Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Work Availability
Timeline
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Nikhil Aherkar

Nikhil Aherkar

Milford,CT, USA

Summary

Dynamic and results-driven Cloud and Kubernetes Engineer with over 8 years of expertise in designing and managing cloud-native infrastructures across AWS, Azure, and hybrid environments. Proficient in Kubernetes orchestration (On-Prem, AKS, and EKS) and Red Hat OpenShift, with a strong emphasis on containerization and CI/CD automation to enhance system performance and ensure high availability of mission-critical applications. Successfully led cross-departmental initiatives, partnering with development teams to containerize over 60 applications using Docker and Helm, while collaborating with security teams to implement RBAC, network policies, and compliance automation within Kubernetes clusters. Consistent track record of delivering scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud solutions while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation that aligns seamlessly with organizational goals.

Overview

12
12
years of professional experience

Work History

WebSphere Application Server Sr admin

Avangrid Management Company
08.2020 - Current
  • Designed and implemented cloud infrastructure solutions using AWS/Azure.
  • Migrated on-premises applications to the cloud.
  • Developed and enforced cloud security policies, ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations.
  • Collaborated with stakeholders to define cloud strategy and roadmap, aligning with business goals.
  • Architected and deployed scalable cloud solutions for around 30+ applications.
  • Automated cloud infrastructure provisioning and management using tools like Terraform and Ansible.
  • Monitored and optimized cloud resources, achieving a ~25% reduction in cloud spend.
  • Architected and deployed highly available OpenShift clusters across hybrid cloud environments.
  • Automated platform provisioning and application deployment using Terraform and Helm.
  • Integrated OpenShift with enterprise CI/CD pipelines, reducing deployment time by 60%.
  • Implemented monitoring and alerting using Prometheus and Grafana for proactive issue resolution.
  • Led migration of legacy applications to containerized microservices on OpenShift.
  • Managed OpenShift cluster lifecycle, including upgrades, patching, and scaling.
  • Developed custom Operators and templates to streamline application onboarding.
  • Collaborated with development teams to containerize applications and optimize resource usage.
  • Ensured platform security and compliance through RBAC policies and vulnerability scanning.
  • Provided technical guidance and mentorship to junior engineers.

WebSphere Application Server Admin

New York Technology Partners (For client Avangrid Inc.)
07.2019 - 08.2020
  • Design, Development, and implementation of Process workflows for various internal business processes using WebSphere Portal Server.
  • Installation and configuration of WebSphere Application Server 8.0/7.0 and WebSphere Portal 8.x/7.0 on Linux Platforms and use Update Installer/Installation Manager to update with fix packs.
  • Apply fix packs, fresh packs, and patches for different versions of WERE and Web servers in all the environments.
  • Use Enhanced Web Content Manager Template interface for point-and-click creation of rich, engaging, and social web experiences in WebSphere Portal 7.0.
  • Installation of Portal Clusters using horizontal and vertical clustering and deploy Portal Applications, Created Virtual Portals using separate Realms creation.
  • Work on Config Engine tasks transferred data from the Local database to external backend databases like Oracle DB2.
  • Deployment of Themes, Skins, Portlets, Portlet Applications, created portal pages, and assigned portlets to the portal pages.
  • Work with developers and the QA team in various stages of development and testing and take the application from DEV to Test to QA and PROD environments.
  • Installation and configuration of both IIS 6.0 Web Servers and plug-ins, and configured SSL for the Web Server and plug-in communications.
  • Creation and federation of profiles to the Deployment Manager using both the Profile Management tool and automating the process using the manage profiles and add node command.
  • Use hybrid clustering, horizontal and vertical, to make use of efficient resources on a single system and to provide hardware failover, load-balancing, and work with developers.
  • Responsible for deploying applications on the cluster and setting up the environment.
  • Configuration of WebSphere resources like JDBC providers, JDBC data sources, and connection pooling.
  • Troubleshoot problems on the various environments involving the integrations of WebSphere, IIS Web Server, Web Servers, Site Minder, and LDAP.
  • Configuration of admin console security on WebSphere by creating users with various roles to access the WebSphere admin console - users and groups in LDAP and added them as WebSphere Console Groups.
  • Involved in opening and working on PMRs with IBM to solve various issues related to the environment.
  • Provide preventive solutions for IBM WebSphere Message Broker interfaces, like automating configuration management tasks using an Ant script, and provide performance monitoring solutions.
  • Enabled traces for various traces and took thread dumps. For ticketing services related to the Service, Change, and Incident tickets, we use ServiceNow.
  • Used WebSphere plug-in for load balancing across the cluster members and manually updated it for remote Web servers in the DMZ.
  • Participated in team meetings and management meetings to resolve issues related to the various environments.

Middleware Admin

Atos-Syntel Inc. (For Client Independent Health Association)
10.2016 - 07.2019
  • Responsible for the Administration of WebSphere Application Servers Configuration, Deployment to the Development, pre-PROD, Performance, and Production environments
  • Developed and maintained shell scripts that facilitate the Administration of WebSphere Application Servers 9.2/11g
  • Upgraded WebSphere Application Servers Server from 7.x to 8.5.5.13 for various applications
  • Installing, configuring WebSphere Application Servers 8.5.5.13 application server on Linux platform
  • Configured Clusters for applications' high availability, scalability, and failover support as per the capacity requirements
  • Involved in Load balancing and Performance tuning for various projects
  • Analyzed thread/heap dumps to resolve out-of-memory issues & to identify performance bottlenecks
  • Performing builds and deployments of EAR/WAR/JAR files to the environments using WLST, Ant, Shell scripts, and sending out the release notes
  • Configured database Connection Pools and Data Sources to connect to Oracle, SQL Server
  • Configured JMS servers, connection factories, topics, and queues for various applications
  • Configured Node Manager service to start/stop WebSphere Application Server instances through the WebSphere Application Server console
  • Developed Unix shell scripts to automate the WebSphere Application Servers Administration (recycling the application server, deploying web/enterprise applications, log rotation, monitoring application state)
  • Involvement in assisting the QA team in Load and Integration testing of J2EE applications on WebSphere Application Servers Server
  • Involved with the customer care and Development teams in troubleshooting and fixing day-to-day problems of the applications in production
  • Actively involved in co-ordination efforts to integrate various enterprise applications involving multiple architectures and technologies by working with Development and QA teams
  • Providing 24x7 on-call support for Production Environment
  • Installing and configuring AppDynamics Agents for the app server.
  • Created scripts for Alerts and effectively analyzed data, and auto started all the services after reboot of the Servers

WebSphere Application Servers Support Admin

IBM India Private Ltd
07.2013 - 09.2016
  • Supporting clustered WebSphere Application Servers server instances and applications hosted on them
  • Installing, configuring WebSphere Application Servers Linux platform
  • Configured Build and Deployment task in Tortoise SVN (Pulling the code from SVN Branch and deploying to WebSphere Application Servers instances)
  • Migrated the applications from Tomcat to WebSphere Application Servers
  • Configuring a Cluster of managed server instances for high availability of the application and load balancing
  • Generating SSL Certificates using the key store utility
  • Configuring Work managers based on requirements, i.e., prioritized the requests, response time goal, min, max constraints
  • Applied patches and fix packs on the WebSphere Application Servers and JDKs
  • Used WebSphere Application Server plugins to route the requests from Apache to WebSphere Application Server instances
  • Configured J2EE resources, data sources, connection factory, JMS Queues/Topics, and JMS server
  • Configured Migratable targets and distributed JMS queues and topics for highly available destinations
  • Set up a security realm to protect the administration console and application resources
  • Monitoring WebSphere Application Servers' resources, application components, and performance tuning
  • During the outage, determine the root cause to fix the issues
  • Developed a shell script for Thread Dump and CPU utilization
  • Tuning application servers, analyzing garbage collection, work manager threads, and response time
  • Setting up appropriate heap settings and addition of JVMs depending CPU/Memory available on the machine
  • Recommending a proper configuration environment based on performance engineering test and user-based load
  • Providing 24
  • 7 support on applications

Education

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science

Walchand Institute of Technology
Solapur, Maharashtra, India
07.2013

Skills

  • Cloud platform expertise: AWS and Azure
  • Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, Helm
  • Container orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, AKS & EKS
  • Scripting Languages: Python, Bash, PowerShell, YAML
  • CI/CD Tools: Jenkins, GitLab CI
  • Monitoring and Logging: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, AppDynamics, Tivoli Performance Viewer, Performance tuning toolkit, Splunk
  • Security: IAM, VPC, Security Groups, Firewalls, OAuth, TLS, OpenShift Compliance Operator
  • Middleware Application Server: IBM WebSphere Application Server vs 855x
  • Web Server: IBM HTTP Server vs 855x
  • Middleware Web Portal Server: HCL WebSphere Portal vs 85x, Liferay
  • Operating Systems: Red Hat Linux, AIX, Windows

Work Availability

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tuesday
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friday
saturday
sunday
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afternoon
evening
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Timeline

WebSphere Application Server Sr admin

Avangrid Management Company
08.2020 - Current

WebSphere Application Server Admin

New York Technology Partners (For client Avangrid Inc.)
07.2019 - 08.2020

Middleware Admin

Atos-Syntel Inc. (For Client Independent Health Association)
10.2016 - 07.2019

WebSphere Application Servers Support Admin

IBM India Private Ltd
07.2013 - 09.2016

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science

Walchand Institute of Technology

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