Phiwayinkosi Lucky Gazu
Technical Lead: Platforms Engineering
Cape Town
Summary
Platform Engineering Lead. Possessing 7.5 years of experience in corporate industry, in Digital, DevSecOps, Cloud, SRE, Software and Platform Engineering. Well-versed with technical product ownership, line managerial, Agile practices, people’s skills, communication and public speaking skills acquired through occupation of different roles in the technology space. An innovation enthusiast that has been enabling, technically guiding and judging innovation projects and Hackathons. Have tapped into technical content publishing through recent partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Overview
10
10
years of professional experience
7
7
years of post-secondary education
5
5
Certifications
Work History
Platform Engineer: Tech Lead
Old Mutual Limited
Cape Town
10.2020 - Current
- Accountable for FinOps culture and cloud operational cost optimisation
- Line-managed platform engineers for Digital, Data and Analytics business unit
- Drive DevOps reusability and standards to enable delivery through CI/CD solution
- Orchestrated cloud infrastructure best practices through containers and micro-services (ECS and Kubernetes)
- Advice, Support and Best practices regarding both AWS and platform technologies (AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudWatch Events, S3, Kubernetes, Prometheus etc.)
- Patterns for extensive Monitoring and Logging Solution
- Cloud Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) Practices
- Cloud Platform Security
- Established metrics-driven culture, utilising key performance indicators to guide decision-making in platform operations.
- Spearheaded migration efforts to cloud-based infrastructure, resulting in improved scalability and cost savings.
- Developed custom tools and scripts to automate routine tasks, boosting team productivity.
- Evaluated new technologies for potential adoption into the platform ecosystem, ensuring a cutting-edge tech stack.
- Increased system reliability with proactive monitoring and timely issue resolution.
- Conducted technical evaluations of engineering designs and test results.
- Created detailed reports on engineering activities and findings.
- Developed comprehensive engineering documents for all projects.
- Developed and maintained relationships with suppliers to facilitate quality and timely delivery of materials.
Platform Engineer
Old Mutual Limited
10.2020 - 06.2022
- Provide a highly scalable and highly available platform
- Enable rapid and continuous delivery for development teams including an automated CI/CD solution to production
- Orchestrated containerised infrastructure platform (Kubernetes)
- Advice, Support and Best practices regarding both AWS and platform technologies (AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudWatch Events, S3, Kubernetes, Prometheus etc.)
- Extensive Monitoring and Logging Solution
- Providing support for all things platform-related (and on-call for out of hours production critical issues)
- Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) Practices
- Platform Security
- Automation (Backups, Batch Jobs etc.)
- Disaster recovery (platform)
Lead Analyst Programmer
Old Mutual Limited
03.2019 - 10.2020
- Assist with sprint planning and sizing sprint backlog
- Improvement of IT service – Always ON
- Implement and consistently apply DevOps principles and standards
- Assist with creation of sprint backlog
- Prepare and conduct relevant tests against codebase to ensure quality of delivery
- Improve and maintain technical quality of features and tasks
- Ensure compliance to Digital and Business Operational Support Models
- Conduct regular code reviews
- Infrastructure platform availability and uptime
- Evolution, maintenance and support of shared infrastructure capabilities and tooling
Analyst Programmer
Old Mutual Limited
02.2017 - 02.2019
- Deliver Timely / Cost Effect Solutions
- Produce Quality Documentation
- Transfer Skills / Knowledge, Mentor and Train
- Conduct Thorough Analysis and Robust Design
- Conduct Quality-Conscious Peer Reviews
- Produce Quality Code, Unit Test Effectively
Graduate IT Trainee
Old Mutual Limited
02.2015 - 07.2017
- Work closely with and report to Line manager with all the tasks Assigned
- Developing custom marketing dashboard concepts for client reporting
- Benchmarking performance across all online channels and advising on KPIs
- Reporting on key metrics, analyzing and interpreting trends and providing actionable insights based on available analytics data
- Analyzing the effect of different online and offline channels on each other and developing and implementing innovative strategies for improvement and growth
- Using methodical performance analysis to influence/support campaign strategies
- Write well designed, testable, efficient code by using best software development practices
- Integrate data from various back-end services and databases
- Gather and refine specifications and requirements based on technical needs
- Create and maintain software documentation
- Be responsible for maintaining, expanding, and scaling Digital Marketing websites
- Stay plugged into emerging technologies/industry trends and apply them into operations and activities
- Cooperate with web designers to match visual design intent
Student After hours Demonstrator
School of Maths, Stats & Computer Science, UKZN, Westville
02.2015 - 10.2015
- Assist students who need help with the PCs and their programming assignments
- Report any problems (security or technical) to Technical Manager
- Ensure security of the labs; make sure everyone abides by the rules
Education
Matric -
Umzikazi High School
Nkandla, KwaZulu Natal 01.2005 - 01.2009
BSc - Computer Science and IT
UKZN
Durban, KZN 01.2012 - 01.2015
NQF Level 6 - Digital Marketing
Red And Yellow
Cape Town 04.2016 - 06.2016
Skills
Monitoring tools - Grafana, Prometheus, AlertManager
BI tools
Shell programming
Angular
Terraform
CloudFormation
Typescript
Java
C#
Python
Visual Basic
C
ASPNET
Nodejs
Containerization - Kubernetes, Amazon EKS & ECS, Docker
CI tools - Jenkins
AWS Services
Relational Databases
Non-Relational Databases
Git
UNIX
Windows
Certification
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
References
- Wilson Karuri, Data Platform Owner, Old Mutual Africa Regions, Colleague, +254 725 78 5957, wkaruri@oldmutual.com
- Dhivendran Naicker, Senior Solutions Architect , AWS, Cloud Partnership, +27 84581 0442, naickdr@amazon.nl
- Kershnee Ballack, IT Executive, Old Mutual Limited, Line Manager, +27 71915 0491, kballack@oldmutual.com
Demographics
Male, South African, 9207216201089, Single, IsiZulu, English, Excellent, None
Accomplishments
Published a technical content (case study) in partnership with Amazon Web Services. The publication cane be found here: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/old-mutual-case-study/
Timeline
Strategic Thinking: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage, Emeritus - April 2023 - December 2023
12-2023
Platform Engineer: Tech Lead
Old Mutual Limited
10.2020 - Current
Platform Engineer
Old Mutual Limited
10.2020 - 06.2022
Lead Analyst Programmer
Old Mutual Limited
03.2019 - 10.2020
Analyst Programmer
Old Mutual Limited
02.2017 - 02.2019
NQF Level 6 - Digital Marketing
Red And Yellow
04.2016 - 06.2016
Graduate IT Trainee
Old Mutual Limited
02.2015 - 07.2017
Student After hours Demonstrator
School of Maths, Stats & Computer Science, UKZN, Westville
02.2015 - 10.2015
BSc - Computer Science and IT
UKZN
01.2012 - 01.2015
Matric -
Umzikazi High School
01.2005 - 01.2009
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