Harshada Kakad

Results-driven Cloud Infrastructure and Automation Specialist with 15 years of experience in designing, developing, and automating private and multi-cloud environments using Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, OpenStack, Cisco Cloud Suite (UCS Director, Prime Service Catalogue, Cloud-Centre), Zenoss, and Ansible, Designing and implementing an MCP tool using Codex. Proven success in delivering enterprise-grade cloud solutions for leading global clients including Bank of England, BBC, Credit Suisse, AMD, and European Central Bank. Expert in virtualization, cloud orchestration, infrastructure automation, and monitoring, with a strong record of enhancing performance, reducing manual efforts by up to 98%, and contributing to opensource innovation with 46 commits to OpenStack.

Skilled in cross-platform integration, patch management, and building scalable automation frameworks aligned with business goals and compliance standards.

PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER at ORACLE (2021-05 – Present)

• Led cross-functional teams in the design, development, and release of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance (PCA), ensuring on-time delivery and high-quality standards.
• Oversaw release management, including planning, scheduling, and maintaining comprehensive documentation for PCA deployments.
• Developed a custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool using Codex to automate remote infrastructure management; implemented secure, key-based command execution via SSH bastion hosts to management nodes. Bug triaging became much more convenient and saved time from days to just hour to get to actual root cause.
• Developed and implemented new features and bug fixes, enhancing functionality and stability of PCA.
• Designed and integrated ULN (Unbreakable Linux Network) support, enabling automated patch management and regular package updates for enterprise clients.
• Applied security fixes and compliance updates, ensuring PCA adheres to the latest enterprise security standards.
• Diagnosed and resolved critical customer-reported issues, reducing downtime and improving client satisfaction.
• Provided on-call support via PagerDuty, responding to production issues and coordinating with cross-functional teams to maintain operational stability.
• Collaborated with internal teams to streamline maintenance workflows and improve patch deployment efficiency.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER AND CONSULTANT at METSI TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD (2015-08 – 2021-05)

• Led the end-to-end automation of provisioning VMs (Linux, Windows) on VMware and bare metal servers using Cisco UCS Director, significantly improving deployment efficiency.
• Automated the creation of networks and EPGs on ACI Fabric for clients including Proximus and the Bank of England.
• Designed and implemented multi-cloud installation automation of Cisco Cloud Centre Suite using Ansible and Ansible Tower, reducing manual efforts by 98%.
• Developed dynamic monitoring reports using ZenPacks for BBC to track new device and application types. Built the system architecture for Produban's IaaS platform, integrating Cisco Prime Service Catalogue, Cisco Process Orchestrator, and OpenStack.
• Integrated all OpenStack APIs with Cisco UCS Director to enable operations on tenants, projects, instances, images, and VMs natively.
• Integrated OpenStack with CliQr to model applications directly on OpenStack.
• Delivered IaaS cloud infrastructure monitoring solutions using Cisco UCS Performance Manager, ExtraHop, and Zenoss for Diebold Nixdorf and the European Central Bank.
• Contributed to the development of the ExtraHop platform for ONS Zwolle and Credit Suisse to monitor application performance, detect anomalous behaviour, and identify potential data breaches.

SENIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER at AMD FROM IZELTECH (2014-06 – 2015-07)

• Worked as a key member of the team to deliver the SeaMicro driver for SeaMicro SM15000 Fabric Compute System for AMD.
• Designed, developed, and maintained the ML2 driver in Neutron for SeaMicro SM15000 Fabric Compute System, enhancing network automation capabilities.
• Successfully implemented Serial Console blueprint for SeaMicro, improving system accessibility and debugging efficiency.
• Built end-to-end automation for installing OpenStack with Ironic to launch bare metal instances on SeaMicro Fabric Compute System for AMD.
• Led and delivered the project "Cloud Velocity Cost Estimation Tool", which collected configurations for Linux/Windows systems and provided optimal templates for AWS and Azure with accurate cost estimations.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER at HGST A WESTERN DIGITAL GROUP COMPANY (2011-06 – 2014-02)

• Played a key role in the development team to build VMCache (Write Through) and VMCache (Write Back) solutions for VMware using SSD technology.
• Successfully ported SDM (STEC Device Manager) to ESX, enabling efficient storage device management. Created test cases and automation scripts to validate the VMware CIM plugin for managing STEC SSDs, ensuring reliability and performance.
• Designed, developed, and maintained a performance benchmarking tool for SSDs, supporting high-volume IOPS testing and performance optimization.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER at KQINFOTECH (2010-06 – 2010-12)

• Worked on a project to port OpenSolaris 128-bit ZFS file system to Linux 64-bit, increasing storage capacity and scalability.
• Created documentation and man pages for the Linux operating system, improving usability and knowledge sharing.
• Automated the process to create RPM packages for Fedora 12, 13, 14 and RHEL 6, streamlining deployment and installation.
• Maintained the GitHub public repository for the ZFS file system project, ensuring version control and collaboration.
• Designed and developed a testing framework to validate the file system and gather performance metrics for optimization.

Masters in computer application in Computer Science – Pune University

Bachelor of Computer Science in Computer Science – Pune University