Career Profile
Welcome!
I'm Keith Kain, a seasoned DevOps/Cloud Platform Engineer with over a decade of expertise specializing in cloud-native infrastructure, SRE practices, and developer experience optimization. My background in financial technology and large-scale systems has equipped me with the skills to design resilient architectures that balance security, performance, and cost-efficiency.
As an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional and Solutions Architect, I excel at transforming complex infrastructure challenges into elegant automated solutions. My strengths include implementing infrastructure-as-code methodologies, designing self-healing systems, and leading incident response with a focus on continuous improvement.
This resume itself demonstrates my cloud expertise: it's built as a serverless application hosted on AWS using S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, and CloudFront, deployed through a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions and secured following AWS best practices.
See the complete architecture and implementation details in my technical blog post.
Skills & Proficiency
Cloud Infrastructure & Architecture:
Designed and implemented resilient, cost-optimized cloud architectures on AWS, focusing on efficiency and reliability. Specialized in serverless architecture (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB), containerization (ECS/EKS), and infrastructure-as-code using CloudFormation and Terraform with compliance-as-code practices.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional and AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate with proven experience in production environments.
DevOps, CI/CD & Infrastructure as Code:
Built and maintained sophisticated CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI that streamlined deployment processes and minimized deployment failures. Implemented infrastructure validation, security scanning, and automated testing throughout the delivery pipeline. Developed extensive automation using Python, Go, and Bash to eliminate manual processes. Created self-service developer tools that reduced infrastructure provisioning time from days to minutes. Implemented GitOps workflows for infrastructure management with comprehensive testing and validation. Experienced with Ansible, AWS SAM, and modern deployment strategies (blue/green, canary).
Development & Engineering:
Skilled in backend and middleware development using Python, Go, and Node.js. Designed and implemented RESTful APIs, microservices, and serverless functions supporting critical business operations. Developed data processing pipelines and integration solutions connecting diverse systems. Consistently applied software engineering best practices including test-driven development, code review, and continuous refactoring to ensure maintainable, high-quality code.
Container Orchestration & Microservices:
Managed production Kubernetes (EKS) and ECS clusters supporting high-traffic financial applications. Implemented service mesh architectures, automated scaling policies, and container security best practices. Successfully migrated monolithic applications to containerized microservices, improving operational efficiency while enhancing scalability.
Site Reliability Engineering:
Established SRE practices including SLOs/SLIs, error budgeting, and automated remediation. Improved Mean Time to Recovery through implementation of comprehensive observability and incident response automation. Led disaster recovery exercises and created runbooks that ensured high service availability in a regulated financial environment.
Observability & Performance Optimization:
Built comprehensive monitoring ecosystems using Grafana, Prometheus, New Relic, and CloudWatch with automated alerting via PagerDuty. Developed custom dashboards that provided real-time visibility into system health and business metrics. Implemented distributed tracing with AWS X-Ray to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks.
Security & Compliance:
Implemented defense-in-depth security approaches including least-privilege IAM policies, network segmentation, and automated security scanning. Experience with AWS Organizations, Control Tower, and Security Hub for managing multi-account environments. Worked within SOC2 and PCI-DSS compliance frameworks to ensure secure infrastructure.
Experiences
- Optimized cloud infrastructure costs through implementation of right-sizing, reserved instances, and serverless architectures for the Intellix money movement platform serving thousands of commercial banking clients.
- Enhanced incident recovery capabilities through development of self-healing automation using EventBridge, Lambda, and Step Functions. Authored comprehensive runbooks and implemented auto-remediation for common failure scenarios in mission-critical financial systems.
- Led migration of legacy applications to modern cloud architecture, converting monolithic applications to microservices using containers (ECS/Fargate) and serverless technologies (Lambda, API Gateway). Significantly reduced deployment time while improving scalability and reliability.
- Established SRE practices including implementation of SLOs/SLIs, error budgeting, and blameless postmortems. Created comprehensive observability solutions using Grafana, New Relic, Datadog, and distributed tracing that enhanced rapid incident response in a regulated financial environment.
- Architected secure CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, security scanning, and compliance validation for banking applications processing sensitive financial data. Implemented infrastructure-as-code using Terraform and CloudFormation with automated drift detection.
- Implemented DevOps practices for the research computing infrastructure, introducing Git and GitLab CI. Reduced deployment cycles while improving quality and reliability.
- Implemented a self-populating inventory system for hardware and software assets using automated discovery tools integrated with the machine build pipeline.
- Modernized middleware code and improved processes by refactoring legacy components, implementing version control, and establishing automated testing. These improvements reduced technical debt and enhanced system reliability
- Created infrastructure-as-code templates using Ansible and PowerShell DSC that standardized environment creation and ensured consistent configurations across development, testing, and production environments.
- Evaluated and documented monitoring requirements for research computing infrastructure. Collaborated with stakeholders to identify critical metrics and developed a monitoring strategy aligned with department objectives and resource constraints.
- Managed enterprise Windows infrastructure using industry-standard toolsets including MDT, SCCM, WSUS, and PowerShell for a large educational environment, ensuring reliable and secure computing resources.
- Orchestrated software deployment and licensing for complex engineering software packages, streamlining distribution of specialized applications to academic departments.
- Administered Linux servers and endpoints running RHEL using Red Hat Satellite and Puppet for configuration management and automated updates.
- Implemented MacOS management solution using Jamf Pro with Automated Device Enrollment workflow, creating a unified device management strategy across multiple platforms.
- Developed automation solutions using PowerShell and Python that eliminated repetitive tasks and improved system reliability across the university's computing environment.
- Managed large-scale endpoint environment consisting of 3000+ client systems across Windows and Mac platforms using advanced RMM/MDM solutions for centralized system management.
- Led cross-functional migration project to upgrade 2000+ endpoints from Windows 7 to Windows 10, coordinating with academic departments to minimize disruption and ensure compatibility with instructional applications.
- Developed custom automation solutions using PowerShell and Python that addressed specific institutional challenges and streamlined IT support processes across the university.
- Modernized system deployment processes by implementing efficient Windows build automation workflow with MDT, WDS, and PowerShell, replacing legacy imaging methods and significantly improving deployment efficiency.
- Managed identity and access systems for student and staff accounts across multiple educational platforms, ensuring appropriate access while maintaining security and compliance with educational privacy requirements.
- Provided technical support and troubleshooting for classroom IT and AV systems, ensuring reliable technology resources for educational instruction in a K-12 environment.
Projects
Serverless Resume Platform
Designed and implemented this serverless resume website using AWS S3, CloudFront, Lambda, and API Gateway. Configured CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions for automated testing and deployment. Infrastructure managed as code with Terraform.
Streaming Data Pipeline for Log Analysis
Architected and implemented a real-time log analysis solution using AWS Kinesis Data Streams and Lambda functions. Designed the pipeline to process and analyze application logs at scale, enabling proactive monitoring and alerting. Enhanced observability with custom dashboards for visualizing system health metrics and performance trends.
Multi-Region Disaster Recovery Solution
Designed and implemented a cross-region disaster recovery strategy, taking into account the unique requirements of a regulated financial environment. Utilized AWS Route 53 health checks, S3 cross-region replication, and DynamoDB global tables to ensure data consistency. Created automated failover procedures with AWS Lambda that reduced manual intervention during recovery scenarios.