Ivor Pietersen

Systems-minded Enterprise Cloud Architect and Platform Security Engineer with over 5 years of experience building secure cloud-native infrastructures and data pipelines across GCP and Azure environments. Holds a highly rare comprehensive matrix of 7 formal Google Cloud certifications spanning Foundational, Associate, and Professional tiers alongside advanced L400 generative AI credentials.

Founder & Cloud Architect - LAKKA - Cape Town, South Africa

(2025-01)

• The Strategic Concept: Named from the Dutch lexicon meaning "lacquer" or "seal"—symbolising a platform built to permanently lock down organizational context and decision traceability.
• Built an independent cloud continuity platform to solve a major flaw in LLMs: losing operational context during long-term multi-agent workflows.
• Engineered a custom memory-externalisation system that allowed chat-based AI agents to autonomously offload, store, and execute tasks across external models—effectively bypassing the rigid platform containerisation and API constraints imposed by tech monopolies.
• Structured a low-overhead, self-sustaining infrastructure model that hosts multi-threaded user profiles smoothly on minimal computing footprints.

Data Engineer (Contract) - Nexus Data

(2024-11 - 2025-05)

• Handled sensitive, heavily regulated financial and legal assets for corporate law firms, automotive brands, and banking institutions.
• Managed high-pressure compliance data movements inside secure Azure Databricks clusters and locked workspace environments.
• Wrote custom scripts to stabilize failing data streams, improving key management and production workflow resilience.

Data Engineer - BCX

(2023-07 - 2024-09)

• Audited external SaaS vendor platforms and exposed critical SLA fulfillment failures, saving the company significant operational capital by terminating underperforming contracts.
• Acted as a trusted technical liaison managing client expectations and team delivery capacity under pressure.
• Wrote serverless Cloud Functions to monitor developer sandboxes in real-time, automatically cutting off live cloud spend when budgets were breached (a feature not natively offered by the cloud vendor).
• Deployed standardized Terraform patterns to enforce baseline security, identity mapping, and deployment guardrails across enterprise environments.

Data Engineer - Telkom

(2020-02 - 2023-06)

• Built a custom project setup automation tool from scratch that functioned exactly like an internal version of Terraform, cutting cloud infrastructure deployment timelines down from weeks to a few minutes.
• Overhauled messy Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) deployment pipelines by introducing a centralized, locked state file framework, preventing data drift and accidental concurrent overrides.
• Managed technical procurement, backend integration, operations, and GCP governance for the Telkom Group Innovation Management Platform across Teams and SharePoint ecosystems.
• Drastically reduced cloud storage overheads by 90% through target system redesigns.

Web App Development (Contract) - Vitagen-X

(2019-01 - 2019-12)

• Debugged and secured unstable data routing behaviors for cloud-hosted container systems using Ruby on Rails, Python, and Django, successfully reducing memory footprints to slash monthly hosting costs.

Co-Founder & Technical Lead - The Really Awesome Company (Mi-Light SA)

(2015-01 - 2018-12)

• Spotted the consumer shift toward connected homes years before "smart appliances" went mainstream; co-founded an early domestic distribution network dedicated entirely to smart LED lighting technology.
• Successfully negotiated and secured a national sole distribution contract from a premier global LED manufacturer.
• Managed complex sovereign import supply chains and navigated the 2015 currency collapse by engineering custom technical workarounds on entry-level hardware modules to protect operational capital.

Data Science Programme - Data Science - Explore Data Science Academy (2019-01 - 2019-12)

Cape Town Chapter Dean - Artificial Intelligence - International School of AI (2018-01 - 2018-12)

Professional Photography Diploma - Photography - City Varsity, Cape Town (2008-01 - 2009-12)

Bachelor of Social Sciences - Psychology, System Philosophy, Complex Media Analysis - University of UCT (2004-01)

Independent Examinations Board (IEB) Matriculation Certificate - General Studies - Michaelhouse (2002-01 - 2002-12)