Tech with Francis: DevOps and Everything Cloud

Cloud Architect | DevOps Engineer | Technical Writer

Welcome to my website where I share my thoughts and projects on DevOps and Cloud Engineering.

About me

I am a certified AWS Solutions Architect and DevOps Engineer with expertise in cloud architecture, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure automation. Proficient in both AWS and OVHcloud platforms, I specialize in deploying and managing scalable, secure, and cost-efficient cloud solutions using tools like Jenkins, GitHub, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes. With a strong background in network planning and optimization, I excel at designing high-performing, reliable cloud infrastructures while leveraging AWS services like EC2, ECS, Lambda, and CloudFormation. Passionate about innovation and technical writing, I’ve authored papers to simplify complex technical concepts.

Experience

Freelance, DevOps & Cloud Engineer

2023 — Present

CI/CD Pipeline Implementation: Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and GitHub Actions, reducing deployment time by 35%. Integrated tools like SonarQube for code quality checks, which improved code quality metrics by 20%, and Nexus/Artifactory for artifact management, reducing artifact retrieval times by 15%.
Containerization and Orchestration: Containerized applications using Docker by creating Dockerfiles and Docker Compose files, reducing application startup time by 25%. Deployed and managed containerized applications on Kubernetes clusters, resulting in 40% reduction in infrastructure costs through optimized resource allocation.
Monitoring and Logging: Set up monitoring solutions using AWS CloudWatch for real-time metrics and alerting, which decreased the Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) for incidents by 50%. Implemented logging and monitoring for microservices architecture, improving log retrieval efficiency by 30%.
Cloud Deployment and Management: Deployed scalable applications on AWS, leveraging services like ECS, EKS, Lambda, and S3, which improved application scalability by 60%. Implemented cost optimization strategies that reduced overall cloud costs by 25% and conducted security best practices and compliance checks, improving audit compliance from 75% to 95%.
Version Control and Collaboration: Managed code repositories and collaborated on projects using Git and GitHub. Utilized Git hooks and GitHub integrations for automation of tasks in CI/CD pipelines, which improved development team productivity by 20% and reduced code integration errors by 15%.
Networking and Security: Configured secure network architectures, including VPC, subnets, and security groups, leading to a 40% reduction in unauthorized access attempts. Implemented IAM roles and policies for fine-grained access control, improving security posture and reducing access management incidents by 25%.

Network Planning & Optimization (NPO) Engineer

NOKIA

2022 — 2023

•Leading network planning projects of Airtel's new sites roll-outs in Kenya, taking into consideration coverage, quality and capacity limitations.
•Spearheading network optimization projects in my cluster sites and at PLMN level. Using such network analysis tools as NitroGeo, MapInfo, Google Earth Pro, and Planet Momentum, I'm able to come up with network improvement strategies, both soft and hard optimizations.
•Troubleshooting network customer complaints. This entails coming up with the RCAs of poor network experiences across the various RATs, and coming up with solutions in an accurate and timely manner (within SLA).
•Proactively doing capacity planning for Airtel's 4G sites with future growth plans in mind.
•New feature study, testing and implementation (2G, 3G and 4G).
•Conducting routine network audit and parameters alignment.
•Network parameter configuration via OSS tools.
•Daily monitoring and reporting of my cluster sites (Central region sites (3G & 4G). Continuously doing both SW and HW trials to improve their KPIs.
•Supporting field engineers with optimization and planning insights in their daily activities