Carlos Parada
Senior DevOps / Platform Engineer · Kubernetes · AI-Native Tooling
carlos@parada.co.uk · linkedin.com/in/carlos-parada-lamela · British / Spanish
Senior platform engineer with deep, hands-on Kubernetes expertise and a 20-year grounding in UNIX, infrastructure and cloud. I design and operate multi-tenant Kubernetes platforms end to end — from custom kubeadm clusters to managed AWS EKS — with GitOps delivery, a strong security posture and real cost discipline. Most recently I lead AI-native platform engineering: building team-shared Claude Code skills, MCP/agent integrations and spec-driven (BMAD) workflows that automate Day-2 operations and change how a platform team builds. CKA, CKAD and CKS certified.
Key Skills & Technologies
Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, Kustomize, kubeadm, AWS EKS
AI-Native Engineering: Claude / Claude Code, MCP servers & tool integrations, spec-driven development (BMAD), agentic workflow & runbook automation
Cloud: AWS, OpenStack
Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Terragrunt
GitOps & CI/CD: Argo CD, Argo Workflows, Concourse CI, Renovate
Programming & Scripting: Go, Python, Bash
Security: Aqua Security, Wiz, Kubernetes & cloud hardening, policy enforcement, mTLS via Linkerd service mesh
Observability: Prometheus, Thanos, Grafana, Loki
Operating Systems: Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS, multiple UNIX flavours
Employment History
NearForm — Remote, UK
Senior DevOps Engineer · November 2019 – Present
Lead platform engineer for a major client in the business-management SaaS space, owning a multi-tenant Kubernetes platform end to end.
Kubernetes & Platform Engineering
- Migrated the client's infrastructure and deployment pipelines onto Kubernetes — moving hundreds of tenants across multiple cross-regional Kubernetes clusters.
- Designed and built multiple custom Kubernetes clusters with kubeadm, then led the migration to managed AWS EKS.
- Provisioned all cloud infrastructure as code with Terraform / Terragrunt (DRY), following immutable-infrastructure principles.
- Built the GitOps delivery model on Argo CD for cluster add-ons and customer applications; packaged workloads with Helm and Kustomize.
- Implemented CI/CD on Concourse CI for cluster provisioning and Day-2 operations — cluster patching and image promotion across environments.
- Operate the platform's blue/green node-group strategy for zero-downtime cluster and add-on rollouts.
- Owned the security and shift-left programme: Kubernetes and cloud hardening, rollout of Aqua Security and Wiz, and in-transit encryption via a Linkerd service mesh (CKS-certified).
- Built and run the observability stack: Prometheus, Thanos, Grafana and Loki.
- Drive FinOps cost-optimisation of cloud resources.
AI-Native Engineering
- Pioneered AI-native platform engineering for the team: authored and maintain a library of shared Claude Code skills that codify operational runbooks — cluster login, add-on blue/green flips, dependency-PR automation, PR-to-Slack — cutting toil and standardising Day-2 operations.
- Introduced spec-driven AI development (BMAD) — brainstorm → plan → implement — to standardise how the team builds with AI agents.
- Built MCP server and tool integrations connecting agents to GitHub, Slack, Kubernetes and AWS for automated workflows.
- Apply AI-assisted tooling to accelerate Helm, Terraform and GitOps authoring and Day-2 automation.
- Automated dependency management across platform repositories with Renovate.
Zopa — London
Senior Site Reliability Engineer · June 2018 – October 2019
- Architected and supported infrastructure across AWS and on-premises VMware, with a strong zero-trust emphasis fitting a regulated financial business.
- Created and supported multiple Kubernetes clusters through to production.
- Infrastructure as code with Terraform modules and immutable infrastructure; automation tooling in Python, Go and Bash.
- Built CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins and Concourse CI; managed Helm releases as code with Helmsman.
- Ran HashiCorp Vault, Kafka and Redis clusters; owned DNS zones (PowerDNS, Active Directory) and self-hosted collaboration tooling (Jira, Confluence).
Sky — London
Site Reliability Engineer · August 2017 – June 2018
- SRE in Sky's Content & Discovery area, also embedded with development teams; supported infrastructure across the UK, Germany and Italy.
- Cloud-agnostic, immutable infrastructure as code with Terraform across AWS, GCP and OpenStack.
- Led the transition from Rancher/Docker deployments to Mesosphere and Kubernetes, with a focus on observability.
Sky — London
DevOps Engineer · August 2016 – August 2017
- DevOps role with a strong persistence focus — Cassandra, MongoDB and Couchbase clusters.
- Developed and maintained Ansible and Puppet modules; managed AWS and OpenStack resources.
- Docker image development; test-driven infrastructure with Test Kitchen and ServerSpec.
Betfair — London
Platform Engineer · March 2015 – August 2016
- Linux platform engineering across Citrix XenServer and OpenStack virtual machines.
- Configuration management with Puppet; SAN storage administration.
Earlier Career — Madrid (2003 – 2015)
- UNIX/Linux systems administration, SAN storage and operations across Atos Origin, Hewlett-Packard, SHS-POLAR, Cibernos and Qualitas — progressing from batch operations and web design into enterprise UNIX (HP-UX, Solaris), storage and automation. A long grounding in large-scale, mission-critical infrastructure.
Certifications
- CKAD — Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (2024)
- CKS — Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (2022)
- CKA — Certified Kubernetes Administrator (2021)
- RHCE — Red Hat Certified Engineer (2014)
- RHCSA — Red Hat Certified System Administrator (2012)
- HP-UX CSE — Certified System Engineer, Virtualization specialty (2011)
- HP-UX CSA — Certified System Administrator, HP-UX 11iv3 (2008)
Languages
English — Proficient · Spanish — Native