Profile

Dariusz Kołczański

Dariusz Kołczański

Age:40
Area:Gdańsk, Pomerania, Poland
Phone:+48 607 287 307

Senior DevOps Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer / Platform Engineer / Tech | Team Lead / Trainer

My name is Darek and I am a systems administrator/DevOps with over 20 years of experience. I'm a highly motivated linux/unix expert with professional enterprise background. Always strongly focused on delivering the best possible solutions with maximum efficiency, performance and security. When approaching task, I always try to automate them, knowing that in the longer run this is a time safer for the team. Recently I had the privilege of being a Team/Tech Lead and it was both an amazning and enlightening experience.



AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

KEY SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES:

Extensive knowledge in Linux/Unix Systems Administration

Extensive knowledge in email systems

Infrastructure as Code enthusiast

Systems and application monitoring / performance

Automation / Provisioning

Strong shell scripting skills

Basic programming skills

Webdev technologies

Troubleshooting: fixing impossible issues


Soft skills / character:

Team Leader focused on the Team

Knowledge sharing - internal trainer

Openminded

Patient

Positive attitude

Team player

Analytical and decision making skills

Cheerful

Currently interested and trying to be better in:

DevOps

Cloud

Continous Integration/Continious Delivery

Containers and orchiestration









Work Experience

2021 - now

Scalac

Senior DevOps Engineer

#5 - FinTech Company - Tech Lead


Our goal was to redesign and rewrite very old and flaw deployment solution for deploying the whole Application stack into the AWS. Using the modern approach and tools, focusing on security and reliability.

Tech Lead for the Enablers Team. Design, architecture, quality, code reviews and best practices for automation, deployment and security.


Main infrastructure stack:

Cloud - AWS
Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
Coniguration Management - Ansible
CI/CD - Jenkins
Containers - Docker
Database - PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle
SVC - Git
Scripts - Bash / Python / YAML / Jinja2



#4 - FinTech Company - Platform Engineer


- Taking care of whole delivery pipelines and environments

- Taking care of entire production environment - develop and maintenance.

- Creating new environments in AWS

- Custom made Terraform modules


Main infrastructure stack:

Cloud - AWS
Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
Orchiestration - AWS ECS
Coniguration Management - Ansible
Monitoring - Prometheus / Grafana / ELK
CI/CD - GitlabCI
Containers - Docker
Database - PostgreSQL
SVC - Git
Scripts - Bash / Python / YAML / Jinja2



#3 - SaaS Observability Platform for Kubernetes - Site Reliability Engineer


- Taking care of whole delivery pipelines and environments

- Taking care of entire production environment - develop and maintenance.

- Managing Kubernetes clusters,

- Maintaining pipelines

- Implementing new features


Main infrastructure stack:

Cloud - AWS
Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
Orchiestration - Kubernetes
Coniguration Management - Helm, Ansible
Monitoring - Prometheus / Grafana / ELK
CI/CD - GitlabCI / ArgoCD
Containers - Docker
Database - PostgreSQL
SVC - Git
Scripts - Bash / Python / YAML / Jinja2



#2 - Blockchain Project - Senior DevOps / Tech Lead


- Leading role and mentoring the Team

- Taking care of entire production environment - develop and maintenance.

- Bringing stability and modern DevOps approach into existing hybrid production environment.

- Redesigned workflows and architecture to avoid often outages and then focused on performance of applications and delivery pipeline.

- Architecture of infrastructure, cooperation with developers, proposing more efficient solutions

- Setting up cloud infrastructure (AWS) for automated deployment of different blockchain nodes and indexers (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos) along with supporting applications.

- Everything in Infrastructure as Code approach, wrapped up in CI/CD with custom Docker images on different environments.

Key achievements:
- setting up whole delivery pipeline for various blockchains,
- automated infrastructure setup,
- provisioning with building custom Docker images,
- resolving performance issues with large scala data handling


Main infrastructure stack:

Cloud - AWS, DigitalOcean, Hetzner
Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
Coniguration Management - Ansible
Monitoring - Prometheus / Grafana / ELK
CI/CD - Github Actions, Jenkins
Containers - Docker
Database - PostgreSQL
SVC - Git
Blockchains - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos
Scripts - Bash / Python / YAML / Jinja2



#1 - Blockchain Project - Senior DevOps / Tech Lead


- Leading role and mentoring the Team

- Architecture of infrastructure, cooperation with developers, proposing more efficient solutions

- Setting up cloud infrastructure (AWS) for automated deployment of different blockchain nodes and indexers (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos) along with supporting applications.

- Everything in Infrastructure as Code approach, wrapped up in CI/CD with custom Docker images on different environments.

Key achievements:
- setting up whole delivery pipeline for various blockchains,
- automated infrastructure setup,
- provisioning with building custom Docker images,
- resolving performance issues with large scala data handling


Main infrastructure stack:

Cloud - AWS
Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
Coniguration Management - Ansible
Monitoring - Prometheus / Grafana / ELK
CI/CD - Github Actions
Containers - Docker
Database - PostgreSQL
SVC - Git
Blockchains - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos
Scripts - Bash / Python / YAML / Jinja2



2017 - 2020

Solwit S.A.

Team / Tech lead | Senior DevOps Engineer

External contractor in internal project for Intel Technology Poland .Totally independent position, over 30 bare metal servers, more than a 1000 hosted systems. Project goal was to deliver a full Software Delivery pipeline along with tools to support Software building. We supported over 3000 developers in different global locations and timezones. We provided them a full solution to deliver a software in a modern way with best moder DevOps approach - Git server cluster merged with Code Review tools and CI/CD platform. Also we were responsible for the whole Infrastructure and many other supporting systems and extendind the environemt for the specified customers needs.


Main infrastructure stack:

Hypervisors - VMware
Infrastructure as Code / Coniguration Management - Salt / Ansible
Monitoring - Zabbix / Prometheus / Grafana / ELK
CI/CD - QuickBuild / Gitlab
Containers - Docker
Orchiestration - Kubernetes
SVC - Git
Scripts - Bash / Python / YAML / Jinja2


Key achievements:
- Builded up a team of a passionate professionals (There where 2 of us when, I've joinend - now it's 7 team members)
- Significantly reduced a technological debt
- Automated most hard and common tasks
- Extended the Team skills by various internal trainings
- Reshaped the technlogoical stack and mindset of our team and customers to bring new solutions
- Better quality and performance of delivered resources (code reviews/automation)

Key projects:
- Rebirth project - redesign whole infrastructure stack and delivery proccess
- Rewrite every core component into Infrastructure as Code tool
- Increased quality and performance of whole delivery pipeline


2014 - 2017

zjednoczenie.com

Senior Systems Administrator

Totally independent position, 24/7 on call standby. Over 50 physicall servers, more than 200 containers, mostly for www hosting and development. I've inherit whole infrastracture which wasn't in a very good shape, it took some time to bring the best solutions to provide stability and security for our customers.


Main infrastructure stack - Debian, Proxmox, OpenVZ, Ansible, Zabbix, Postfix, Qmail, Nginx, Apache, AOLserver, MySQl/MariaDB, Percona, PostgreSQL


- Provided technical expertise for IT infrastructure, implementation, optimization and upgrade.
- Performed troubleshooting and diagnosis to hardware/software infrastructure failures, and provided solutions
- Security
- Provisioning
- Automation
- Migration some apps into the cloud
- Colaboration and support for developers team - Technical support

2009 - 2014

Wirtualna Polska S.A.

Systems Administrator

Strongly independent position. Over 200 physicall servers, more than 500 containers, mostly for advanced email services and internal support systems of Poczta WP.


Poczta WP - free email services - 11 million active users

Main infrastructure stack - Solaris, OpenSolaris, CentOS, Zabbix, Qmail


- Administration and maintenance of systems and services
- Development and maintenance of Poczta WP email services
- Development and maintenance of Antispam systems
- Development and maintenance of internal support tools
- Development and maintenance of monitoring system / tools
- Automation
- Cooperation and support for developers team
- Technical support for customer care team
- Preparing and performing training sessions for other teams, including non technical staff ( explaning strict IT stuff in human language )

2007 - 2009

Wirtualna Polska S.A.

Helpdesk - support specialist

Technical support for users and customer care team:
- email services
- hosting / domains
- cooperation with developers and administartors teams
- developing internal support tools

2002 - Now

Freelancer

Administrator/Developer

- Linux / Unix Systems Administration
- Web / email hosting
- WebDev