What is your role within Transcenda and your primary areas of responsibility?

I joined Transcenda in October 2021 as a DevOps specialist. My key focus is building the infrastructure that enables Continuous Delivery on one of our projects. We promote Infrastructure as a Code and currently bring the builds, testing, release, and infrastructure setup automation to the range of software products.

On a daily basis, I work with Amazon Web Services and Kubernetes. We also use Docker and Terraform quite actively for environment setup and provisioning.

What does your typical working day look like?

As a part of the operations team, we are building a platform for the engineering teams which will empower them to use their cloud environments most efficiently.

I start my day by syncing up with team members on the priority items to work on and then picking up the ongoing tasks from our Kanban board.

We are collecting feedback and requests from the engineers and constantly polishing our setup to help deliver software more frequently and in a timely manner.

What are the development techniques you use?

We tend to use Continuous Delivery, which enables the ability for building, testing, and releasing software with greater speed and frequency.

Let us look at the example of the Web project that runs on AWS. In cases when we onboard a new project with the click-opsed infrastructure, the first goal is to move to Infrastructure as a Code, and automate the setup on AWS using the Terraform/SpaceLift. The app instances that are run on EC2 containers are typically moved to Kubernetes and provisioned via Docker.

I prefer starting a new infrastructure project deployment with the fresh continuous integration pipelines and replicating a similar setup from the ground up, with all the latest tools and best practices in mind.

The key is to keep the different environments close and make them reproducible automatically so that the same issues appear across all environments: QA, Staging, and Production. We use the QA and Staging for testing the application before it gets deployed to upper environments, reachable by end users. Once the testing is completed, we deploy the app to production, making the application available to end users.

What are your hobbies, and how do you like to spend your free time?

I always wanted to broaden my horizons and embrace new knowledge in Information Technology Management, so I recently applied to Cardiff Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom.

I do enjoy some coffee breaks with my teammates or going out for a pint of beer in a bar nearby. I’ve also started playing table tennis regularly with a local team in the UK. It helps distract me physically and keeps my mind clear.

What do you like most about your job at Transcenda?

I’m really happy I joined the Transcenda team, where I have the opportunity to work with brilliant specialists and great clients. The company helps me improve my skills by providing regular feedback and sharing tips on how to improve my productivity. Careerwise, Transcenda has helped me accelerate my career growth. The opportunity to be a part of  large-scale projects with complicated infrastructure is extremely motivating and I enjoy learning from the experience of rebuilding such infrastructures. Keeping things scalable yet efficient is my primary goal.

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