Olivier Van Aken

DevOps Engineer

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Contact

Skills

  • AWS

  • CI/CD

  • Terraform

  • Containers

  • Kubernetes

  • Python

  • Golang

  • Azure

Certificates

  • Solutions Architect Associate

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • Developer Associate

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • Professional Scrum Master I

    Scrum.org

Language

  • Dutch

    Native

  • English

    Fluent

  • French

    Conversational

  • German

    Basic

Education

  • Karel de Grote, Antwerp

    Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.), Computer Sciences

    2013 - 2016

  • University of Antwerp

    Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Sciences

    2011 - 2013

Objective

Freelance IT professional with 9 years of experience, specializing in Cloud and DevOps. I design and implement secure, scalable systems that are built to last—without compromising on deadlines.

Highlighted Experience

  • Zetes People ID · DevOps Engineer

    Mar 2024 - Oct 2024 (8 months) · Freelance
    Brussels, Belgium

    Part of a Java API team specialized in signing and encryption for government identification systems in a business unit with near-zero AWS experience, which had to migrate APIs from on-premise Kubernetes to AWS ECS, while navigating rapidly changing requirements, deadlines and formalities of a Japanese client.

    AWS

    Containers

    Terraform

    Automation

    Cloud Migration

    CI/CD

    Python

    Jenkins

    Java

    Signing

    mTLS

  • Nike · DevOps Engineer

    Aug 2020 - Feb 2024 (3 years 7 months) · Freelance
    Antwerp, Belgium

    Maintained the DevOps and Kubernetes foundation of Nike Europe's distribution centers together with 30 DevOps colleagues in an agile environment while being part of 3 Data Engineering teams within a Data & Analytics business unit.

    AWS

    Containers

    Terraform

    Automation

    CI/CD

    Python

    Kubernetes

    Golang

    Jenkins

    Cloud Migration

  • Barclays · Cloud Engineer

    Aug 2019 - Nov 2019 (4 months) · Consultant (Capgemini)
    Manchester, UK

    Part of an iOS app team in a transformational business unit where new technologies are adopted faster compared to other units in a tightly regulated financial environment.

    AWS

    Coaching

    Automation

    Golang

    Node.js

    Cloud Migration

    Serverless

  • ABN Amro Bank · Full Stack & Cloud Engineer

    Sep 2017 - Aug 2019 (2 years) · Consultant (Capgemini)
    Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Started as member of the team which maintained the frontend foundation and gradually took the position of cloud consultant during a considerably large cloud migration in a tightly regulated financial environment.

    AWS

    Coaching

    Groovy

    Containers

    Node.js

    Jenkins

    Cloud Migration

    JavaScript

    Angular

    CSS

    SCSS

Experience

  • Zetes People ID · DevOps Engineer

    Mar 2024 - Oct 2024 (8 months) · Freelance
    Brussels, Belgium

    Part of a Java API team specialized in signing and encryption for government identification systems in a business unit with near-zero AWS experience, which had to migrate APIs from on-premise Kubernetes to AWS ECS, while navigating rapidly changing requirements, deadlines and formalities of a Japanese client.

    • the code base counts nearly 20 Terraform projects
    • designed and implemented a strictly private multi-VPC AWS network with VPC peering using Terraform
    • implemented private AWS service connections with VPC endpoints using Terraform
    • implemented AWS ECS Fargate services, tasks and container definitions with logging using Terraform
    • implemented autoscaling, network load balancers and application load balancers using Terraform
    • configured RDS Aurora databases using terraform and implemented database migration side car containers for the services
    • implemented around 50 IAM roles using Terraform
    • implemented variable management with SSM parameters and SM secrets using Terraform
    • implemented mTLS certificate creation and management using Terraform
    • designed and implemented AWS account and organization structure using Terraform
    • automated AWS account creation using Terraform and Python
    • implemented Terraform state management in AWS S3 as part of AWS account creation
    • implemented IAM Identity Center integrations with Azure Entra ID as part of AWS account creation
    • implemented on-premise Jenkins CI/CD pipeline access with AWS IAM Roles Anywhere as part of AWS account creation
    • implemented account budgets and alerts as part of AWS account creation
    • implemented Jenkins CI/CD pipeline and a CLI to deploy different projects and components separately or all together
    • implemented library of 20 reusable Terraform modules
    • implemented modular Terraform projects which enabled the overseas client to plug and play the Terraform resources with their own existing resources already deployed with AWS CloudFormation
    • managed 10 different deployment environments for both parties
    • implemented tag policies using Terraform
    • reduced AWS account costs by 70% with optimizations of the VPC resources
    • close collaboration with overseas Japanese development teams

    AWS

    Containers

    Terraform

    Automation

    Cloud Migration

    CI/CD

    Python

    Jenkins

    Java

    Signing

    mTLS

  • Telenet · DevOps Engineer

    Oct 2024 - Dec 2024 (3 months) · Freelance
    Brussels, Belgium

    Filled in on a project to maintain delivery continuity while part of a team providing an in-house API development platform, which has the intention of migrating internal legacy applications to a cloud based platform with a uniform logic and design.

    • deployed a new environment with containerized AWS lambdas using Terraform and GitLab CI/CD pipelines
    • documented the deployment process of the new environment, filling the gaps of the existing environment documentation
    • shared know-how about the inner workings of specific AWS Lambda configurations
    • implemented AWS tagging policies
    • reviewed current infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines, documented issues found on Jira as improvement stories

    AWS

    Gitlab

    Containers

    Terraform

    Automation

    CI/CD

    Python

    Serverless

  • Moobii · Full Stack & Cloud Engineer

    May 2021 - Jun 2021 (2 months) · Freelance
    Brussels, Belgium

    One-man project to build a .NET API backend which integrates with the Belgian government's eHealth patient platform and is used daily by over 20 Belgian healthcare institutions for all their patients.

    • designed and implemented a .NET REST API backend in C#
    • maintained Azure environment and compute instances using Azure App Service and Terraform
    • set up git repositories and deployment pipelines in Azure DevOps
    • implemented JSON Web token encryption and signing in C# to authenticate with the eHealth services
    • set up the certificates used for encryption and signing using Azure Key Vault and Terraform
    • set up the secrets used for encryption and signing using Azure Key Vault and Terraform
    • wrapped the government VESTA SOAP API with a .NET REST API in C#

    Azure

    .NET

    C#

    API

    Encryption

    mTLS

    SOAP

    HTTP

  • Nike · DevOps Engineer

    Aug 2020 - Feb 2024 (3 years 7 months) · Freelance
    Antwerp, Belgium

    Maintained the DevOps and Kubernetes foundation of Nike Europe's distribution centers together with 30 DevOps colleagues in an agile environment while being part of 3 Data Engineering teams within a Data & Analytics business unit.

    • designed and implemented AWS EKS Kubernetes clusters for multiple environments using Terraform, Kubernetes and Helm
    • implemented Kubernetes cluster monitoring with Grafana and Prometheus using Terraform and Helm
    • implemented a tagging policy module using Terraform for uniform tagging across all AWS resources created with Terraform
    • implemented multiple Airflow base container images using Docker
    • maintained 12 Airflow instances across multiple environments which host ETL tasks for 4 distribution centers
    • implemented a shared Airflow package in Python used in the Airflow Python code across all instances
    • implemented a shared Ops package in Python used in all code repositories of the teams
    • implemented a shared Utils package in Python used in all code repositories of the teams
    • implemented Jenkins CI/CD pipeline for deploying the Airflow instances and uploading the tasks and configurations
    • maintained Jenkins instances for each team and automated configuration deployments
    • implemented 5 Jenkins base container images using Docker to speed up legacy Jenkins CI/CD pipelines by 10 minutes
    • implemented a CLI tool in golang which automates version and release management
    • implemented automated version and release management in all Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
    • implemented an ETL monitoring application in Python using Jenkins and Terraform
    • implemented a Snowflake warehouse autoscaling application in Python using Jenkins, Kubernetes cron jobs and Helm
    • implemented Jenkins CI/CD pipelines for deploying jobs on Databricks
    • automated AWS S3 syncs across multiple AWS accounts
    • implemented ETL jobs in Python for legacy applications using AWS Lambda, AWS S3 and Box
    • implemented dozens of Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
    • implemented a strict and efficient code development and reviewing process using GitHub and Jenkins
    • presented and standardized the above shared practices with the DevOps community
    • interviewed software engineering profiles to fill positions within the application and platform teams

    AWS

    Containers

    Terraform

    Automation

    CI/CD

    Python

    Kubernetes

    Golang

    Jenkins

    Cloud Migration

  • Barclays · Cloud Engineer

    Aug 2019 - Nov 2019 (4 months) · Consultant (Capgemini)
    Manchester, UK

    Part of an iOS app team in a transformational business unit where new technologies are adopted faster compared to other units in a tightly regulated financial environment.

    • designed application and platform solution diagrams together with the Solution Architect of the platform team
    • communicated the application team AWS requirements to the platform team
    • implemented backend infrastructure with AWS CloudFront, ApiGateway, Lambda (Golang) using SAM and CloudFormation
    • implemented CI/CD pipelines for the backend application using AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild
    • implemented dozens of IAM roles
    • implemented platform infrastructure using AWS S3, Route53, DynamoDB, Cognito, EC2, ECS, VPC and WAF
    • interviewed DevOps profiles to fill positions within the application and platform teams

    AWS

    Coaching

    Automation

    Golang

    Node.js

    Cloud Migration

    Serverless

  • ABN Amro Bank · Full Stack & Cloud Engineer

    Sep 2017 - Aug 2019 (2 years) · Consultant (Capgemini)
    Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Started as member of the team which maintained the frontend foundation and gradually took the position of cloud consultant during a considerably large cloud migration in a tightly regulated financial environment.

    • maintained the frontend foundation in an agile environment
    • developed frontend development tooling in Node.js for 50 teams of frontend developers
    • reduced the frontend pipeline's duration by 95% from 1.5 hours to 10 minutes using AWS Lambda
    • developed frontend performance monitoring tooling using AWS EC2, ECS, Batch and Lambda
    • developed frontend components in AngularJS/SASS/HTML
    • led 4 teams in migrating their backend services to AWS
    • led 1 team in launching their greenfield API project on AWS
    • coached and trained 40 colleagues to prepare them for the maintenance of their applications on AWS
    • carried processes for approvals and assessments
    • assisted the teams with planning their cloud user stories
    • implemented proposed containerised services with ECS clusters, RDS, S3, Route53 and VPC
    • implemented proposed serverless APIs with ApiGateway, Lambda and DynamoDB
    • implemented CI/CD pipelines for the applications using Bitbucket, CodePipeline and CodeBuild

    AWS

    Coaching

    Groovy

    Containers

    Node.js

    Jenkins

    Cloud Migration

    JavaScript

    Angular

    CSS

    SCSS

  • Puratos · Web Developer

    Aug 2017 - Sep 2017 (2 months) · Consultant (Capgemini)
    Antwerp, Belgium

    Filled in on a project to maintain delivery continuity.

    • developed components in AngularJS/SASS/HTML (Jekyll) for the frontend
    • refactored legacy components in AngularJS/SASS/HTML (Jekyll) for the frontend

    Jekyll

    JavaScript

    Angular

    HTML

    CSS

    SCSS

  • Argenta · Full Stack Engineer

    Dec 2016 - Jun 2017 (7 months) · Consultant (Capgemini)
    Antwerp, Belgium

    Part of the team responsible for the client's internet banking web application, which serves thousands of customers daily in a tightly regulated financial environment.

    • developed AngularJS/LESS/HTML components for the frontend
    • developed Java Spring/Camel API components for the backend
    • responsible for quality control and made sure unit testing coverage was up to standards
    • developed entire user stories in an agile scrum environment
    • led the migration to Java/Groovy configuration as code for Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
    • monitored production on-premise services and databases
    • on-call support role for production

    Java

    Spring

    API

    Jenkins

    Groovy

    Angular

    JavaScript

    HTML

    CSS

    LESS

  • FLAVR · Full Stack Developer

    Jun 2016 - Aug 2016 (3 months) · Freelance
    Antwerp, Belgium

    Startup environment where flexibility and tight deadlines are key.

    • created new frontend components in AngularJS/SASS/HTML (MEAN stack)
    • created new backend components in Node.js/Express/MongoDB (MEAN stack)
    • created responsive e-mail templates for the marketing strategy in MJML
    • maintained AWS EC2 environments with basic scaling and load balancing
    • on-call support role for production

    AWS

    MongoDB

    API

    HTML

    Node.js

    Angular

    CSS

    SCSS

    MJML