CV

CV ⋅ Antti Viitala #

For detailed timelines please refer to LinkedIn

Bio #

  • Well-rounded software engineer with a focus on infrastructure, Kubernetes and GitOps
  • Lead Cloud infrastructure & DevOps at Synpulse8, supporting multiple projects and internal products working primarily with Kubernetes on AWS EKS, as well as OpenShift for on-prem deployments
  • ~5 years of experience within technical consulting for financial services
  • Comfortable picking up new topics/technologies and driving their implementation

Key skills #

  • Kubernetes (EKS) and OpenShift, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and GitOps (Flux and ArgoCD). Everything I manage is declarative, automated and documented.
  • Experience with cloud providers:
    • AWS: Most of my experience is in AWS. Primarily services around EKS and RDS, so everything related to networking (VPCs, LBs, EC2), secrets (SM and SSM), certs (ACM), IAM, etc.
    • Azure: A ~year’s experience running an AKS cluster, basic networking and some databases. Azure AD usage and SSO w/ various apps.
    • Others (Only used for short term POCs and experiments): GCP, Linode, Railway, Hetzner
  • Tooling and other applications: Backstage (setting up and running our internal Backstage dev portal), GitHub Actions, containerization tools, SonarCloud, JFrog Artifactory, a bit of Jenkins, Postgres primarily for databases
  • Decent Linux/sysadmin skill set, understanding of basic OS structures, perms, networking logic. Comfortable in a terminal.
    • Operating systems: Primarily distros based on Debian/Ubuntu/Alpine and Amazon Linux. Experimenting with various OS’ (NixOS, virtualized MacOS), networking and virtualization in my homelab.
  • General programming languages/frameworks:
    • Strong: Python (especially Django) | Terraform | Bash and shell scripts
    • Basic: Golang | HTML/CSS/JS
  • Languages: English 🇬🇧 | Finnish 🇫🇮
  • Technical writing examples:
  • Personal projects: See GitHub

With Kubernetes I have experience primarily with EKS, k3s and AKS. I prefer to manage clusters with GitOps using flux, though I am also familiar with ArgoCD. I have worked with both Istio and Cilium as service meshes, and much prefer Cilium. For interacting with clusters I’m a huge fan of K9S.

Some of the Kubernetes applications I have configured and have familiarity with are kubernetes-autoscaler, nginx-ingress, cert-manager, external-dns with Route 53 and Azure DNS, oauth2-proxy with Azure and GitHub providers, redis, loki-stack, prometheus-stack, and robusta.

Work experience #

Synpulse8 [2021 - Present] #

Company website - Synpulse8

Solution Architect (Vice President) - Devops, CI/CD, cloud, system design & software development #

  • Design, set up and maintain central internal cloud infrastructure and developer platform following the GitOps model - champion GitOps and Flux in the organisation
  • Lead, troubleshoot, and support on-prem OpenShift deployments of various applications, including Synpulse8 applications as well as Avaloq ACPR
  • Devops and infra-as-code for a mobile application with a CMS API backend (AWS App Runner / Aurora / WAF / ECR / S3 etc. managed via Terraform, GitHub Actions, JavaScript)
  • Devops and infra-as-code for several microservices-based financial applications (primarily using AWS EKS / AWS Aurora DBs / S3 etc. managed via Terraform and Kubernetes, GitHub Actions)
  • Devops and infra-as-code for a financial-services focused risk analytics visualization app (Azure/AWS, AKS/EKS, GitHub Actions, front: React / back: Spring, Apache Pinot, Terraform, Airflow)
  • Set up, administration and operation of our CI/CD pipelines and cloud infra, for example our internal product development clusters (AWS, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, JFrog)
  • S8 Operating model definition: devops, tech stack (incl. licensing), architecture principles, security policies
  • Various internal initiatives: creating websites/portals/webapps with e.g. Hugo and Azure Static Web Apps

Solution Architect (Senior Analyst) - System design, software development #

  • IT Platform design for a new market / new business unit of a global Swiss private bank
  • Development lead and client-facing project manager for an employee analytics tool (Python, MS Graph API)
  • Architecture/REST+Kafka integration for OpenShift-based Avaloq Wealth Platform ( AWP)
  • Led internal initiative for APAC OpenWealth chapter, an open API standard for wealth management

Synpulse Management Consulting [2019-2021] #

Company website - Synpulse management consulting

Consultant - Technology and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) focus #

  • Investment Suitability for a global Swiss Private bank (HK/SG) - Regulatory and control sampling gap analysis
  • Process Optimisation for a global Swiss Private Bank (HK/SG) - Prioritize automation initiatives and deliver a trade reconciliation POC with Blue Prism
  • Data ingestion and Portfolio reporting for a MFO (HK) - Development lead and project manager

Finnish Defence Forces (National service) [2018] #

Internships #

Advisor roles & miscellaneous #

So Responsible [2023 - Present] #

I am a technology advisor for So Responsible, a startup making charitable donations in Hong Kong easy and convenient.

Education & certs #