Valentin Stoican
Development
Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Skills
DevOps
About
Valentin has over 5 years of experience as a skilled DevOps Engineer, specializing in Kubernetes management, multi-tenancy platform architecture, and migration projects. Recognized for revamping backend services and standardizing deployment processes. Valentin is committed to enhancing customer experiences and ensuring robust infrastructure environments.
Acomplishments
Designed and implemented a scalable, user-friendly platform for Docker Inc.’s 3rd anniversary competition, successfully serving thousands of participants worldwide. Demonstrated excellence in full-stack development, cloud integration, and system scalability, ensuring a seamless, efficient experience for a diverse, global user base. This project highlighted my ability to manage and deliver complex projects with significant user impact and tight deadlines.
Spearheaded enhancements to the Libstorage project, focusing on Dell storage drivers. Implemented performance optimizations that reduced cluster rollouts from 8 hours to 45 minutes, achieving a tenfold decrease in storage mount and unmount times. This contribution significantly enhanced system efficiency and deployment speed, demonstrating deep technical expertise and a strong commitment to impactful software development.
Work Experience
Kubernetes Platform Engineer
Woven Planet by Toyota
January 2023 - October 2023
- My role went beyond the typical boundaries of Kubernetes management and I was involved in the architecture and development of a multi-tenancy platform, led and coordinated L5 (former Lyft ’s self-driving car division) migration to a new platform.
- I contributed to various integrations and customisations of the Developer Portal based on Backstage from Spotify.
- Worked closely with the SRE team to define Customer User Journeys and subsequently custom metrics for measuring and monitoring the journey
DevOps Engineer / SRE
Shell
September 2022 - October 2023
- I joined Shell with the goal of migrating AWS infrastructure with minimal downtime and service disruption. I designed Terraform modules for various infrastructure components and executed deployments using Terragrunt and Github workflows. Collaborating with the Customer Experience Management development team, we successfully revamped the backend services for the Shell Mobile App. I standardised the build, testing, and deployment processes by creating reusable Github workflows.
DevOps Engineer
Asset Panda
February 2021 - December 2022
- As a DevOps Engineer I started designing AWS infrastructure, environments segregation, CI/CD pipelines and Development strategies (branch strategies, Git flow, Sandbox environments). I am reponsible for refactoring Terraform code and deploy AWS infrastructure and services (e.g. ACM, API GW, ECR, CodeBuild pipelines, EKS, KMS, Route53, S3, VPC). Work with development teams to containerise applications and deploy them to Kubernetes.
DevOps Engineer (Kubernetes)
Rio Tinto
August 2020 - March 2022
- I set up infrastructure in Azure and on-prem, mainly focused around Kubernetes. Data was processed by workloads running Kubeless (Serveless functions). Additionally I set up Tanzu Kubernetes clusters to be used by development teams to set up their CI/CD pipelines using Gitlab CI. I integrated Snyk into development workflows, enhancing security practices by identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities in the codebase. Along other security improvements, I introduced a centralised secrets management.
Kubernetes expert
Capgemini (McDonalds account)
November 2019 - May 2020
- As Kubernetes expert my main responsibility was to make sure all platforms are stable. All deployments, changes were vetted by me before going to production.
- Kubernetes clusters which fell under my responsibility were Production US/Canada/Australia/UK/Germany. All Kubernetes clusters were deployed in AWS using kops. Among the projects delivered the following are worth mentioning: Sync certificates using S3 bucket, ConfigMaps and sidecar containers, Calico IPAM blocks cleaning, zero downtime K8s.
DevOps Cloud and CI/CD Engineer
Atradius
May 2019 - November 2020
- As DevOps Cloud Engineer my main responsability is to help teams migrating from on-prem infrastructure to Azure Cloud. Infrastructure provisioning is ensured using Terraform, Github, Slack and Jenkins. I designed a CI/CD for deploying, testing and provisioning of Azure Cloud components.
- As CI/CD Engineer I am working with 5 development teams to deliver the flow requied for IFRS17 program. Platform is based on Kubernetes, Spark, R, Hadoop, Informatica, SAS.
DevOps Architect/Engineer
Credendo
March 2018 - May 2019
- As DevOps architect I am responsible for drafting a new DevOps landscape taking into consideration Business, Compliance, Security and Operational Requirements. The new architecture brings all new projects promoted by CNCF. Rancher will orchestrate Kubernetes clusters where microservices are being deployed.
- As a DevOps engineer I am reposible for streamlining CI/CD pipelines, defining the roles and reponsabilities, providing best practice guidelines.
DevOps CI/CD - Build team
ING
February 2017 - March 2018
- As DevOps engineer in Domestic Banking I was responsible for continuously
- improving the performance, scalability and availability of CDaaS platform. The platform consists of hundreds of Docker containers managed with Mesos and Marathon. Storage solution supported and maintained is Ceph where Rados Block Devices (RBD) are stored. Block devices are mounted as persistent storage for Docker containers using Rexray and Libstorage drivers and API (also contributed to Libstorage Github project).
DevOps CI/CD
Bank Mendes Gans
May 2016 - January 2017
- As DevOps engineer in Wholesale Banking I was responsible for migration, re- design and implementation the Development pipeline. Integration and optimisation of development aplications like Git, Jenkins, Artifactory, Sonar, Fortify, Jira, Crucible/Fisheye. Combined the knowledge of Certified Scrum Master and making use of Docker containers and Kubernetes to agilely streamline and accelerate the development process.
Technical Consultant & Implementation Engineer
Proximus
August 2015 - April 2016
- Hired in the Services Platform & Cloud team to design and develop a new AAA platform for external customers. The deliverable consisted of a distributed Tacacs as a Service platform built upon the following technologies: Active Directory, LDAP and MongoDB. Services communicate over encrypted connections and the APIs were developed using Python and operated with Flask and Gunicorn. LDAP Replication, MongoDB replica set along with HAProxy and Keepalived provide a robust and fully redundant platform
DevOps Engineer
KPN
January 2015 - August 2015
- Contracted by Netco ICT Management Applications SAS department for deploying custom solutions on Linux platforms. Complexity of activities varied from managing 200+ RedHat Servers via RedHat Sattellite to configuring turn-key solutions for Internal customers with specific requirements for configuration, storage, networking and deployed services. Worked for Capacity Management department to develop custom KPIs in Cacti. Custom system and service checks were implemented in Nagios. Designed and rol
Team Lead - Trading application engineers
Optiver
December 2013 - November 2014
- My responsibilities were to coordinate a team 6 engineers supporting Delta1 and Brazil Trading teams. Balancing workload and prioritizing task, finding ways to improve operations and optimize infrastructure were among the tasks fulfilled. Also, I was involved in complex projects like Exchange migrations, Software deployment automation, Data warehouse feeds optimisation, Compliance reporting.
Trading Application Engineer
Optiver
March 2013 - November 2013
- Projects and responsabilities:
- - Configure trading systems to be able to trade new products on different exchanges (e.g. Eurex, Xetra, Euronext Liffe, Italian cash MTA, Italian Derivatives IDEM, Turquoise)
- - Troubleshooting Autotraders, Exchange connected components, Trading tools, ORC
Application analyst
Markit
March 2011 - February 2013
- I deployed and customize HP application suite consisting of HP uCMDB, HP DDMi, HP Asset Manager, HP ConnectIT but also development tools like Jenkins, Hudson, Artifactory and SVN. Most of the relevant work was carried on setting up MSSQL as backend for Artifactory, develop JIRA plugins using Groovy, writing discovery tools and patterns for HP Application suite using proprietary language and Jython.
NGOSS Domain Lead
Hewlett-Packard
May 2009 - January 2011
- As a domain lead for the NGOSS domain I was responsible with development of new opportunities, lead technical initiatives and coordinate the team within EEM (European Emerging Markets) region consisting of 13 countries. The activity was a joint effort of Project Managers, Product Managers and Technical leaders.
Education
Politehnica University of Bucharest
PhD
September 2007 - January 2008
Design Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems using Genetic Algorithms (
Politehnica University of Bucharest
Bachelor
September 2002 - January 2007
Mobile communications and satellites
Al.D.Ghica High School
highSchoolOrEquivalent
September 1998 - January 2002
Computer Science
Trainings
Certifications
2022 Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (Cloud Native Computing Foundation)
2020 Certified Kubernetes Application Development (Cloud Native Computing Foundation)
2019 Certified Kubernetes Administrator (Cloud Native Computing Foundation)
2017 Neural Networks and Deep Learning (Deeplearning.ai)
2017 Certified RancherOS Partner and Consultant
2016 AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level (in progress)
2016 Certified Scrum Master (Xebia)
2015 Solaris 11 (Delta)
2014 Project Management and Structured Thinking
2014 Personal development training (Increase efficiency, Cultural training etc.- provided by Optiver)
2014 Financial Markets - Yale University
2013 Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence – Case Western Reserve University
2013 Python training (provided by Optiver)
2013 Scrum, Agile, Kanban (provided by Optiver)
2013 Derivatives training (provided by Optiver)
2012 ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management
2012 Technology Entrepreneurship (Stanford University)
2012 HP Asset Management – Tailoring Software (provided by HP)
2011 Artifactory administration training (provided by JFrog)
2009 Guardium – Real-time Databases Audit and Monitoring
2009 uCMDB Essentials (provided by HP)
2008 PL/SQL programming (provided by Oracle)
2008 Java programming (provided by Oracle)
2004 Linux/Unix/Solaris administration (provided by Cisco Academy)
