Aaron Gorka

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Leading in the uplift of observability in an agentic (AI, LLM) application.

Tech: AWS ECS, OpenTelemetry, GitHub Actions, Python, Langfuse, HoneyHive, Semantic Kernel

Nearmap

Tech: AWS (EKS, VPC, IAM), Terraform, Helm, GitHub Actions, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, OpenTelemetry

EKS Platform Scaling & Optimisation

Led large-scale optimisation of Kubernetes platform supporting GPU workloads:

• Scaled machine learning workloads from 3,000 to 9,000+ GPU nodes
• Implemented drastic observability, networking and control plane optimisations
• Reduced deployment lead time from multiple days → 1 hour (Terraform restructure, unified CI/CD pipeline, testing uplift)

Observability & Logging

• Designed and deployed Grafana Loki to replace legacy logging (Graylog)
• Built 20+ production dashboards and alerting standards across platform components
• Implemented scalable, multi-tenant observability architecture
• Centralised alerting via Opsgenie with integrations across AWS and monitoring stack

Platform Engineering & Architecture

• Re-architected IAM/RBAC into scalable, team-based access model
• Led migration from GitLab CI to GitHub Actions (self-hosted runners)
• Contributed to network modernisation strategy (AWS Transit Gateway)

Leadership & Mentorship

• Acted as team lead: ran standup/backlog grooming/retros, guided technical direction, and mentored engineers
• Improved engineering standards (decision logs, commit conventions, linting)

CMD Solutions (Mantel Group)

Lead Consultant on client engagements.

Kasada – Platform Transformation & Scale

Tech: AWS (EKS, EC2, ALB), Pulumi, Buildkite, Elasticsearch, Prometheus/Grafana, Node.js (TypeScript)

Developer Productivity & CI/CD Transformation

Led end-to-end redesign of the SDLC to enable high-velocity, low-risk deployments:

• Reduced release cycle from months → <1 day (commit to production)
• Designed and implemented trunk-based development with progressive delivery across environments and customers
• Built fully automated, zero-touch deployment pipelines using Buildkite
• Migrated legacy customers to continuous delivery model without disrupting active development
• Enabled rapid iteration, contributing to acquisition of largest customer to date

Distributed Systems Scaling

Solved critical scaling challenges across high-growth infrastructure:

• Designed solutions for ALB target group scaling limits (2,000+)
• Mitigated single-threaded application constraints on multi-core systems
• Optimised platform to handle highly spiky, burst-heavy traffic patterns
• Scaled Prometheus observability to thousands of nodes using recording rules and federated architecture

Observability & Logging Platform

Designed and implemented centralised, production-grade logging and monitoring:

• Implemented Elastic Cloud–backed logging platform to improve developer experience
• Built ingestion pipelines using Fluentd/Fluent Bit for structured, searchable logs
• Enabled real-time debugging and cross-team visibility at scale (20+ TiB indexed logs)
• Established observability patterns adopted across engineering teams

Kubernetes Platform Engineering

Architected and delivered a production-grade EKS platform:

• Designed microservices platform with fully automated deployments (no manual intervention)
• Implemented post-deployment validation via automated system-level tests
• Integrated observability and reliability checks directly into deployment workflows
• Delivered platform enabling independent team scaling and faster feature delivery

Security & Compliance Enablement

• Delivered platform changes required for SOC 2 and PCI DSS compliance
• Ensured infrastructure and deployment practices aligned with security standards

Technical Leadership

• Acted as senior technical authority across engagements, influencing architecture and delivery strategy
• Partnered with product and engineering leadership to align platform capabilities with business outcomes
• Drove adoption of modern engineering practices across teams

Vodafone Hutchison Australia (TPG)

AWS Architect responsible for the infrastructure design of the www.vodafone.com.au website refresh.

Tech: AWS (EC2, ASG, Serverless, CloudFront, Lambda@Edge)

• Advising/coordinating teams on all aspects of cloud infrastructure
• Upskilling the infrastructure team in cloud-native and Python best practices
• Writing out foundational code examples/templates
• Doing whatever needed to be done to get the project across the line

Zip Money

Tech: AWS (EKS), Elasticsearch, Terraform, Buildkite

• EKS platform design & build for the new Amazon Australia partnership
• CI/CD processes, implementation and culture
• Developer skill uplift
• Go-live Kubernetes support
• Terraform IaC, GitLab CI/CD

Finder

Supporting a team deliver a greenfields service on to EKS.

• Helm charts, Terraform and CI/CD for new microservices
• Advising on all things DevOps-related

Equifax

Lead consultant delivering a Kubernetes platform on AWS and facilitiating migration of apps.

• Creating AWS infrastructure for Kubernetes cluster using KOPS
• Working with security and compliance teams to introduce Kubernetes to the organisation
• Creating Docker images for applications and working with engineering teams to migrate applications

Other notable clients include BPay, Fox Sports, Bravura and ANZ.

amaysim

• Championed DevOps culture in development teams
• Migrated applications from Rancher to AWS ECS
• Modernised legacy development practices: pipeline-based CI/CD workflows, trunk-based development, immutable artifacts

Domain Group

• Building AWS infrastructure (EC2, ECS) and CI/CD pipelines
• Maintenance and reliability engineering for high-traffic websites including https://domain.com.au
• Designed and built monitoring platform, highly useful for development teams
• Delivered solution architecture for rewrite of https://www.mydesktop.com.au

TAL

• Administrated Linux servers and applications
• Collaborated with developers, DBAs, application support and infrastructure support to deliver accurate metrics to management

KU Children's Services