Shiva Sai K

Software Engineer with 4+ years designing and building cloud-native, containerized, distributed systems on Kubernetes and OpenShift. Proficient in Go and Python, with hands-on experience across microservices architecture, CI/CD automation, Infrastructure as Code, and observability tooling. Proven record of improving reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency for production workloads on IBM Cloud, while collaborating across cross-functional teams and providing technical guidance to peers.

Cloud Developer at IBM ISDL (2024-10 – Present)

• Spearheaded design and development of a distributed backup and restore platform for IBM Cloud Databases (ICD) a multi-service, microservices-based DBaaS improving recovery time by 35% and strengthening data reliability across large-scale production workloads.
• Architected and built custom Kubernetes controllers in Go to automate lifecycle management (provisioning, upgrades, backups, restore) for distributed database systems, applying resiliency and scalability best practices.
• Automated complex operational workflows using Kubernetes Jobs and controllers, reducing manual intervention by 40% and minimizing production deployment errors.
• Designed and developed a RESTful API serving as the single source of truth for the UI, enabling centralized management, retrieval, and creation of database instance backups across multi-tenant customer accounts.
• Instrumented services with Prometheus and Grafana authoring alert rule definitions and pushing custom metrics through kube-state-metrics to strengthen production observability and speed up incident detection.
• Managed high-availability production environments supporting 10,000+ customer database instances, maintaining 99.9% uptime through proactive monitoring, alerting, and performance tuning.
• Optimized infrastructure utilization and container orchestration strategies, reducing platform cost overhead by 25%.

Software Engineer at IBM ISDL (2022-07 – 2024-10)

• Deployed and managed OpenShift clusters on IBM Z Systems, focusing on OADP operator stability, performance, and production readiness.
• Implemented end-to-end CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and Ansible, delivering zero-downtime upgrades and automated deployment strategies.
• Developed Ansible playbooks as Infrastructure as Code, automating cluster installations and daily operations.
• Increased test coverage from 32% to 72% across multiple OADP operator releases by building Go and Python test suites (Ginkgo, Pytest), advancing software quality engineering and integration testing practices.
• Designed and implemented an end-to-end pipeline supporting OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) installation across diverse IBM environments and configurations.
• Collaborated cross-functionally on open-source enhancements and customer-facing technical blogs, sharing engineering best practices with peers.

Intern at IBM ISDL (2022-01 – 2022-07)

• Worked on Kubernetes and OpenShift to enhance cluster orchestration efficiency.
• Played a pivotal role in launching the compliance operator for IBM Z's first release.

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Electronics and Communication Engineering – Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (2018 – 2022)