Aleksei Koliada

Platform Engineering Team Lead

Cloud & DevOps Engineer
Tallinn, Estonia
Aleksei Koliada photo

Professional Summary

Platform Engineering Team Lead with 5+ years building and operating cloud-native systems on Azure. Combines technical depth in .NET and distributed architecture with hands-on Kubernetes operations and engineering leadership. Proven track record of measurable outcomes: 30% infrastructure cost reduction, 50% CI/CD acceleration, and Cosmos DB performance at fintech scale. Drives cross-team technical initiatives, sets engineering standards, and delivers production systems across fintech and healthcare domains.

Experience

Platform Engineering Team Lead

IMTC | Remote | Jun 2022 – Present

  • Promoted to technical lead; established platform engineering discipline, defined architecture standards, led hiring cycles, and drove cross-team engineering practices across the organisation.
  • Architected Cosmos DB overhaul — redesigned partitioning, indexing strategy, and data models for high-volume multi-tenant workloads, eliminating production performance bottlenecks.
  • Led Azure cost-optimisation programme across Cosmos DB, App Services, Front Door, and Elasticsearch, achieving up to 30% reduction in platform infrastructure spend.
  • Rebuilt CI/CD pipeline architecture on Azure DevOps, parallelising stages and introducing artifact caching — cutting average pipeline execution time by ~50%.
.NET 8C#AzureAzure FunctionsService BusCosmos DBPostgreSQLElastic StackAzure DevOpsKubernetesPythonPowerShellSignalR.

Software Engineer

ITransition | Remote | Aug 2021 – May 2022

  • Engineered full-stack features for enterprise production systems using .NET and React, owning delivery of core product modules with direct client impact.
  • Took architectural ownership of complex service modules; shaped API contracts and data-layer design decisions.
  • Mentored junior engineers, conducted code reviews, and introduced practices that improved team delivery quality.
.NET CoreC#ReactJavaScriptCosmos DBAzureService FabricGit.

Junior .NET Software Engineer

NIX Solutions | Kharkiv, Ukraine | May 2020 – Jul 2021

  • Delivered full-stack features across .NET and Angular web applications in Agile delivery teams.
  • Contributed to technical requirements refinement with Business Analysts, improving solution accuracy before implementation.
  • Participated in sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives; established early habits in iterative, quality-focused delivery.
.NET CoreASP.NET MVCC#SQL ServerEntity FrameworkAngularJavaScriptGit.

k8s-project-foundry

Self-hosted Kubernetes homelab running production-grade workloads on a k3s cluster, managed end-to-end via ArgoCD GitOps.

  • Architecture: multi-namespace Helm-based deployments, Nginx ingress, cert-manager with Let's Encrypt TLS, GHCR image registry, automated rolling deployments.
  • Hosts this CV website (Next.js, Docker, multi-stage builds) and internal tooling.
  • Demonstrates full DevOps lifecycle: code → Docker image → GHCR → ArgoCD sync → live cluster.

Cosmos DB Scalability Optimisation

Redesigned partitioning strategy, indexing policy, and data models for high-volume multi-tenant workloads at IMTC, eliminating hotspots and sustaining throughput under peak load.

  • Result: Resolved primary production performance bottleneck across multiple tenants.
  • Scope: Azure Cosmos DB with .NET 8 backend services.

Azure Infrastructure Cost Optimisation

Audited and restructured resource allocation across the IMTC platform — identified over-provisioned services, right-sized workloads, and tuned auto-scaling policies without impacting availability.

  • Result: Up to 30% infrastructure cost reduction across Cosmos DB, Azure App Services, Front Door, and Elasticsearch.

CI/CD Pipeline Re-architecture

Rebuilt Azure Pipelines configuration from scratch — parallelised stages, eliminated redundant build steps, and introduced artifact caching across all product delivery pipelines.

  • Result: ~50% reduction in average pipeline execution time; faster feedback loops and improved engineering throughput across all product teams.

Skills

KubernetesTerraformGitOpsDockerCI/CD

Platform & Cloud

  • Kubernetes (cluster architecture, RBAC, networking, multi-tenant operations)
  • Docker, Helm, ArgoCD, GitOps
  • Microsoft Azure (Functions, App Services, API Management, Front Door, Service Bus, Key Vault, AKS)

Backend & Architecture

  • C# / .NET 8 (microservices, Azure Functions, REST APIs, SignalR)
  • Distributed systems, event-driven architecture, Service Bus messaging patterns
  • SQL and NoSQL data modelling, query optimisation, schema design

Data & Storage

  • Cosmos DB (partitioning, indexing, multi-tenant data modelling)
  • PostgreSQL, SQL Server
  • Elasticsearch, Kibana, Elastic APM

DevOps & Observability

  • Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipeline engineering
  • Infrastructure as Code — Terraform, Helm charts
  • Structured logging, distributed tracing, alerting
  • Linux, PowerShell, Python scripting

AI-Assisted Engineering

  • Agentic workflows: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor — deep daily use for code generation, refactoring, architecture exploration, and automated multi-step tasks
  • LLM APIs: Anthropic Claude API, OpenAI API — prompt design, tool use / function calling, context management, cost-aware model selection
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol): configuring and using MCP servers to extend agents with custom tools and data sources
  • Prompt engineering: system prompt design, structured output, chain-of-thought, retrieval-augmented patterns
  • Applied across platform engineering, infrastructure automation, CI/CD scripting, and code review workflows

Languages

  • English (Proficient)
  • Ukrainian (Native)
  • Russian (Native)

Education & Certifications

Bachelor of Economics

College of Economics and Management | Kyiv | 2015 – 2019

Analytical and business-process foundation complementing a self-directed software engineering career. Core strengths in structured problem-solving and quantitative reasoning carry directly into platform architecture and cost-optimisation work.

MicrosoftExpires Sep 2025

AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator

Issued Sep 2023
MicrosoftExpires Feb 2026

AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions

Issued Feb 2024
CNCFExpires Jul 2027

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

Issued Jul 2024