Open to interesting problems · Ahmedabad, India

Abhishek
Kothari — Cloud Solutions Architect & Principal SRE

Cloud Solutions Architect

13+ years building and running planet-scale systems, from backend code to Kubernetes, IaC, observability and AI-powered automation.

01 — About

Architect by trade, builder by habit.

I'm a backend & cloud solutions architect with 13+ years of experience leading software development, architecture design and Site Reliability teams. I keep learning constantly, and have adapted to AI-powered agentic execution and spec-driven development.

My strength is logical visualisation: foreseeing production issues in an architecture before they happen. I'm ready to code in any language, and I deploy cloud solutions on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud using Pulumi, Terraform, CloudFormation and more.

I also write, contributing to blogs like Geekflare and ButterCMS. More about me →

🤖
AI-powered automationRAG, agents and incident tooling
🏗
Architecture & SREScale, cost and reliability
🎓
B.E. Electronics & Comm.Gujarat Technological University · CPI 8.52
🗣
English · Hindi · GujaratiRemote-friendly, globally interviewing
0+

Years of experience

0+

Machines upgraded by guard-railed fleet automation

AI RCA

Automated incident root-cause analysis & response

JIT SSH

Rolled out fleet-wide to harden security

0M+

Active series on open-source observability (Twilio)

5×9

Availability held through the ECS → EKS migration

0M+

Requests per second on systems I built

02 — Recent projects

AI & automation, in production

What I've been shipping lately: automation with guardrails, AI that investigates, and observability that people can act on.

01 · AUTOMATION

Guard-railed upgrades for a 2000+ machine fleet

Automated fleet upgrades with proper draining of hosts and the necessary guardrails built in, so changes roll out safely and repeatably instead of by hand.

Fleet automationHost drainingGuardrails
VIRTASANT
02 · AI

Automated incident root-cause analysis & response

AI-driven investigation that pulls evidence from documentation search (RAG), metric plugins and log APIs, surfaced through a Slack bot, to find root causes and speed up response.

RAGSlack botIncident response
VIRTASANT
03 · SECURITY

Fleet-wide just-in-time SSH access

Rolled out just-in-time SSH access across the fleet so access is granted when it is needed, strengthening the security landscape.

JIT accessSSHSecurity
VIRTASANT
04 · OBSERVABILITY

Open-source observability stack

Built and ran a 30M+ active-series platform on Grafana, Prometheus, the OpenTelemetry Collector, Grafana Loki and Tempo, migrating off Datadog.

GrafanaPrometheusOTel CollectorLokiTempo
TWILIO
05 · RELIABILITY

Better observability for SLO tracking

Improved the observability landscape in my current role so service SLOs can be tracked properly and reliability conversations are driven by data.

SLOsDashboardsObservability
VIRTASANT

All projects →

03 — Career timeline

A 13-year journey

Most recent first. Open any role for the full detail, or expand everything.

Newest → oldest
  1. Client: confidential · planet-scale on-prem environments plus smaller ones on AWS.

    Featured projects

    • Fleet upgrade automation — automated upgrades for a fleet of 2000+ machines, with proper draining of hosts and the necessary guardrails built into the automation
    • AI incident response — automated incident root cause analysis and incident response
    • Just-in-time SSH — fleet-wide rollout of just-in-time SSH access to strengthen the security landscape
    • SLO observability — improved the observability landscape for better SLO tracking of services

    AI & automation

    • Build AI-powered RAG pipelines to automate documentation search
    • Create a Slack bot that automatically investigates incidents using document search, metric plugins and log APIs
    • Leverage AI-assisted coding to build interactive TUIs and automation tooling at a fast pace
    • Build automation to reduce SRE toil as and where possible

    Platform & infrastructure

    • Manage observability instrumentation for large-scale self-hosted GitHub and Artifactory
    • Automate infrastructure provisioning and upgrades using Pulumi and Terraform
    • Manage planet-scale environments running on-premise and other smaller ones on AWS
    • Manage infrastructure as code using Puppet, Ansible, Terraform and Terragrunt
    • Instrument dynamic GitHub Actions infrastructure on AWS for Mac-based instances
    • Build GitHub apps & pre-receive hooks to enforce checks on abusive activities for self-hosted GitHub

    Analytics & people

    • Build dashboards tracking growth and usage metrics for various tools
    • Automate analytics-based reporting using ClickHouse and GitHub Enterprise systems
    • Build an infrastructure usage-forecasting backend for analysing usage growth
    • Mentor juniors to get up to speed with the products and perform their best; interview candidates around the world for the SRE/DevOps team
    • Learn quickly and adapt to new projects — regardless of whether they involve coding or SRE work
    AI / RAGIncident automationJIT SSHFleet automationSLOsGitHub EnterpriseArtifactoryPulumiTerraformClickHouseClaude Code
  2. Product: Twilio Segment · systems handling billions of transactions.

    Featured: open-source observability

    • Designed, deployed and operated a high-volume (30M+ active series) observability stack built entirely on open source: Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry Collector, Grafana Loki and Tempo
    • Migrated the observability tech stack from Datadog to open-source tooling

    Scale & reliability

    • Built highly scalable and available systems (10M+ rps – 99.9% availability)
    • Handled the AWS ECS → AWS EKS migration while maintaining five 9's of availability
    • Re-architected systems handling billions of transactions from a cost-optimisation aspect
    • Architected HIPAA-compliant networking solutions for EKS clusters using Cilium Cluster Mesh

    Automation, IaC & people

    • Automated SRE processes such as upgrades, migrations and provisioning
    • Wrote Terraform IaC for the infrastructure solutions above
    • Built and customised open-source tools like K2, kubeapply and others
    • Mentored teams of software engineers through the SRE & DevOps journey to help them grow
    AWS EKSCiliumGrafanaPrometheusOpenTelemetry CollectorLokiTempoTerraformHIPAA
  3. Remote · product confidential.

    • Developed and maintained applications and utilities using Java Spring, Python, Docker, Kubernetes and Git
    • Architected easily scalable and cost-optimised solutions for cloud platforms
    • Led a team of consultants in development of assigned modules
    • Participated in and planned critical design decisions for scalable data-management platforms
    • Reviewed and improved architectures from security and cost aspects
    • Managed deployment servers for the assigned modules
    • Automated code deployment and installation of supporting tools for virtual machines
    • Managed and resolved issues related to AWS cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes infrastructure
    • Created Helm charts for automating bulk deployment of multiple projects using an automated code pipeline
    • Developed IaC using Pulumi & Terraform libraries
    Java SpringPythonDockerKubernetesHelmPulumiTerraformAWS
  4. Product: RocketML — Elastic Cloud Compute Platform.

    Backend & AWS

    • Developed Java Spring Boot APIs for the Angular 8 frontend
    • Leveraged Hibernate, Spring Security, Spring JPA, Spring Data, Lombok and other libraries for a faster, optimised solution
    • Led project execution and planning for feature releases
    • Set up AWS infrastructure for deployment; used the AWS SDK to programmatically manage elastic cloud compute resources
    • Used CloudWatch, Lambda, ECS and EC2 to optimise resource costs
    • Built dynamic AWS IAM role-assignment logic for secure execution of tasks
    • Integrated AWS Polly, Alexa, S3 and RDS with dynamic Linux-based instances
    • Built Docker images for a variety of machine-learning libraries and Amazon Machine Images using Packer
    • Worked with ML and parallel-computing tools such as AWS ParallelCluster, MLflow, Airflow, JupyterLab and RocketML
    • Built AWS CloudFormation templates for simplified deployment across environments

    Azure, GCP & DevOps

    • Enabled Azure customers to use the application — ARM templates, Azure VM, scale sets, DNS and more for dynamic infrastructure
    • Replicated the setup on Google Cloud Platform: Deployment Manager templates, code deployment pipelines, app services and programmatic infrastructure deployment
    • Diagnosed and fixed a variety of network configuration issues
    • Managed DevOps with AWS CodePipeline & GitHub, internally and for customers; created Postman test suites for automated CI/CD tests
    Spring BootAWSAzureGCPPackerCloudFormationDockerML tooling
  5. Products: DXA Chatbot Builder and Streebo Mobile Forms.

    DXA Chatbot Builder — smart transactional multi-channel chatbot

    • Led a team of developers managing the flagship product, Streebo Chatbot Builder
    • Proposed and laid down architecture for enhancements that reduce business effort
    • Developed NodeJS backend services (Joi, Sequelize for MySQL, Bluebird, ExpressJS, Handlebars) and Angular 7 widgets leveraging IBM tools
    • Studied NLP engines: Google Dialogflow, Microsoft Bot Framework, Wit.ai, IBM Watson and AWS Alexa
    • Built a smart multi-lingual chatbot on IBM Watson and Google Cloud services; enabled self-learning with IBM Watson Discovery to reduce training effort
    • Built bots for multiple channels with Dialogflow and Google Assistant; integrated the chatbot into Google Home and Amazon Dot
    • Took part in customer implementations and helped banking clients architect chat-support systems

    Mobile Forms — forms runtime

    • Led a team of interns and technical consultants
    • Developed REST web services (JAX-RS, Java) for form creation and data management; studied IBM Forms Experience Builder architecture
    • Developed an LDAP-based authentication and authorization system and OSGi service hooks, adapters and management code
    • Enhanced functionality for better performance; conducted technical interviews for technical and BA roles
    NodeJSAngular 7IBM WatsonDialogflowJava JAX-RSOSGiLDAPMySQL
  6. Oracle India · three product modules.

    US Payroll

    • Managed seed data and fast formulas used for payroll calculation
    • Maintained and enhanced payroll element creation
    • Developed Linux scripts to automate forward-porting of code

    UI/UX

    • Rectified issues in the existing UI
    • Made the UI mobile responsive using the Oracle JET framework

    Core HR

    • Resolved issues in existing Core HR functionality and enhanced it for better performance
    • Took client calls to understand issues and resolve them faster
    Oracle HCM FusionFast FormulasOracle JETLinux scripting
  7. Tata Consultancy Services.

    • Developed a multi-threaded Java application to manage sensor feedback in a vehicle
    • Created Linux scripts to manage threading and program execution
    • Developed NodeJS web services for analysing and monitoring vehicle positions
    • Developed client-side web application modules on a Spring MVC + Hibernate framework
    • Created backend file-processing modules for government offices using the ZK framework
    • Worked in a dynamic environment with tight deadlines; worked at the client side to monitor optimisation issues during project UAT and pilot
    JavaNodeJSSpring MVCHibernateZKLinux
  8. Edulark Services — where the career began.

    • Developed the Spring MVC based web application teacheron.com
    • Created Linux scripts to manage threading and program execution
    • Onboarded new employees onto development using the framework
    • Handled production issues with the website
    JavaSpring MVCLinux scripting

Full experience page →

04 — Skills

The stack, layer by layer

Hover or tap a layer to see what sits inside it.

AI & Automation

Where I spend most of my time now: agentic tooling, RAG and automation that removes toil and shortens incidents.

RAG pipelinesIncident-investigating Slack botAutomated RCA & responseAgentic workflowsSpec-driven developmentClaude CodeRoo CodeGeminiAI-built TUIs

Fleet Automation & Security

Safe automation at fleet scale — guardrails first.

2000+ machine fleet upgradesHost drainingGuardrailsJust-in-time SSHGitHub apps & pre-receive hooksHIPAA networkingToil reduction

Observability & SLOs

Open-source observability at 30M+ active series, plus the SLO tracking that makes it useful.

GrafanaPrometheusOpenTelemetry CollectorGrafana LokiGrafana TempoJaegerSLO trackingDatadogSplunkElasticsearchLogstash

Cloud & Containers

Planet-scale on-prem and public cloud — AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

AWSAzureGoogle CloudKubernetesEKS / ECSDockerCilium Cluster MeshHelmGitHub EnterpriseArtifactoryGitHub Actions

Infrastructure as Code

Everything defined in code, reviewed and repeatable.

PulumiTerraformTerragruntCloudFormationARM templatesGCP Deployment ManagerAnsiblePuppetPacker

Languages

Ready to code in whatever the problem needs.

PythonExpertNodeJSExpertJavaIntermediateGoIntermediate

Data Stores

Relational, document and key-value — and ClickHouse for analytics.

PostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBDynamoDBOracle 11g/12cClickHouse

Full skills index →

05 — Selected work

Freelance & consulting projects

Tap a card to flip it and see what I delivered.

Certifications & education
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 8 Programmer I

Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 8 Programmer I

Gujarat Technological University
B.E. Electronics & Communication
Gujarat Technological University · 2009–2013 · CPI 8.52

Certifications →

06 — Testimonials

Don't take my word for it

Genuine words from colleagues and clients.

“

I had the pleasure of working with Abhishek for a project at Mobiquity. His expertise in Node and AWS is commendable. He is responsible and always eager to work on challenging tasks. Abhishek would be an asset to any team and I highly recommend him.

SP
Shubhangi PandyaTechnical Lead
“

Abhishek was always a few seconds away to collaborate on the product we worked on for years together. We had many productive discussion on issues and features, he embraces state of the art cloud and backend technologies.

AC
Adnan ChowdhurySenior Frontend Developer
“

Abhishek is an impressive professional - innovative, focused, results-oriented, capable, a valued co-worker who inspires action. I am extremely impressed with his valued contributions in the product team towards the Chatbot Builder and Streebo DXA. He would be an asset to any organization that he is associated with. I am happy to give Abhishek my highest possible recommendation for his professionalism and quality of work.

MB
Moiz BarodawalaHR Manager
“

Abhishek is one of the most organized professionals that I have ever encountered in my career. He has been consistent for bringing out the most innovative methods to perform a task. On the other hand, he has always been an accomplished leader and a brilliant mentor that brings out best in an individual.

JS
Jinay ShahConsultant - Java/Oracle
“

Abhishek, is hardworking, focused and responsible; and ensures the seamless execution of whatever tasks are assigned to him. He's also a good leader and motivator with a “go-getter” attitude. I enjoyed working with him, his dedication and work ethics are impressive.

AM
Aman MunjalProduct Analyst
“

Abhishek has an excellent ability to deliver work with precision. He is always proactive, quick learner and self motivated. Even though, Abhishek comes from technical background, you will always find him giving best business outcome for any problem/situation. He is a fantastic person to deal with.

KV
Krishna VaidPre-Sales Consultant
“

Top service from start to finish, clearly knows his stuff and able to troubleshoot problems, work under pressure. Highly recommended for AWS consulting

PH
Paul HaymanE-commerce Business Owner
“

Abhishek was a huge help with our AWS infrastructure activities. Always available at regular timing, on time for meetings and ready to answer complex questions on the fly - Highly recommend his services for AWS infrastructure setup, optimisation and security.

CS
Cole SmithTechMe.IO Founder

Read all testimonials →

07 — Writing

Notes on cloud, SRE & observability

17 articles on OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, system design and reliability. Latest below.

Microservices vs Monoliths: Making the Right Choice
Dec 01, 202515 min readDistributed Systems

Microservices vs Monoliths: Making the Right Choice

The choice between a monolithic and a microservices architecture is one of the most critical decisions a software engineering team faces. It impacts everything from development velocity and team structure to operational

On-Call Best Practices: Preventing Burnout
Dec 01, 202513 min readDistributed Systems

On-Call Best Practices: Preventing Burnout

The relentless hum of production systems, the constant vigilance required to maintain their health, and the inevitable late-night pages are an inherent part of the modern software engineering landscape. For Site Reliabil

Capacity Planning in the Cloud Era
Oct 28, 202512 min readCost-Management

Capacity Planning in the Cloud Era

In the dynamic landscape of cloud computing, managing infrastructure effectively is less about static provisioning and more about intelligent, adaptive resource orchestration. Capacity planning, once a periodic, often te

Incident Management: Post-Mortem Culture That Works
Oct 27, 202514 min readSite Reliability Engineering

Incident Management: Post-Mortem Culture That Works

The world of complex distributed systems is inherently unpredictable. Despite our best efforts in design, testing, and deployment, incidents are not a question of “if,” but “when.” For Site Reliability Engineers, Softwar

Observability vs Monitoring: Understanding the Difference
Oct 27, 202514 min readSite Reliability Engineering

Observability vs Monitoring: Understanding the Difference

In the rapidly evolving landscape of distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native architectures, the terms “observability” and “monitoring” are often used interchangeably, leading to confusion and, more criticall

Chaos Engineering in Production: A Practical Guide
Oct 27, 202511 min readSite Reliability Engineering

Chaos Engineering in Production: A Practical Guide

We’ve all been there. It’s 3 AM, and the pagers are screaming. A critical service is down, customers are impacted, and the on-call team is scrambling through logs and dashboards, trying to piece together a puzzle in the

All 17 articles →

08 — Contact

Let's build something reliable.

Consulting, architecture reviews, SRE engagements or just a chat about distributed systems and AI-powered automation.