AZARIAH KIDANE
Fort Washington,MD
Summary
Senior Cloud and DevOps Engineer with extensive experience in AWS cloud infrastructure and CI/CD automation. Founded and scaled a multi-state facilities management company, driving operational efficiency through technology integration and KPI analytics. Adept at end-to-end platform ownership and remediation of security vulnerabilities in regulated environments.
Overview
1
1
Certification
13
13
years of professional experience
Work History
Business Broker
Transworld Business Advisors
10.2024 - Current
- Advised business owners on exit planning and transaction readiness to maximize business value
- Conducted operational and financial due diligence, evaluating workflows and vendor dependencies to identify scalability risks
- Analyzed financial statements and reporting systems to enhance valuation accuracy and support buyer underwriting
- Coordinate with attorneys, lenders, and buyers to support transaction execution and transition planning
CEO / Operations Manager
F&F LLC
Washington, DC
05.2015 - Current
- Founded and scaled multi-state facilities management services company, ensuring compliance across regulated environments
- Led technology-enabled operations, overseeing system selection, vendor-managed IT services, and operational reporting processes
- Conducted financial, operational, and systems due diligence for SBA-funded acquisition, facilitating strategic decision-making
- Conducted financial, operational, and systems due diligence for an SBA-funded acquisition completed in 2024
Senior Consultant / Project Engineer
Vertical Applications
Ballston, VA
02.2020 - 03.2023
- Implemented Infrastructure as Code using CloudFormation to standardize and automate deployments
- Engineered and maintained AWS cloud infrastructure supporting production applications using EC2, S3, RDS, IAM, and VPCs
- Administered Jenkins CI/CD platform, including creation and maintenance of build and deployment jobs
- Installed, configured, and managed Jenkins plugins to support pipeline functionality
- Troubleshot and resolved failed builds, pipeline errors, and deployment issues
- Performed Jenkins platform upgrades and version maintenance to ensure stability and security
- Configured Ansible playbooks for system provisioning and configuration management
- Supported source control and artifact workflows using GitHub and Nexus
- Led remediation of environment-wide vulnerabilities identified through Nessus scans, contributing to ATO certification
- Managed Linux and Windows application servers, configuring IIS for application hosting to ensure reliable application access
- Supported U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within the Department of Homeland Security, providing DevOps and infrastructure support for mission-critical systems
- Supported UI Path RPA infrastructure including Orchestrator, Robots, and Studio
- Held an active Public Trust security clearance during tenure
Linux Engineer
Thomson Reuters Special Services
McLean, VA
08.2019 - 02.2020
- Administered and hardened Red Hat, Ubuntu, and CentOS systems, including patching, upgrades, and configuration management
- Developed and maintained Linux-based infrastructure for production applications in virtualized environments
- Tuned Elasticsearch and Linux systems for performance, stability, and reliability
- Built, configured, and managed Elasticsearch clusters supporting search, logging, and analytics workloads
- Implemented monitoring and alerting using Splunk and Nagios to ensure application availability
- Created and maintained standardized golden images for efficient VM provisioning and Linux deployments
- Configured and supported application stacks on Apache and related middleware to ensure stable operations
- Collaborated with DevOps and development teams to troubleshoot OS, application, and network-level issues
DevOps Engineer
Vertical Applications
Crystal City, VA
11.2015 - 11.2017
- Deployed and managed Docker containers and Jenkins pipelines to automate and streamline build and deployment workflows
- Administered RHEL, Ubuntu, and Amazon Linux environments
- Configured ForgeRock security stack and managed SSL keystores to ensure secure application access
- Implemented monitoring and code quality tooling using SonarQube
- Provided infrastructure and DevOps support for production systems within Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) at U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- Supported MongoDB environments and integrated data into Tableau for analytics use cases
- Held an active Public Trust security clearance during tenure
Data Center Technician
Amazon
Manassas, VA
08.2013 - 04.2014
- Troubleshot and repaired server hardware, RAID, BIOS, and OS issues, ensuring optimal performance in 24/7 data center environment
- Utilized SSH and diagnostic tools to efficiently resolve infrastructure and connectivity issues, minimizing downtime
- Collaborated with network engineers to swiftly resolve production incidents, enhancing overall system reliability
- Supported AWS services including EC2, S3, and EBS
- Performed OS installations and system recovery
Education
Bachelor of Science - Health & Exercise Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VASkills
- AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, IAM, VPC, EBS)
- Docker
- Jenkins
- CloudFormation
- Ansible
- GitHub
- Nexus
- Elasticsearch
- Splunk
- Nagios
- SonarQube
- Linux expertise
- Windows Server
- IIS
- Cloud services
- Team collaboration
- Cross-functional collaboration
Certification
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, 2020
- Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master, 2020
- UI Path Infrastructure Training Certificate, 2020
Timeline
Business Broker
Transworld Business Advisors
10.2024 - Current
Senior Consultant / Project Engineer
Vertical Applications
02.2020 - 03.2023
Linux Engineer
Thomson Reuters Special Services
08.2019 - 02.2020
DevOps Engineer
Vertical Applications
11.2015 - 11.2017
CEO / Operations Manager
F&F LLC
05.2015 - Current
Data Center Technician
Amazon
08.2013 - 04.2014
Bachelor of Science - Health & Exercise Science
Virginia Commonwealth University