Hybrid Cloud Architecture
Production estates running across AWS and Azure together: landing zones, account and subscription structure, autoscaling and multi-AZ, sized right for cost and growth.
AWS · Azure ● Hybrid
8+
Years in DevOps & SRE
Senior DevOps & Platform Engineer
Automate everything.
Automate everything.
Recover from anything.
Eight years building and running DevOps platforms, fifteen in tech, and still hands-on across a hybrid AWS and Azure estate every day. I build platforms that are reproducible with code, observable when they move, and quick to recover when they don't.
Hybrid AWS + Azure Hands-on every day Relocating to New Zealand
Amjad Syed Senior DevOps & Platform Engineer · Dubai
Where I've worked
2
Clouds in production
15
Years in tech
3
Countries worked
About me
I'm a senior DevOps and platform engineer based in Dubai, and I still spend most of my day in the terminal. At Lumi I build and run our hybrid AWS and Azure estate myself, from Terraform and Bicep through to on-call.
Twice now I've stood up an entire cloud estate from scratch against a regulatory deadline: separating Lumi's AWS data platform and Okta identity from its former parent company after the public listing, and consolidating the Wellcome Sanger Institute's fragmented GCP and AWS workloads onto one automated AWS platform. Work like that is where architecture, security, networking and delivery stop being separate skills.
I'm relocating to New Zealand and will need work visa sponsorship. I hold a UK Master's in Computer Systems Security, delivered for the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, and own a regulated, compliance-driven cloud estate day to day.
BasedDubai, UAE
RelocatingNew Zealand · visa sponsorship required
Experience15+ years
CloudHybrid AWS + Azure, hands-on
EducationMSc Computer Systems Security (UK)
Core skills
Get in touch →Engineering
Automation & Infrastructure as Code
Every environment reproducible in Terraform, Bicep and Ansible, reviewed and versioned, with PowerShell and Python automation for the operational work either side of it.
Terraform · Bicep ● No drift
Cloud Security & Identity
Least-privilege IAM, Entra ID and Okta, application SSO with SAML and OIDC, MFA, managed secrets, and tested backup and restore so recovery is a plan, not a scramble.
IAM · SSO ● Least-priv
Cloud Networking
VPC and VNet design, subnets and peering, DNS, load balancing, network security groups, private endpoints and hybrid connectivity, debugged at packet level when it matters.
Networking ● VPC · VNet
CI/CD Automation
Build, test and deploy pipelines in Jenkins, Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions that turn manual, risky releases into fast, boring, repeatable ones.
Pipelines ● 0-downtime
Kubernetes & Containers
Containerised workloads on managed Kubernetes across EKS and AKS, with sane defaults for scaling, rollouts and self-healing.
EKS · AKS ● Production
Observability & SRE
Prometheus, Grafana, Azure Monitor and Splunk wired into metrics, logs, traces and alerting that catch problems before users do, with runbooks teams can follow.
Reliability ● SLOs
AI-assisted Engineering
Agentic AI tooling used deliberately in the delivery loop for code review, infrastructure-as-code scaffolding, runbooks and incident triage, with human review kept firmly in front of production.
AI tooling ● In the loop
How I work
Deep Troubleshooting
I follow a problem wherever it leads, through cloud, networking, Linux, containers and databases, not just the platform layer. Packet captures and kernel logs included.
Root cause ● Full stack
Incident Response & On-call
Calm, structured incident response with runbooks and on-call practices that scale beyond one person. I carry the pager alongside the team.
Reliability ● 24/7
Own It to Production
I take work from design through code review, rollout and the operational reality afterwards. Whatever I build, I run.
Ownership ● E2E
Technical Direction & Mentoring
Seven years setting technical direction while writing the code: design reviews, platform standards, and levelling up engineers around me.
Mentoring ● 7 yrs
Tools I work with
#AWS#Azure#Kubernetes#EKS#AKS#Docker#Helm#Linux#Terraform#Bicep#Ansible#Jenkins#Azure DevOps#GitHub Actions#Git#PowerShell#Python#Go#Bash#Prometheus#Grafana#Azure Monitor#Splunk#Entra ID#Okta#SAML#OIDC#VPC#VNet#DNS#NGINX#CI/CD
Work experience
Jun 2024 – Present
Lead DevOps Engineer
Lumi Dubai
Saudi vehicle rental and mobility company, listed on the Saudi Exchange in 2024.
- Build and run Lumi’s hybrid AWS and Azure cloud hands-on across Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD and observability.
- Run the Azure side end to end: landing zones and Azure Policy governance, AKS, VNet and private-endpoint networking, Entra ID and conditional access, Bicep and Terraform, and Azure DevOps pipelines alongside Jenkins.
- Operate production platforms with Prometheus, Grafana and Azure Monitor, incident response and on-call, PowerShell and Python operational automation, and continuous cloud cost optimisation.
- Led Lumi’s technology separation from Seera Group across cloud, data and identity workstreams.
Jan 2023 – Jun 2024
Lead DevOps Engineer
Almosafer Dubai
One of the Middle East’s largest online travel agencies, part of Seera Group.
- Automated data-platform infrastructure for a high-traffic travel platform with Terraform and Amazon EMR, and introduced Prometheus and Grafana monitoring.
Jun 2022 – Jan 2023
Senior DevOps Engineer
Wellcome Sanger Institute Cambridge, UK
UK genomics and biodata research institute, working on human and pathogen genome science.
- Standardised fragmented GCP and AWS workloads onto a single automated AWS platform, with security and compliance controls for sensitive healthcare and genomic data.
- Built and ran cloud and on-premises infrastructure for scientific digital products, working across a small engineering team.
Jan 2018 – Jun 2022
Senior DevOps Engineer
Seera Group Dubai
Saudi Arabia’s largest travel and tourism group. Business units at the time included Almosafer, Almosafer Business and Lumi.
- Implemented the end-to-end production platform for Almosafer single-handedly: Amazon EKS, CI/CD, Keycloak identity, Istio service mesh, NGINX ingress and monitoring, scaling it from zero to 4,000 bookings a day.
- Replaced a consultancy-implemented Apigee API gateway with Kong after evaluating actual usage, removing approximately USD 300,000 (about NZD 513,000) of licensing cost.
- Built and ran cloud infrastructure, automation and CI/CD for the group’s travel and hospitality platforms for four-plus years.
Apr 2013 – Dec 2017
Sr Platform Administrator
Broadcom (CA Technologies) Hyderabad
Global enterprise software and semiconductor company.
- Administered enterprise platforms and infrastructure, automating routine operational tasks.
2012
Release Engineer
IG Group Bengaluru
UK-listed online trading and financial derivatives provider.
- Ran Linux production environments, packaged Java apps with Maven, and built Splunk dashboards and alerting.
2011 – 2012
Software Engineer
Tech Mahindra Bengaluru
Indian IT services and digital transformation consultancy.
- Supported WebLogic and Apache on Solaris and Red Hat Linux, resolved priority-1 incidents, and automated deployments with shell scripts.
Selected career impact
Lumi technology separation Lumi · Architecture & delivery
Designed and built Lumi’s standalone technology estate after its public listing, carving it out of Seera Group over two years. I owned the architecture and did the hands-on work across cloud, identity/SSO, data and business-process automation. Delivered the regulatory, compliance-driven separation on schedule with no service disruption.
Platform ● Zero downtime
AWS data-platform separation Lumi · AWS
Rebuilt Lumi’s AWS data platform as an independent estate: Amazon EMR clusters, Apache Airflow orchestration, Tableau and production machine-learning workloads, cut over without breaking a single pipeline. Worked directly with the Data Engineering and Data Intelligence teams and avoided SAR 2 million (approximately NZD 910,000) in quoted professional-services costs.
AWS · Data ● ~NZD 910k avoided
Okta identity separation Lumi · Identity
Established Lumi’s independent Okta identity environment end to end: procurement, Active Directory integration, MFA and application SSO using SAML and OIDC. Designed and implemented the solution personally, avoiding SAR 1 million (approximately NZD 456,000) in quoted professional-services costs.
Identity ● ~NZD 456k avoided
Almosafer platform build Seera Group · Almosafer
Implemented the end-to-end production platform for the Almosafer travel product single-handedly: Amazon EKS, CI/CD pipelines, Keycloak for identity, Istio service mesh, NGINX ingress and full monitoring and alerting. The platform scaled from zero to 4,000 bookings a day.
Kubernetes ● 0 → 4,000 bookings/day
Apigee to Kong gateway replacement Seera Group · Almosafer Business
Almosafer Business ran an Apigee API gateway implemented by an external consultancy. I evaluated what the platform actually used, found none of the Apigee-specific capabilities were in play, and replaced it with Kong. Removed approximately USD 300,000 (about NZD 513,000) of licensing cost with no loss of capability.
Cost ● ~NZD 513k saved
Build vs buy: HR workflow automation Lumi · Automation
A commercial robotic-process-automation rollout was proposed to automate a set of HR workflows. I analysed what those workflows actually required and built the integration myself in Python against the HR platform’s OData API instead. That avoided the RPA licences, the dedicated infrastructure to run them and two additional engineering hires, equivalent to SAR 645,150 (approximately NZD 294,000) in avoided annual operating cost.
Automation ● ~NZD 294k / yr
Almosafer data platform Almosafer · Platform
Automated Almosafer’s data-platform infrastructure with Terraform, introduced scalable Amazon EMR capacity and implemented Prometheus and Grafana monitoring, improving ETL performance, reliability, recovery and environment consistency.
Platform ● Terraform · EMR
Wellcome Sanger cloud standardisation Wellcome Sanger Institute · Cloud
Consolidated fragmented GCP and AWS workloads onto a standardised AWS platform, automated infrastructure provisioning and introduced monitoring, security and compliance controls for sensitive healthcare and genomic data. Reduced operational complexity and helped research teams launch new DNA research processes faster.
Cloud ● GCP → AWS
Education
Master's in Computer Systems Security
University of South Wales, United Kingdom
UK research delivery
Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge · regulated healthcare and genomic data
Open source & engineering projects
View GitHub ↗Outside my day-to-day work I build small command-line tools and automation in Go and Python, for the fun of it, to keep learning, and to give a little back to the communities whose tools I rely on. It's where I try ideas before they're useful at work.
tiaki Go
Read-only AWS technical readiness scanner for selected NZISM and PSR information-security controls. Single static binary, no mutating API calls, versioned control mappings, and terminal, JSON or HTML reports. Every finding states its evidence, its remediation and what an automated check cannot verify.
Cloud security ● Read-only
goconsul Go
Small Go command-line tool to list and export all keys, or a prefix, from a Consul KV store. Built to make configuration backup and migration between Consul clusters a one-line operation.
Tooling ● Go CLI
pys3browser Python
Browser-based S3 bucket explorer built with Python, Flask and boto3, written because there was no simple local S3 browser for macOS at the time.
AWS ● Flask · boto3
Get in touch
I'm always glad to talk about DevOps, cloud and platform engineering. The quickest ways to reach me are below.
I am relocating to New Zealand and would need work visa sponsorship. Happy to interview across New Zealand time zones and to start a conversation at any stage.