrail-triggered Lambda function to automatically replicate newly created tenant buckets to the backup account ➜ Diagnosed a silent production data deletion incident 15 days post-delivery: used delete marker forensics and CloudTrail correlation to trace a rogue developer cron job within 6 hours, confirming the backup account remained fully intact

Experience

  1. AWS DevOps Engineer and Solutions Architect

    Upwork· OtherMar 2026 — Aug 2026
    • Delivered AWS & DevOps solutions across 15+ clients in the US, UK, EU and Switzerland, spanning cloud infrastructure, serverless design, IaC, CI/CD and data pipelines
    • Built a serverless data pipeline for Meridian Brands (US logistics), replacing a legacy VBScript EDI workflow with an AWS Lambda solution in Python using boto3
    • Designed IAM credential architecture securing $1M+/day trading infrastructure for a client, adopted over the dev team's original design
    • Architected cross-account S3 replication for a Swiss SaaS platform (Novartis, Roche, UBS, Juventus) covering 173 bucket pairs and 206,000+ objects
    • Traced a 15-day production data-loss incident to a rogue developer cron job within 6 hours using CloudTrail and S3 delete-marker forensics
    • Audited a 21-service ECS Fargate environment for ChargeOnSite, reduced ECR costs by ~$1,044/year and identified ~$25,900/year in additional savings
    • Diagnosed a Docker Compose race condition for Flexore Group and had the fix merged upstream within 4 days
    • Built a serverless S3-to-RDS stock ingestion pipeline with full VPC networking and a normalised PostgreSQL schema
    AWSDevOpsPythonBoto3S3EC2ECSEKSKubernetesDockerTerraformAnsibleGithub ActionsCI/CDGitlabJenkinsAWS LambdaRDSAuroraPostgresMysqlmongodbDynamoDBECS FargateCloudfrontroute53KMSCloudwatchCloudtrailAWS Secrets ManagerAWS IAMEventBridgeVPCNetworkingServerlessInfrastructure as CodeIaCBashLinuxCost OptimizationFinOpsData PipelineCloud FormationAIArtificial IntelligenceClaudeAWS CliCDKSDK

  2. DevOps Engineer

    Upwork· OtherFeb 2025 — Feb 2026
    • Designed and maintained AWS infrastructure across EC2, Aurora PostgreSQL, S3, CloudFront, Lambda and Route 53, reducing monthly cloud spend by 22%
    • Built and maintained CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and AWS CodePipeline, enabling zero-downtime blue/green deployments and cutting deployment time from 35 minutes to under 8 minutes
    • Containerized microservices with Docker, orchestrated workloads on ECS Fargate, implemented Terraform-based infrastructure as code
    • Collaborated with frontend and product teams to architect backend services for analytics workflows
    System AdministrationLinuxDevOpsTerraformDockerHelmKubernetesTestingPythonFastApiMERNArtificial IntelligenceAIClaudeCloudAWSFargateCodePipelineDeploymentBlue/GreenCanaryFinOpsCloud Cost OptimisationInfrastructureTypeScriptSDKCDK

  3. Software Developer

    Upwork· OtherOct 2023 — Jan 2025
    • Developed and maintained RESTful APIs using Node.js (Express) and Python (FastAPI); improved average API response time by 40% through query optimisation, Redis caching, and connection pooling
    • Built full-stack features across a SaaS analytics product using React/Next.js and PostgreSQL + TypeORM
    • Automated deployment workflows using GitHub Actions and Docker Compose on DigitalOcean/Hetzner VPS environments
    • Integrated Stripe, SendGrid, and Twilio; implemented JWT and OAuth2 authentication with refresh token rotation and RBAC
    • Contributed to frontend development using React and Tailwind CSS; implemented real-time updates via WebSockets and SSE
    FastApiNodejsJavascriptTypescriptNextjsdjangoPythonFull StackBackendFrontendWordpressVPSServerDigital OceanHetznerMERNORMPostgresqlStripeSendgridtwilioJWTOauth2Github ActionsTailwindAutomated TestingUnit Testing
Education

  1. Bachelor in Applied Science (BaSC)

    Oxford Brookes UniversityOxford, UK2023 — 2025
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