MORRIS CHINONSO CHUKWU
Reisterstown,MD
Summary
Results-driven Solutions Architect, Cloud and DevOps Engineer with over 8 years of experience designing, deploying, and managing secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure environments. Skilled in cloud architecture, infrastructure automation using Terraform, Bicep, and ARM templates, and building CI/CD pipelines with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins. Experienced in Kubernetes, containerization, cloud security, governance, and cloud-native solutions, with a strong track record of delivering reliable, high-performing platforms that align with business objectives and industry best practices.
Overview
6
6
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Senior DevOps & Cloud Engineer
Fannie Mae
05.2024 - Current
- Serve as the primary lead for Azure cloud infrastructure design, provisioning, and lifecycle management across enterprise applications.
- Architect and implement scalable Azure solutions leveraging Azure Landing Zones, hub-and-spoke networking, and enterprise governance frameworks.
- Containerized enterprise applications using Docker and implemented standardized image build processes, improving deployment consistency across development, testing, and production environments.
- Administered and optimized Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, including node pool management, autoscaling, ingress configuration, certificate management, cluster upgrades, and production troubleshooting.
- Collaborate with development teams to build and manage CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions and Terraform for automated and consistent deployments.
- Provision and manage scalable Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), leveraging availability sets and scale sets to support critical workloads and ensure business continuity.
- Design and maintain secure network architectures using VNets, subnets, NSGs, and Azure Firewall, ensuring compliance with organizational security policies.
- Implement and monitor infrastructure performance using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Dynatrace, Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus and Application Insights to ensure system health, uptime, and SLA adherence.
- Enforce governance, compliance, and cost efficiency through Azure Policy, Azure Blueprints, and tagging strategies across multiple subscriptions.
- Automate provisioning, configuration, and deployment tasks using Python, Bash, Azure CLI, Terraform, and Bicep to drive infrastructure as code (IaC) and operational efficiency.
- Administered Nexus Repository Manager to manage enterprise artifacts, container images, package dependencies, and release governance while supporting secure software supply chain practices.
- Optimize Azure cost and resource performance using Azure Cost Management, rightsizing analysis, Reserved Instances, and budget enforcement.
- Implement role-based access control (RBAC) and manage Azure AD identities to uphold zero-trust and least-privilege access standards.
- Design and manage end-to-end backup and disaster recovery solutions using Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery, ensuring business resilience.
- Led successful migration of legacy on-premises SQL databases and workloads to Azure PaaS solutions (Azure SQL, Azure App Services), reducing operational overhead by 40%.
- Participate in security audits and cloud architecture reviews to maintain alignment with NIST, ISO, and CIS benchmarks.
- Optimized data delivery by loading processed datasets into Azure Synapse Analytics, enabling high-performance enterprise reporting and reducing query latency for downstream stakeholders.
Azure Cloud Engineer
Vipre Security Group
01.2022 - 04.2024
- Served as the main contact for Azure resource management and optimization.
- Provision and manage Azure virtual machines (VMs) to support business applications and workloads.
- Configure and maintain virtual networks (VNets), subnets, and network security groups (NSGs) to ensure secure connectivity.
- Monitor system performance and health using Azure Monitor and Log Analytics to ensure high availability and performance.
- Enforce compliance and governance using Azure Policy and Blueprints to align cloud resources with organizational standards.
- Automate routine tasks using PowerShell scripts and Azure CLI to streamline operations and reduce manual effort.
- Optimize cost and performance using Azure Cost Management and performance tuning techniques for efficient resource utilization.
- Manage resource groups and apply role-based access control (RBAC) to enforce least-privilege access policies.
- Deploy and manage backup and disaster recovery solutions using Azure Backup and Site Recovery to ensure data protection.
- Migrated on-premises databases to Azure.
- Architected a modern Data Lakehouse on Azure to support advanced analytics, utilizing Azure Databricks to bridge the gap between raw data storage and actionable business intelligence.
- Streamlined data accessibility for BI teams by designing high-performance SQL pools in Azure Synapse Analytics, supporting complex analytical queries across billions of rows.
- Collaborated on CI/CD integration for data workloads, using Git and Azure DevOps to automate the deployment of Data Factory entities and Spark notebooks across environments.
Junior Azure Cloud Engineer
Fortune 10
02.2020 - 01.2022
- Worked closely under the guidance of senior Azure Cloud Engineers to support the setup, configuration, and maintenance of cloud infrastructure across client environments.
- Assisted in provisioning and managing Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), configuring virtual networks (VNets), subnets, and network security groups (NSGs), and managing Azure storage solutions (Blob, File, Disk).
- Supported the implementation of security best practices including identity management, access policies, and Azure Key Vault integration.
- Developed and executed basic automation scripts using PowerShell and Azure CLI to streamline repetitive tasks and improve operational efficiency.
- Participated in monitoring and logging activities using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Resource Health to identify and escalate performance and compliance issues.
- Conducted regular environment audits and health checks, ensuring cloud resources were aligned with organizational security and cost management standards.
- Contributed to infrastructure documentation, troubleshooting processes, and deployment runbooks to support knowledge transfer and scalability of operations.
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
École Supérieure des Technologies et de Gestion (ESTG University)
Cotonou, Benin Republic07-2022
Skills
- Cloud Architecture & Solution Design: Azure Landing Zones, High Availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR), Multi-Region Architecture, Well-Architected Framework, Hybrid Cloud Architecture, Workload Assessment, Cloud Migration Strategy
- Design, Build & Configure: Monolithic and Microservices Architecture, Cloud-Native Applications, Scalable Enterprise Solutions
- Cloud Infrastructure Management: Provisioning, scaling, and managing Azure environments
- Serverless Computing: Azure App Service, Azure Logic App, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Apps, Azure Function etc
- DevOps: Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Containerization and Orchestration, Source code management, CI/CD, Version control
- Identity & Access Management: Microsoft Entra ID, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Conditional Access
- Automation & Scripting: PowerShell, Azure CLI, Bash, Infrastructure as Code (ARM Templates, Bicep)
- Monitoring & Security: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Security Center, Defender for Cloud, Azure key vault, Resource lock etc
- Backup, Disaster Recovery & Compliance: Azure Backup, Site Recovery, Azure Policy, Blueprints etc
- Azure Governance: Cost management, tagging strategy, subscription management etc
- Networking: Azure Virtual Networks, Subnets, NSGs, VPN Gateway, Load Balancers etc
- Resource Management: Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Resource Groups, Templates
Websites
Accomplishments
- Designed and implemented enterprise-scale Azure Landing Zones supporting secure multi-subscription environments and governance standards.
- Implemented automated backup and disaster recovery solutions, ensuring 99.9% data availability across critical workloads.
- Reduced monthly cloud infrastructure costs by over 33% by identifying underutilized resources and leveraging Azure Reserved Instances.
- Improved cloud security posture by implementing Microsoft Defender for Cloud recommendations, reducing critical security findings by over 70%.
- Implemented GitOps deployment practices leveraging GitHub repositories and Kubernetes manifests, improving deployment governance and auditability across cloud environments.
- Implemented enterprise-wide containerization strategies using Docker and Kubernetes, reducing application deployment times by over 75% and improving release consistency across environments.
- Successfully migrated 30+ on-premises applications and databases to Azure, enhancing scalability and reducing operational costs by 28%, all with zero downtime.
- Automated CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions and Jenkins, reducing software release cycles from days to hours while improving deployment reliability and traceability.
- Developed centralized monitoring dashboards using Azure Monitor and Log Analytics, reducing incident response times by more than 40%.
- Enforced enterprise-wide RBAC policies and Azure Policy configurations across multiple subscriptions, significantly improving security posture and regulatory compliance.
Certification
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
LANGUAGES
English
Timeline
Senior DevOps & Cloud Engineer
Fannie Mae
05.2024 - Current
Azure Cloud Engineer
Vipre Security Group
01.2022 - 04.2024
Junior Azure Cloud Engineer
Fortune 10
02.2020 - 01.2022
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
École Supérieure des Technologies et de Gestion (ESTG University)