James Kariuki

I am a Cloud, DevOps/DevSecOps Engineer and Full-Stack Developer with hands-on experience (4 years +) designing and automating scalable, secure, and highly available infrastructures. I specialize in building CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, and infrastructure as code, while ensuring robust monitoring, logging, and compliance. With a strong background in both backend and frontend engineering, I bring end-to-end expertise in delivering cloud-native applications that balance performance, reliability, and security.

My focus is on automation, observability, and cost-efficient architectures that enable teams to move fast without compromising stability.

Cloud & DevSecOps Engineer at Namarunu (2022-01 – Present)

• Designed and maintained secure CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Jenkins, embedding SAST, DAST, and IaC security scanning (tfsec + OPA policies for Terraform) to prevent misconfigurations and vulnerabilities early in the SDLC.
• Built and deployed Dockerized microservices on Kubernetes (AWS EKS), applying hardened container images, secure networking, and production-grade security controls through image scanning with trivy.
• Implemented policy-as-code using Kyverno (Kubernetes) and OPA (Terraform) to enforce security, compliance, and governance consistently across infrastructure and workloads.
• Applied Zero Trust architecture across AWS and Kubernetes, leveraging least-privilege IAM, secure service-to-service communication, and network segmentation to reduce blast radius with istio, Cillium, Falco and RBAC.
• Centralized identity and access management using AWS IAM Identity Center, enabling secure SSO, fine-grained role access, and auditable permissions across multiple AWS accounts.
• Improved cloud security posture using AWS-native controls such as IAM, Security Groups, NACLs, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, and Security Hub, enhancing threat detection and compliance visibility.
• Reduced cloud costs by ~30% through Kubernetes resource optimization, autoscaling, and right-sizing while maintaining security and reliability.
• Adopted GitOps with Argo CD, enabling auditable, declarative deployments, secure change management, and rapid rollbacks.
• Implemented end-to-end observability using OpenTelemetry for unified metrics, logs, and traces, with Tempo for distributed tracing, improving root-cause analysis and incident response.
• Enhanced monitoring and security visibility with Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK/EFK, increasing system reliability and reducing MTTR.
• Automated infrastructure provisioning and configuration using Terraform and Ansible, supporting multi-environment (dev, staging, prod) deployments through reusable, secure modules.
• Partnered with development teams to shift security left, optimize release workflows, and reduce lead time while maintaining compliance and auditability.

Fullstack developer at Likel procurement china (2019-01 – 2021-12)

• Built scalable microservices using Next.js, Node.js, and Django, focusing on modular architecture and clear service boundaries.
• Instrumented backend services and APIs using OpenTelemetry, enabling distributed tracing, metrics, and request-level visibility across services.
• Optimized MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and Redis, improving query performance by ~40% and significantly reducing application latency.
• Containerized applications with Docker, ensuring consistent environments across development, staging, and production.
• Implemented secure authentication and authorization (JWT, role-based access control), applied encryption in transit and at rest, and enforced OWASP Top 10 security best practices.
• Hardened APIs with input validation, rate limiting, and secure headers, reducing exposure to common web vulnerabilities.
• Improved API performance and reliability using Redis caching and load-balancing strategies.
• Automated builds, tests, and releases via CI/CD pipelines, reducing deployment time by ~50% and improving release confidence.

Computer science – EDX Havard

Devops – Techworld with nana

AWS cloud computing – AWS re/Start