Jesse Mirza

Jesse Mirza

Platform Engineer · Kubernetes · DevSecOps

20+ years in IT · 5+ years hands-on Kubernetes · Enterprise platform enablement

LinkedIn Netherlands

About

I'm a senior platform engineer with more than 20 years in IT and over five years of hands-on Kubernetes and cloud-native platform work in enterprise environments. I help development and feature teams onboard, containerise and migrate to Kubernetes, and adopt GitOps, CI/CD and platform standards.

I combine deep Linux, Kubernetes and DevSecOps knowledge with coaching, documentation and clear stakeholder communication. I turn recurring team needs into reusable standards, reference implementations, automation and a better developer experience, with a focus on standardisation, scalability and self-service.

Bio

Coming soon

A personal bio is on its way. This section will be written by Jesse soon.

Core expertise

Kubernetes Enablement

  • Kubernetes
  • K3s
  • AKS
  • Rancher
  • Containerisation
  • Onboarding
  • Migrations
  • Platform standards

GitOps & Platform Automation

  • Argo CD
  • Rancher Fleet
  • GitOps
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Helm
  • Kustomize

DevSecOps & CI/CD

  • GitLab CI
  • Jenkins
  • GitHub Actions
  • Azure DevOps
  • Falco
  • Trivy
  • Kyverno

Kubernetes Security

  • RBAC
  • NetworkPolicies
  • Security policies
  • Falco
  • Trivy
  • Kyverno
  • Hardening

Cloud & Enterprise Platforms

  • Azure
  • Azure DevOps
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Private cloud
  • Enterprise platform migrations

Observability

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Alertmanager
  • Loki
  • Logging
  • Monitoring & alerting

Platform Engineering

  • Golden paths
  • Reference implementations
  • Standardisation
  • Scalability
  • Developer experience

Enablement & Coaching

  • Development & feature teams
  • Technical coaching
  • Knowledge transfer
  • Documentation
  • Stakeholder management

Experience

  1. Platform Engineer

    Jul 2024 – present
    NS (Dutch Railways)

    Platform enablement for feature teams in Train Platform Delivery: onboarding and migrating train applications to a PaaS/K3s platform on Azure. Built standardised GitOps deployment patterns and CI/CD, provisioned reproducible K3s environments with Ansible and Terraform, and helped roll out 800+ Kubernetes clusters with Falco, Kyverno and Trivy built into delivery. I also coach junior and medior engineers.

    • Azure
    • K3s
    • Rancher Fleet
    • Helm
    • Kustomize
    • Terraform
    • Ansible
    • Prometheus
    • Grafana
    • Loki
    • Falco
    • Kyverno
    • Trivy

  2. Platform Engineer

    2021 – 2024
    City of Amsterdam

    Guided development teams through cloud adoption, containerisation and migrations to Azure/AKS with standardised GitOps deployments. Automated platform requests for Nginx, HAProxy and OPNsense, secured AKS with Falco and Trivy, built monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana, and migrated 80+ critical PostgreSQL databases to Azure.

    • Azure
    • AKS
    • AWS
    • Kubernetes
    • Argo CD
    • Helm
    • Terraform
    • Ansible
    • Falco
    • Trivy
    • Prometheus
    • Grafana
    • PostgreSQL

  3. Platform Engineer

    2021 – 2022
    Z-CERT

    Migrated a Puppet estate to private and public cloud using Terraform and SaltStack, including Google Cloud environments. Built CI/CD in GitLab, Jenkins and GitHub Actions, standardised Kubernetes deployments with Argo CD, RBAC and NetworkPolicies, and acted as Scrum Master and coach for junior DevOps engineers.

    • Terraform
    • SaltStack
    • GCP
    • AWS
    • GitLab CI
    • Jenkins
    • GitHub Actions
    • Kubernetes
    • Argo CD
    • Prometheus
    • Loki

  4. Data Engineer

    2020 – 2022
    ING Bank

    Supported data-science teams and led the migration from GitLab/Artifactory to Azure DevOps. Built and ran an Apache NiFi cluster (NiFi Registry, ZooKeeper) on ING Private Cloud, with Terraform deployments, NiFi/Kafka monitoring and firewall management through Ansible.

    • Apache NiFi
    • Kafka
    • ZooKeeper
    • Terraform
    • Azure DevOps
    • GitLab
    • Ansible

  5. Ops Engineer

    2020
    ING Bank

    Operated Confluent Kafka clusters for the DORA/Kafka team: user support, patching, upgrades, topic management and troubleshooting. Wrote Ansible code, built CI/CD pipelines in Azure and set up Kafka monitoring dashboards.

    • Confluent Kafka
    • Schema Registry
    • Ansible
    • Azure
    • CI/CD

  6. Automation Engineer

    2019
    Ahold

    Built and maintained unit-tested Ansible modules for the integration team and supported the migration to Azure, building environments and CI/CD with Terraform. Set up Nagios monitoring and managed Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases.

    • Azure
    • Terraform
    • Ansible
    • Nagios
    • PostgreSQL
    • MySQL
    • Oracle

  7. DevOps Engineer

    2018 – 2019
    ING Bank

    Ran offline data platforms on Mesosphere DC/OS with Ceph storage and deployed the RiskShield application on ING Private Cloud for ING Belgium with Ansible. Supported Docker and Zeppelin notebooks, with documentation and knowledge sharing built in.

    • DC/OS
    • Ceph
    • Ansible
    • Docker
    • Zeppelin
Earlier roles (9)

  1. Linux / Puppet Consultant

    Jun 2016 – Apr 2017
    Tele2 Netherlands

    Supported project teams running Apache, Tomcat and MySQL/Percona, and moved several web applications from legacy deployments to standardised Puppet-based ones. Worked on Debian and Red Hat upgrades, Docker Swarm and central logging with ELK.

    • Puppet
    • Debian
    • Red Hat
    • Apache
    • Tomcat
    • Percona
    • Docker Swarm
    • ELK
    • GitLab

  2. Linux Automation Engineer

    Jun 2015 – Mar 2016
    IBM / ABN AMRO

    Delivery Project Services for ABN AMRO: installing and configuring Linux servers and automating application deployments in a large enterprise with strict change and process management.

    • Linux
    • Bash
    • IBM UrbanCode Deploy
    • Hadoop
    • ServiceNow

  3. Puppet Consultant

    Apr 2015 – Jun 2015
    KPN

    Large-scale move to Puppet Enterprise: reviewed Puppet modules with the developers, wrote RSpec tests and worked in a Scrum team where code review and version control were central. Infrastructure, treated as software engineering.

    • Puppet Enterprise
    • RSpec
    • Git
    • Gerrit
    • Scrum

  4. Linux / Puppet Engineer

    Jan 2014 – Apr 2015
    IBM / UWV

    Designed and built a scalable RHEL 6 environment on IBM Flex hardware to speed up and standardise server builds, and helped set up a Puppet platform managing nine separate customer environments ahead of a move to Red Hat Satellite 6.

    • RHEL 6
    • Puppet
    • IBM Flex System
    • Red Hat Satellite

  5. Linux Engineer / Puppet Master

    2013
    Morpho

    Built the Puppet environment for the Dutch travel documents project and automated high-availability Red Hat platforms. Cut a two-engineer, four-week build to a complete system delivery in about two days. Prepared a reproducible high-security environment for Interpol that could be rolled out on site within 16 hours, then trained its admins.

    • RHEL 6
    • Puppet
    • Cobbler
    • Red Hat Cluster
    • DRBD
    • GFS2
    • PostgreSQL
    • PGPool

  6. Linux / VoIP Consultant

    Oct 2011
    Inspecteur S. de Vries School

    Designed, installed and secured an Asterisk VoIP system for two locations with SIP trunking, softphones and desk phones, plus scripts and access rights per department.

    • Asterisk
    • VoIP
    • SIP
    • Linux

  7. Technical Consultant / Director

    2010 – present
    OnlineXS

    Design, implementation and management of hosting and application infrastructure: load-balanced Windows Server platforms, Linux/Windows integration and a hosted desktop/SaaS environment. Led a virtualisation migration from Xen and VMware GSX to clustered XenServer.

    • XenServer
    • Windows Server
    • Linux
    • Samba
    • Zimbra
    • Asterisk
    • iSCSI

  8. Technical Consultant / Director

    2008 – present
    JamesNet IT Solutions

    Responsible for the operation and continuity of hosted Windows and Linux cloud environments: monitoring, backup, SaaS services and IT management. Led staff and provided second-line support.

    • Linux
    • Windows Server
    • SaaS
    • Monitoring
    • Backup

  9. Technical Consultant

    2005 – 2008
    KRATZ Business Solutions

    Seconded to several clients: managed Linux servers, supported Windows Server 2003 and Citrix environments, and wrote user and administration manuals.

    • Linux
    • Gentoo
    • Red Hat
    • Citrix
    • Nagios
    • Postfix
    • Zimbra

Certifications

  • Kubernetes track (KCNA, CKSA)2025
  • Google Prompt Design in Vertex AI2025
  • Kubernetes track (CKAD, CKA)in progress
  • HashiCorp Terraform Associate (003)2024
  • Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104)2024
  • Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)2024
  • Confluent CFA (Apache Kafka)2024
  • Certified Kubernetes (CKA, CKAD)2023
  • Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) 6 & 72012 – 2016
  • Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) 6 & 72012 – 2017

Education

  • Bachelor, Technical Computer Science (Technische Informatica)Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences2001 – 2004
  • System Administrator, MBO level 4 (accelerated)Amsterdam1999 – 2000

Languages

  • Dutch (fluent)
  • English (fluent)
  • Arabic (fluent)

Contact

The best way to reach me is through LinkedIn. I'm always happy to talk about platform engineering, Kubernetes enablement and DevSecOps.

LinkedIn ↗