Summary
Overview
Work History
Skills
Certification
Timeline
Generic

Sanjay Akula

Piscataway,NJ

Summary

Dynamic DevOps Engineer and Unix System Administrator with over 23 years of expertise in managing and automating enterprise UNIX, Linux, and AWS cloud environments. Proficient in infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, developing CI/CD pipelines with GitLab CI, and orchestrating containers with Rancher and AWS EKS. Extensive experience in AWS networking, including Route 53 DNS management. Demonstrated ability to design and maintain scalable storage systems (EFS, SAN), manage Redis databases, implement high availability solutions, enforce security measures, and optimize performance. Strong collaborator known for driving efficient, secure, and reliable infrastructure deployments that enhance operational excellence.

Overview

28
28
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Sr. DevOps Engineer

W.W. NORTON
07.2019 - Current
  • Container Orchestration: Rancher, Kubernetes, AWS EKS Cluster
  • Designed and deployed a highly resilient Kubernetes cluster on AWS using Amazon EKS with Terraform, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance across multiple availability zones.
  • Automated infrastructure provisioning and cluster management with Terraform to maintain consistent, repeatable, and scalable environments.
  • Implemented robust security and networking configurations, including VPC, subnets, and IAM roles, to enhance cluster isolation and resilience.
  • Established automated monitoring, logging, and alerting to proactively detect and recover from failures, maintaining uninterrupted service delivery.
  • Developed and implemented comprehensive disaster recovery plans for AWS infrastructure, ensuring rapid system restoration and minimal downtime in case of failures or outages.
  • Designed backup and recovery strategies for critical data and applications, utilizing AWS services such as S3, Glacier, and automated snapshot management.
  • AWS Services: EC2, S3, EFS, VPC, IAM, CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancers
  • Networking: VPC, Subnets, Security Groups, Route Tables
  • Automation: Terraform, CloudFormation, CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI)
  • Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI/CD to automate build, test, and deployment processes for AWS EKS clusters, reducing deployment time.
  • Integrated Terraform with CI/CD workflows for Infrastructure as Code (IaC), enabling version-controlled provisioning of Kubernetes resources and ensuring consistent environments across dev, staging, and production.
  • Orchestrated multi-stage CI/CD pipelines leveraging GitLab Container Registry for artifacts and blue-green deployments on AWS EKS, enhancing system reliability and enabling seamless rollbacks.
  • Partnered with development teams to promote CI/CD best practices, refining Git branching strategies while tracking key pipeline metrics such as build success rates and deployment frequency.
  • Monitoring & Logging: CloudWatch, Prometheus
  • Others: Docker, Helm charts
  • W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., publishes approximately 400 books annually in its combined trade and college groups. As the largest independent, employee-owned book-publishing company.
  • Technical Skills:

Sr. Systems Administrator

IT Solutions
03.2009 - 06.2019
  • Configured and managed multi-node Rancher clusters also configured AWS EKS for high availability container orchestration.
  • Set up, tuned, and maintained Redis databases to support application caching with high performance and reliability.
  • Architected and managed AWS storage services including EFS file systems for scalable shared storage solutions.
  • Led and executed the migration of legacy AS400 workloads to AWS cloud infrastructure, enhancing scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency while minimizing downtime.
  • Designed, implemented, and maintained VPC networking: subnets, route tables, security groups ensuring secure and optimized AWS network infrastructure.
  • Automated infrastructure provisioning and deployments using Terraform and CloudFormation templates.
  • Developed CI/CD pipelines for continuous integration and deployment of microservices using Jenkins and GitLab CI.
  • Experienced in Terraform-based IaC on AWS and currently expanding my skills with AWS CDK for AWS-native infrastructure automation.
  • Familiar with Apache Kafka concepts, including producers/consumers, topics, partitions, consumer groups, and integrating event-driven services into Kubernetes/EKS-based platforms.
  • Understand patterns for integrating Kafka into CI/CD and GitOps workflows so that Kafka configuration and client deployments are version-controlled and consistently promoted across dev, staging, and production environments.
  • Implemented monitoring, alerting, and log aggregation using CloudWatch.
  • Collaborated with development teams to containerize applications using Docker and deploy via Helm charts on Kubernetes clusters.

Systems Engineer

SCI VANTAGE
New York City
04.2008 - 04.2009
  • Client: Bank of America, 26 Broadway NYC
  • As a Systems Engineer at Bank of America – Investment Services, I led the upgrade of Solaris 9 to Solaris 10 in production environments. I performed IPMP multipath network configuration on global and local Solaris zones to ensure high availability. I monitored web servers using Gomez and network performance with Spectrum tools. Additionally, I managed site traffic rerouting using F5 load balancers to maintain service continuity during failovers.
  • Responsibilities:
  • Installation, Configuration and Performance monitoring
  • Software and Patch Administration on Sun Servers, Monitoring system activities
  • Upgrading Solaris 9 to Solaris 10
  • Worked on Solaris 10 Containers configured and did patch upgrade for Solaris 10 and Solaris 8.
  • Did IPMP multipathing for global zones, also configured each local zone on a separate interface using ip-exclusive and did multipathing on it.

System Administrator

Collabera
Florham Park, NJ
08.2005 - 04.2008
  • Client: AT&T Labs Florham Park, NJ
  • Served as a System Administrator for the Insight Group at AT&T Research Labs, specializing in data mining, forecasting, and market analysis. Utilized business-driven statistical and econometric models alongside a comprehensive data repository to deliver actionable insights tailored to the needs of product management, marketing, sales, and CFO stakeholders. These insights contributed significantly to maintaining AT&T’s competitive edge in the rapidly evolving telecommunications industry.
  • Responsibilities:
  • Installation, Configuration and Performance monitoring
  • Software and Patch Administration on Sun Servers, SGI IRIX64 Servers, Suse Linux and Redhat Linux
  • Worked on various Storages like Hitachi, AMS200, AMS500, NSC55, Hitachi 9520 and EMC Clarion allocating new storages as per project request.
  • Monitoring system activities
  • Upgrading Solaris 9 to Solaris 10
  • Worked on Solaris 10 Containers configured and did patch upgrade for Solaris 10 and Solaris 8. Also, did Live Patch Upgrade on Solaris 10 OS.
  • Configuring LTO3 drives on Sun StorEdge L700 using SSO (Shared Storage Option) and also configured IBM TS3500 Tape Silo on Solaris 10 using Veritas Netbackup 6.0.
  • Configured Failover SSP for E10K domains
  • Installing Veritas Storage Foundation 4.1 and 5.0 for UNIX also installing MP’s for Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas NetBackup
  • Data migration from Sun StorEdge A5200 to Hitachi AMS500 Disk Array
  • Also did Data Migration from one location to another location.
  • Production support and maintenance of various applications
  • Scheduled backups and recovered files and data when required
  • Responsible for Backup & Recovery procedures
  • Installed Redhat three node Cluster on DL 385 HP boxes and DL 580 HP boxes
  • SAN networking for Hitachi Disk Arrays and EMC Symmetric and EMC Clarion using Brocade switches 4100 and for backup using Brocade switch 4900.

System Administrator

St. Michael Hospital
Newark, New Jersey
06.2003 - 07.2005
  • Worked as a System Administration for the Hospital environment and performing day-to-day system activities on Sun Machines.

System Administrator

Jevic Transportation Inc.
Delanco, New Jersey
06.2001 - 05.2003
  • Worked as a System Administrator in the transportation industry, managing daily system operations on NUMA-Q clustered machines. Maintained Linux web servers and performed operating system upgrades from versions 6.1 through 7.2, ensuring optimal server performance and reliability.

System Administrator

The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
Washington D.C
06.2000 - 06.2001
  • Worked as a System Administrator managing Sun Ultra Enterprise servers, handling daily operations, building new QA environment servers, and performing Solaris OS upgrades from 5.5.1 to 2.6 and 2.7 to support system reliability and testing needs.

System administrator

Computer Associates Inc.
08.1998 - 05.2000
  • Working as System administrator handling Sun Ultra Enterprise Servers. Performing day-to-day system administration activities including performance monitoring, daily backups, disk space management etc. Implemented Security on hosts connected to the Internet.

Skills

  • Infrastructure as Code & Automation: Terraform, CloudFormation, GitLab CI, Jenkins
  • Container Orchestration: Rancher, Kubernetes, AWS EKS, Docker, Helm
  • Cloud Platforms & Networking: AWS (EC2, S3, EFS, VPC, IAM, CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancers, Route 53)
  • Operating Systems: Solaris (251 to 10), Linux (RedHat, SuSE), SCO UNIX, AIX 5L
  • Databases: Redis setup and management, Oracle 7x
  • Storage & Backup: Veritas Volume Manager, Solstice DiskSuite, EMC, Hitachi AMS series, Isilon Storage, Veritas NetBackup
  • Networking: VPC, Subnets, Security Groups, Route Tables, Brocade SAN switches (Silkworm 4100/4900/A300/5300), IPMP
  • Monitoring & Logging: CloudWatch, Prometheus, Nagios, Ambari, Gomez, Spectrum
  • Security: eTrust Access Control, eTrust Intrusion Detection
  • Scripting & Automation: Shell scripting, Custom disk space and system monitoring scripts
  • Data & Streaming (concepts): Apache Kafka (producers/consumers, topics/partitions, consumer groups, retention, basic event-driven architectures)

Certification

  • Achieved several professional training courses, AIX 5L training, Veritas Storage Foundation for Unix, a Certificate Course in Computer Application, Sun Solaris UNIX Administration, and Windows NT 4.0 MCP. Also, I completed PMI membership for project management and participated in continuing education in IT and administration.

Timeline

Sr. DevOps Engineer

W.W. NORTON
07.2019 - Current

Sr. Systems Administrator

IT Solutions
03.2009 - 06.2019

Systems Engineer

SCI VANTAGE
04.2008 - 04.2009

System Administrator

Collabera
08.2005 - 04.2008

System Administrator

St. Michael Hospital
06.2003 - 07.2005

System Administrator

Jevic Transportation Inc.
06.2001 - 05.2003

System Administrator

The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
06.2000 - 06.2001

System administrator

Computer Associates Inc.
08.1998 - 05.2000
Sanjay Akula