Harith C

AWS-certified Elasticsearch / Kubernetes / Kafka Architect with over 15 years of extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing cloud-based solutions across multiple platforms, including AWS, GCP, and Azure. Proven expertise in optimizing cloud infrastructure, leveraging AWS services such as EC2, S3, RDS, and Lambda to build highly scalable and efficient systems. Skilled in automating deployments and infrastructure management using Terraform, Ansible, and Packer.

Strong background in container orchestration with Kubernetes, facilitating the deployment of applications across cloud environments while ensuring high availability and performance. Adept at implementing security best practices, managing IAM policies, and utilizing AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and alerting. Experienced in developing and maintaining Elastic Stack solutions (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) in AWS environments, ensuring robust data management and analytics capabilities.

Committed to leveraging advanced technologies and innovative strategies to drive organizational success and enhance operational efficiency. Extensive experience managing production-grade Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) clusters with a focus on high availability, scalability, security, and operational excellence. Experienced in Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Python automation, CI/CD pipeline integration, container lifecycle management, observability, and Kubernetes platform engineering.

Elasticsearch / Kafka / Kubernetes Architect at Telestream (2020-04 – Present)

• Design, configure, and maintain highly available and scalable Elasticsearch clusters across on-premises and cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Elastic Cloud).
• Optimize Elasticsearch indexing, search, and query performance, ensuring robust security and efficient administration.
• Design and provision scalable infrastructure using AWS services such as EC2, S3, and RDS.
• Implement cost management strategies to optimize AWS usage and minimize expenses.
• Develop backup and disaster recovery plans using AWS services like S3 and Glacier.
• Managed Amazon EKS worker nodes, IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA), VPC CNI, AWS Load Balancer Controller, EBS CSI Driver, and Cluster Autoscaler.
• Develop and implement comprehensive Elastic Stack solutions, including Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and Grafana.
• Design RESTful APIs that facilitate data exchange between applications and services.
• Implement custom APIs to integrate with third-party applications, enhancing overall system functionality.
• Create and maintain API documentation for developers and stakeholders, ensuring clear usage guidelines.
• Manage API versioning to ensure backward compatibility and smooth transitions between versions.
• Implement authentication and authorization mechanisms for secure API access.
• Design and deploy Elasticsearch clusters based on business requirements, including hardware and software specifications.
• Configure Elasticsearch nodes and clusters for optimal performance, ensuring proper sharding, replication, and indexing strategies.
• Install and configure Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK Stack) for a fully integrated search and analytics solution.
• Implement network and security configurations for new clusters to ensure secure and efficient operation.
• Utilize Elasticsearch APIs to create, configure, and manage clusters and nodes.
• Use APIs to create, update, and delete indices, ensuring optimal settings for performance.
• Write and optimize queries using Elasticsearch APIs to enhance search performance.
• Implement monitoring of Elasticsearch APIs to track usage, errors, and performance metrics.
• Plan and execute upgrades of Elasticsearch clusters to newer versions, ensuring compatibility with existing configurations and integrations.
• Test upgrades in a staging environment before deploying to production to minimize the risk of downtime or data loss.
• Configure AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for secure access to AWS resources.
• Set up AWS CloudWatch to monitor resources and create alerts for performance and operational issues.
• Stay informed about new features and improvements in Elasticsearch releases and incorporate them as appropriate.
• Upgrade Elasticsearch clusters from older versions (6.x, 7.x) to the latest (8.x), ensuring minimal downtime and data integrity.
• Utilize Ansible, Terraform, and Packer to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of the ELK stack.
• Assess and review the performance of existing Elasticsearch clusters and identify areas for improvement.
• Evaluate and adjust configuration parameters such as memory settings, index settings, and shard allocation to optimize performance.
• Ensure that indexing strategies are effective and data is indexed efficiently to support search and retrieval operations.
• Review and enforce security policies and practices, including access control, encryption, and audit logging.
• Implement and manage Elastic Stack components including Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana and Beats to build and maintain comprehensive logging, search, and analytics solutions.
• Develop and configure Logstash pipelines for data ingestion and transformation.
• Create Kibana dashboards and visualizations for data analysis and reporting.
• Create and maintain real-time monitoring dashboards in Kibana, leveraging Prometheus, Alert Manager, and Grafana for proactive system health monitoring.
• Perform routine maintenance tasks, including database tuning, re-indexing, and security administration, to maintain optimal database performance.
• Utilized Datadog for Kubernetes infrastructure monitoring, dashboards, alerting, and application performance monitoring.
• Provide architectural guidance and direction to development and operations teams, ensuring alignment with best practices and organizational goals.
• Mentor junior engineers, fostering skill development and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies, evaluating their potential impact on existing systems and processes.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand business requirements and translate them into technical solutions that drive organizational success.
• Managed large-scale Amazon EKS clusters across Development, QA, UAT, and Production environments.
• Performed Kubernetes cluster upgrades, node group upgrades, rolling deployments, and zero-downtime application releases.
• Configured Kubernetes Ingress Controllers, Load Balancers, Auto Scaling, Cluster Autoscaler, and Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA).
• Implemented Kubernetes security using RBAC, Network Policies, IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA), and Pod Security Standards.
• Automated Kubernetes infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and Python scripts.
• Troubleshot Kubernetes networking, DNS, storage, and pod scheduling issues in production environments.
• Optimized cluster resource utilization through node sizing, taints, tolerations, affinity/anti-affinity rules, and namespace resource quotas.
• Deploy and manage containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Use Kubernetes for orchestration, managing scaling, load balancing, and service discovery.
• Create and manage Helm charts for consistent application deployment in Kubernetes environments.
• Implement monitoring solutions like Prometheus and Grafana to track container performance and health.
• Apply security best practices for Kubernetes, including network policies and role-based access controls.
• Integrate Kubernetes with CI/CD pipelines to automate application deployment and updates.
• Built end-to-end CI/CD pipelines integrating Jenkins, Git, Docker, Terraform, and Amazon EKS for automated deployments.
• Automated Docker image builds, vulnerability scanning, and Kubernetes deployments using GitOps principles.
• Manage resource allocation and quotas in Kubernetes to optimize performance and cost.
• Develop and implement disaster recovery strategies for containerized applications.
• Manage multiple Kubernetes clusters across different environments (e.g., dev, test, production).
• Configure and troubleshoot container networking, including ingress and service mesh solutions.

Sr. Site Reliability Engineer at Proofpoint Inc. (2019-01 – 2020-04)

• Strong experience in evaluating Elastic clusters, configuration parameters, indexing, search and query performance tuning, security, and administration.
• Create, Maintain, and administer more than 80 Elasticsearch clusters on-prem, AWS, GCP, and Elastic Cloud.
• Safely decommission Elasticsearch nodes and clusters by migrating data, ensuring no data loss, and removing obsolete configurations.
• Use AWS CloudFormation or Terraform to automate infrastructure deployment and management.
• Plan and execute data migrations to AWS from on-premises or other cloud environments.
• Design and implement serverless solutions using AWS Lambda and API Gateway.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines using AWS services like CodePipeline and CodeBuild for automated deployments.

DevOps Engineer at Williams Sonoma (2017-07 – 2018-12)

Elasticsearch Admin at GEP Worldwide (2016-01 – 2017-07)

Database Administrator at Speridian Technologies (2011-08 – 2016-02)

Bachelor of Arts – UNIVERSITY OF JAYAWARDANEPURA (2002)