08/04/2026 updated

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Senior Cloud & Platform Architect | AWS, Kubernetes, GitOps, Terraform, Python, AI-Native Delivery

Warsaw, Poland
Worldwide
MSc Big Data Analytics · Kubestronaut · AWS Solutions Architect Professional
Warsaw, Poland
Worldwide
MSc Big Data Analytics · Kubestronaut · AWS Solutions Architect Professional

About me

Maciej Stepkowski

AI AgentsSREArgo CDGitOpsGitHub ActionsServerlessLLMHelmCrossplaneArtificial IntelligenceAmazon Web ServicesAmazon Elastic Compute CloudCloud EngineeringDevOpsAmazon DynamoDBGitHubInfrastructure As A Service (IaaS)Python (Programming Language)Node.jsOpenShiftAnsibleDesign EngineeringPrometheusTypeScriptAWS CDKDocker ContainerPulumiAdvance Design SystemCloud Platform SystemGrafanaAWS LambdaCloud TechnologiesInfrastructure as Code (IaC)AWS ECSGitLabDesign AnalysisKubernetesGithub EnterpriseInfrastructure DesignElastic KibanaDesign DevelopmentTerraformServerless ComputingAWS EKSDockerMicroservices
Senior Cloud & Platform Architect with 11+ years building production platforms in regulated, high-stakes environments: Tier-1 European banking and EU institution programmes. Kubestronaut (CKA, CKAD, CKS, KCNA, KCSA) and AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional.

CLOUD & PLATFORM
AWS, on-premise and private cloud, hybrid and multi-cloud architecture, Kubernetes, EKS, OKD, OpenShift, Docker, Helm, Kubernetes Operators, multi-tenancy, internal developer platforms, platform engineering, microservices, distributed systems, high availability, scalability, disaster recovery.

INFRASTRUCTURE AS CODE & GITOPS
Terraform, Pulumi, Crossplane (XRDs, Compositions, Functions), Ansible, Packer, ArgoCD, Kargo, Flux, Kyverno, GitOps, infrastructure automation, self-service provisioning.

SERVERLESS & EVENT-DRIVEN
AWS Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge, SQS, SNS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, Kinesis, event-driven architecture, serverless pipelines.

CI/CD & DEVOPS
GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, blue-green deployments, progressive delivery, automated testing, release engineering, DevOps, SRE.

OBSERVABILITY & FINOPS
Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo, Prometheus, Dynatrace, ELK, OpenTelemetry, SLO/SLI design, monitoring, logging, tracing, incident response, on-call, cloud cost optimisation, FinOps.

PROGRAMMING
Python (primary), Go, TypeScript, Node.js, Bash, SQL.

AI ENGINEERING
Claude, Claude Code, Kiro, MCP servers, agentic coding workflows, spec-driven development, LLM application development, multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, MLOps, GenAI in production.

SECURITY & COMPLIANCE
Container and OS image hardening, security baselines for regulated environments, identity and access management, RBAC, secrets management, secure data access layers, EU regulatory compliance, data sovereignty, disaster recovery design and validation.

DATA
PostgreSQL, data architecture, ETL, Tableau, Hadoop/Hortonworks, business intelligence, regulatory reporting automation, data science platforms.

INDUSTRIES
Banking and financial services, public sector and EU institutions, insurance, regulated enterprise.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS
- Scaled EKS infrastructure to 20,000 req/s at member-state tenant scale.
- Introduced Crossplane GitOps self-service, cutting consumer onboarding from ~2 weeks to 1-2 days.
- Replaced ELK with a containerised Grafana/Loki/Mimir/Tempo stack across dozens of environments: 80% cost reduction.
- Built a reusable AWS microservices platform adopted as the default deployment path for 100+ product teams.
- Migrated a vendor monolith to Docker/EKS; the vendor adopted the containerised design into its own product roadmap.
- Authored Kubernetes Operators on OKD enabling AWS provisioning via single-command Ansible playbooks.
- Delivered a self-service data science platform, cutting environment setup from hours to minutes.

Remote-first, EU-wide.

Experience

Professional experience5 - 10 years
Freelancer since2019

Languages

GermanBasic knowledgeEnglishFluentPolishNative speaker

Project history

Founder & Maintainer - Kubemend (kubemend.com)

Internet & IT

< 10 team member

An LLM agent that diagnoses Kubernetes incidents from Observability tools and remediates by opening GitOps pull requests - never touching the cluster directly. Hand-built harness (no agent framework), independent verification gate, and a fault-injection eval lab with reproducible pass-rate benchmarks.

Founder & Solo Engineer - Rnkd (getrnkd.app)

Rnkd

Internet & IT

< 10 team member

Consumer product designed, built and shipped solo, end-to-end: product design,
mobile frontend, backend, cloud infrastructure and distribution.

- Full lifecycle ownership from concept to public release with no team.
- Built using an AI-native workflow (Claude and Claude Code driving planning,
research and code generation) — the same delivery mode I bring to client work.
- Demonstrates the full-stack and product judgement that complements
infrastructure architecture.

Also maintained: rgw-model (Python multi-agent reinforcement learning
environment with cooperative and competitive agents) and allegropti (ML model
estimating optimal listing price for online auctions from product metadata —
foundation of MSc thesis). github.com/m-stepkowski

Technologies: Python, TypeScript, mobile development, AWS, Claude / Claude Code,
agentic development workflows

Senior Cloud & Platform Architect

European Commission

Government and Public Services

Senior architect on a multi-cloud (AWS + on-premise) deployment management
platform serving multiple EU institutional tenants in a highly regulated,
sovereignty-sensitive environment.

- Improved EKS-based infrastructure to handle up to 20,000 req/s, matching the
peak load profile of the platform's largest tenant at member-state scale.
- Introduced Crossplane as a GitOps self-service path for internal consumers;
authored XRDs, Compositions and Crossplane Functions, cutting consumer
onboarding from ~2 weeks to 1–2 days.
- Maintain and evolve the deployment management platform itself: serverless
pipelines (Python, Node.js) across AWS and on-premise, infrastructure-as-code,
observability and CI/CD.
- Designed and validated disaster recovery scenarios for regulated workloads;
ongoing collaboration with security on EU compliance requirements.
- Ship implementation code and internal specifications daily through an
AI-native workflow (Kiro with connected MCP servers, spec-driven generation)
across the platform codebase.
- Mentor development teams on cloud-native and GitOps adoption; lead
architectural decisions on cross-cutting reusable building blocks consumed by
domain application teams.

Technologies: AWS, on-premise cloud, Kubernetes (EKS), Crossplane (XRDs /
Compositions / Functions), Terraform, Ansible, ArgoCD, GitLab CI, Jenkins,
Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, Python, Node.js

Cloud Platform Architect - Microservices Platform (Merlin / Mercury)

Raiffeisen Bank International

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

Architected and delivered a reusable AWS microservices platform that became the
default deployment path for 100+ product teams across a Tier-1 regulated
European bank.

- Spearheaded the platform framework adopted as the organisation's standard
deployment path for product engineering teams.
- Built the observability layer (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo),
security baselines and serverless workflows (AWS Lambda, Step Functions).
- Drove the organisation-wide GitOps shift: ArgoCD, Kargo, Crossplane.
- Authored Kubernetes Operators on OKD enabling product teams to provision AWS
infrastructure through single-command Ansible playbooks.
- Replaced ELK with a containerised Grafana / Loki / Mimir / Tempo stack across
dozens of environments, achieving 80% cost reduction — reduced further after
a subsequent Grafana Cloud migration.
- Hardened containers and OS images (Amazon Linux 2, CentOS) to internal
security baselines; trained and supported customer teams on secure AWS usage.
- Primary technical decision-maker on container orchestration, GitOps and
serverless workflow standards.

Technologies: AWS, Kubernetes, OKD, Docker, Terraform, Pulumi, Crossplane,
ArgoCD, Kargo, Kyverno, Ansible, Packer, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Mimir,
Tempo, ELK, Lambda, Step Functions, Python, Go, TypeScript / Node.js

Cloud Architect - Integration Platform (Hermes)

Raiffeisen Bank International

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

Cloud migration of a third-party vendor monolith into a containerised,
customer-deployable integration platform.

- Decoupled the vendor monolith into Docker containers running on AWS EKS.
- Delivered Ansible playbooks enabling bank customers to run the platform on
their own clusters.
- Outcome: the vendor adopted the containerised design into their own product
roadmap — the migration architecture became the vendor's forward strategy.
- Delivered inside a Tier-1 regulated environment with the corresponding
security, audit and change-management constraints.

Technologies: AWS, EKS, Kubernetes, Docker, Ansible, Terraform, GitLab CI,
Python

Cloud DevOps/Architect - Self-Service Data Science Platform (Advanced Analytics)

Raiffeisen Bank International

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

Designed an AWS platform giving the bank's data scientists isolated,
self-service analytical environments with preconfigured secure data access.

- Architected on-demand isolated environments (RStudio, VSCode, Jupyter) with
governed, preconfigured access to sensitive banking data.
- Cut analytical environment setup time from hours to minutes.
- Built secure data access layers meeting the bank's regulatory and internal
audit requirements.
- Led internal Engineering Chapter sessions; mentored engineers across product
teams on platform and architectural best practice.

Technologies: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Ansible, Python, RStudio,
Jupyter, secure data access architecture

Business Intelligence Expert - Enterprise BI Platform & Regulatory Reporting Automation

Alior Bank

Banking & Financial Services

5000-10.000 team member

- Delivered a global BI tool implementation (Tableau) end-to-end: RFP,
infrastructure, installation and administration — cutting report delivery
time several-fold and accelerating decision-making across sales and risk.
- Drove regulatory reporting automation producing multi-million-dollar savings.
- Installed and configured a Hortonworks Hadoop development environment as part
of the bank's data platform programme.

Technologies: Tableau, Hortonworks Hadoop, ETL, SQL, regulatory reporting

Tech Lead / Reporting Systems Specialist - High-Volume Enterprise Reporting

Alior Bank

Banking & Financial Services

500-1000 team member

- Built .NET applications delivering hundreds of reports daily to 3,000+ users,
with ETL processes handling tens of extracts per day.
- Built and operated a SAS-based web application serving sales and controlling
reports to thousands of unique users; ran SRE-style on-call.
- Tech lead of the Reporting System Team for one year.

Technologies: .NET, C#, SAS, SQL, ETL, on-call / SRE practices

Certificates

Kubestronaut

Cloud Native Computing Foundation

2025

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

CNCF / Linux Foundation

2025

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)

CNCF / Linux Foundation

2025

Kubernetes Cloud Native Associate (KCNA)

CNCF / Linux Foundation

2025

Kubernetes Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA)

CNCF / Linux Foundation

2025

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

CNCF / Linux Foundation

2024

AWS Solution Architect - Professional

Amazon Web Services

2023

AWS Solution Architect - Professional

Amazon Web Services

2020

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