Available for freelance projects

Freelance DevOps & SRE for startups

Numan Iftikhar

DevOps & SRE for startups: ship faster, cut cloud costs, sleep through the night

I set up the pipelines, cloud, and monitoring your team needs so releases are push-button, your cloud bill makes sense, and outages get caught before customers notice. 5+ years on AWS, Azure, and GCP, including banking and healthcare systems.

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Lahore, Pakistan · working remotely worldwide · hello@numaniftikhar.com

5+Years shipping production infra
99.9%Uptime on production Kubernetes
7Cloud & Terraform certifications
PCI / HIPAARegulated environments

Core Technologies & Data Stack

AWS
Azure
GCP
Kubernetes
Docker
Terraform
Helm
Argo
GitHub Actions
GitLab
Jenkins
Ansible
Prometheus
Grafana
PostgreSQL
Python
Go
Linux
Nginx
Cloudflare
DigitalOcean
Apache Kafka
Airflow
Snowflake
dbt
KEDA
About

About Me

I Design, Automate & Scale Cloud Systems

I'm a freelance DevOps and SRE engineer working across Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. I design Kubernetes platforms, ship them with Terraform, and build the LLM systems on top — for teams that need production software to be reliable, secure, and defensible.

With 5+ years of experience across Azure (primary), AWS, and Google Cloud Platform, I am a Kubernetes Architect and IaC Expert with deep expertise in designing, deploying, and managing enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure across hybrid and multi-cloud environments — delivered in regulated environments spanning PCI-DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.

I've extended that same production discipline into AI systems — RAG pipelines, local and hosted LLM serving, and agentic workflows built to run in production, not just demo — and into the data engineering plumbing (ingestion, embedding, API services) that makes models and reporting actually usable. I run this practice through my consultancy, 108 Core Technologies, and I'm available for freelance and contract projects with startups and small businesses.

5+ Years Experience
7 Certifications
3 Cloud Platforms
99.9% Uptime Achieved
Name Numan Iftikhar
Email hello@numaniftikhar.com
Phone +92 301 000 7414
Location Lahore, Pakistan (working worldwide)
Consultancy 108 Core Technologies
Languages English, Urdu
Availability Open to freelance & contract work

AWS Solutions Architect

Associate

AWS Developer

Associate

Azure Administrator

AZ-104

Terraform Associate

HashiCorp 003
Expertise

Practice Areas

A multi-cloud infrastructure foundation, extended into real-time Data Engineering and production AI systems

Cloud & DevOps Engineering

Production Kubernetes on AKS/EKS/GKE, infrastructure as code with Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines through Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions. Observability with Prometheus and Grafana. Delivered in regulated environments (PCI-DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001).

AKS / EKS / GKETerraformAzure DevOps GitHub ActionsPrometheusGrafana

Data Engineering & Modern Lakehouse

High-throughput real-time streaming and batch ETL/ELT pipelines, modern Lakehouse architectures (Delta Lake, Snowflake), automated data transformation with dbt, Airflow workflow orchestration, and high-dimensional Vector ETL for LLMs.

Apache KafkaPySparkAirflow dbt CoreDelta LakeSnowflakepgvector

AI Engineering & LLMOps

Enterprise RAG pipelines, local (Ollama/vLLM) and hosted LLM serving, and agentic workflows. Eval-gated deployments, guardrails, and token cost tracking built to run in production, not just demo.

OllamaQdrantChromaDB FastAPILangGraphClaude API

Currently building depth in: vLLM & model serving, fine-tuning (LoRA/PEFT), GPU scheduling, distributed training, and LLM eval/observability tooling (Langfuse, RAGAS/DeepEval) — hands-on learning, not yet production experience.

Platforms

The Production Foundation Data & AI Need

I bridge the gap between infrastructure, high-throughput streaming data pipelines, and AI systems — combining Kafka/Spark Lakehouse plumbing with eval-gated LLMOps, Kubernetes scaling, and FinOps cost controls.

Capabilities

What I ship

Plain outcomes: faster releases, fewer outages, a smaller cloud bill, and infrastructure your team can understand.

Cloud Migration & Architecture

Move off a single server, Heroku, or a VPS onto AWS, Azure, or GCP with a planned cutover that keeps downtime to a minimum, set up so it stays affordable as you grow.

  • Cloud readiness assessment
  • Multi-cloud strategy & design
  • Planned, low-downtime cutover
  • Cost optimization (FinOps)

Kubernetes & Container Orchestration

Kubernetes on AKS, EKS, or GKE when you actually need it: apps that scale with traffic and restart themselves when something fails.

  • Cluster setup & hardening
  • Helm charts & Istio mesh
  • Auto-scaling & spot nodes
  • Built for 99.9% uptime

Data Engineering & Lakehouses

Resilient streaming data pipelines and modern lakehouses. Automated ETL/ELT workflows, real-time CDC, and vector database indexing.

  • Apache Kafka & Spark streaming
  • Delta Lake & Snowflake modeling
  • dbt transformations & Airflow DAGs
  • Vector DB ingestion (Qdrant/pgvector)

CI/CD Pipeline Engineering

Every merge tested, built, and deployed automatically, so shipping is a button press instead of a late-night manual job, with safe rollbacks.

  • GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Jenkins
  • ArgoCD GitOps workflows
  • Automated testing gates
  • Container image scanning

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Your servers and cloud setup written down as code (Terraform, Ansible), so environments can be rebuilt in minutes and nobody has to remember what was clicked.

  • Terraform modules & state mgmt
  • Ansible playbooks & roles
  • Multi-env provisioning
  • Drift detection & remediation

DevSecOps & Compliance

Security checks built into your pipeline: secrets out of code, images scanned, access locked down. Experience with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and banking-grade requirements.

  • Vulnerability scanning (Trivy/Prisma)
  • Secrets management (Vault/KV)
  • Policy-as-code (OPA)
  • Compliance audit automation

Monitoring & Observability

Dashboards and alerts (Prometheus, Grafana, cloud monitoring) so you hear about problems before your customers do.

  • Prometheus + Grafana dashboards
  • Log aggregation & alerting
  • SLO/SLI tracking
  • Incident response automation

How I Work

01

Discovery Call

Understand your infrastructure, pain points, and goals

02

Architecture Plan

Design a solution with diagrams, timelines, and milestones

03

Implementation

Build, test, and deploy with full transparency via Git

04

Handoff & Support

Documentation, knowledge transfer, and ongoing support

Packages

Fixed-scope packages

Clear scope, clear price. Final quote depends on your setup; we agree on it on a free call before any work starts.

DevOps Health Check & Cost Audit

from $300

A one-week review of your cloud, pipelines, and monitoring, so you know what is costing money and what is likely to break.

  • 1 week turnaround
  • Written report with prioritised fixes
  • Cloud cost savings opportunities
  • Quick wins applied where safe
Book a call

CI/CD Pipeline Setup

from $600

Push code and it gets tested, built, and deployed automatically, with no more manual releases.

  • GitHub Actions or GitLab CI
  • Automated tests on every change
  • Docker container builds
  • Automated deploys to staging & production
Book a call

Cloud Migration / Kubernetes Setup

from $1,500

Move from Heroku or a VPS to a setup that scales, documented as code so it can be rebuilt any time.

  • Heroku/VPS to AWS, GCP, or Azure
  • Or EKS / GKE / AKS Kubernetes setup
  • Infrastructure as code with Terraform
  • Monitoring & alerting included
Book a call

Monthly DevOps retainer — ongoing support, upgrades, and on-call help for your infrastructure. Contact for pricing.

Book a call
Experience

Professional Experience

March 2023 – Present

Senior DevOps Engineer

TrueMedIT Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Remote)
  • Multi-Cloud Architecture & Governance: Architected and managed enterprise infrastructure across Azure and GCP, implementing governance policies and cost-management strategies for high availability and cost-efficiency.
  • Advanced CI/CD Automation: Engineered end-to-end CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Google Cloud Build, significantly reducing lead time for changes across multi-cloud environments.
  • Kubernetes Orchestration (AKS, GKE & Hybrid): Deployed and managed production-grade Kubernetes clusters ensuring 99.9% uptime through advanced scaling and self-healing configurations.
  • Enterprise IaC: Standardized multi-cloud provisioning using Terraform and Ansible, ensuring 100% consistency across Dev, QA, and Production stages.
  • DevSecOps & Compliance: Pioneered security integration with SSL/TLS, automated vulnerability scanning (Prisma/Trivy), and secrets management ensuring banking-level compliance.
  • Cloud Monitoring & Observability: Implemented centralized monitoring using Prometheus, Grafana, and Google Cloud Monitoring with integrated alerting for proactive incident detection.
  • Data Engineering & Streaming Pipelines: Engineered real-time event streaming and batch ETL pipelines using Apache Kafka, PySpark, and dbt Core across Snowflake and PostgreSQL, ensuring automated schema evolution and data quality enforcement.
  • Disaster Recovery: Designed automated backup and recovery solutions using Azure Backup, Velero, and GCP Cloud Storage with cross-region replication.
AzureGCPKubernetes KafkaPySparkTerraformJenkins
July 2021 – March 2023

DevOps & Cloud Engineer

403 IT Solutions Texas, United States (Remote)
  • Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: Architected and optimized Azure and GCP cloud environments, implementing governance and cost-management strategies that scaled infrastructure across multi-cloud deployments.
  • Enterprise Kubernetes & Virtualization: Designed high-availability Proxmox clusters on baremetal and orchestrated production Kubernetes workloads on AKS and GKE, ensuring 99.9% uptime.
  • Data Ingestion & Automation: Automated database migrations, telemetry stream collectors, and multi-stage ETL scripts in Python for analytical dashboards.
  • Advanced CI/CD Orchestration: Engineered multi-platform automation pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Google Cloud Build, reducing deployment lead times.
  • Strategic IaC: Automated end-to-end lifecycle of global environments across Azure and GCP using Terraform and Ansible, eliminating configuration drift.
  • Tier 3 Technical Leadership: Served as the final escalation point for complex networking and system architecture bottlenecks, resolving high-priority incidents.
  • Cross-functional Mentorship: Championed DevOps best practices, mentoring junior engineers and leading knowledge-sharing sessions.
AzureGCPKubernetesPython AnsibleGitHub ActionsGitLab CI
Credentials

Certifications

Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer

Google Cloud

Associate Cloud Engineer

Google Cloud

Professional Cloud Architect

Google Cloud

Solutions Architect – Associate

Amazon Web Services

Developer – Associate

Amazon Web Services

Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)

Microsoft

Terraform Associate (003)

HashiCorp
Selected work

Case Studies & Projects

TrueMedIT Case study

Healthcare software · Multi-cloud on Azure & GCP

Problem Workloads spread across Azure, GCP, and on-premises needed reliable Kubernetes hosting, bank-level security for integrations, and a real disaster-recovery plan.
What I did Ran production Kubernetes on AKS and GKE; built CI/CD with Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Cloud Build; standardised infrastructure with Terraform and Ansible; added vulnerability scanning (Prisma/Trivy) and managed secrets; set up automated backups and recovery with Velero, Azure Backup, and cross-region storage.
Result 99.9% uptime on production clusters, consistent Dev/QA/Prod environments, banking-level DevSecOps compliance, and tested disaster-recovery readiness.

403 IT Solutions Case study

IT services · Hybrid cloud & on-premises

Problem Each team released differently, environments drifted out of sync, and on-premises workloads needed high availability.
What I did Designed high-availability Proxmox clusters on bare metal; standardised CI/CD across teams with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Cloud Build; automated Azure and GCP environments end to end with Terraform and Ansible.
Result Shorter deployment lead times through standardised releases, configuration drift eliminated, faster environment provisioning, and 99.9% uptime on AKS/GKE workloads.

Private RAG Pipeline Flagship

AI / LLMOps — Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Data That Can't Leave the Perimeter

OllamaQdrantFastAPIClaude API
  • Built a retrieval-augmented generation stack for teams whose data can't leave their perimeter, with local Ollama inference and a Qdrant vector store.
  • Served through a FastAPI service layer with clear ingestion, retrieval, and generation boundaries, and the Claude API wired in as an optional escalation path.
  • Dockerized for Kubernetes, applying the same production discipline as my infra work — containerized services, not a notebook prototype.
RAG LLM Dockerized

Real-Time Streaming & Lakehouse Platform Data Eng

Data Engineering — High-Throughput Kafka + Spark Stream Processing & Delta Lake Medallion Architecture

Apache KafkaPySparkDelta Lakedbt CoreAirflowpgvector
  • Designed an event-driven data streaming engine built on Apache Kafka clusters and distributed PySpark Streaming jobs on Kubernetes.
  • Built a Medallion Lakehouse (Bronze → Silver → Gold) on Delta Lake with automated dbt Core SQL transformations, schema enforcement, and Great Expectations quality assertions.
  • Integrated automated Vector & Metadata ETL pipelines that continuously stream clean text chunks into Qdrant and pgvector for sub-second semantic retrieval across enterprise data stores.
  • Implemented end-to-end Airflow DAG orchestration with SLA monitoring, automated backfills, and Prometheus lag metrics.
Delta Lake Kafka Streaming dbt & Airflow Vector ETL

Cloud Cost Estimator

FinOps — LLM-Assisted Architecture Pricing

PythonAzure Pricing APILLM Tooling
  • An LLM interprets an architecture description and identifies the resources it implies, then Python prices them against the live Azure Retail Prices API.
  • Language models for reasoning, code for accuracy — the LLM never touches the arithmetic.
LLM FinOps

FinGuard Reference Architecture

Multi-Cloud Banking Platform

Problem Multi-cloud banking DR with tenant isolation
Solution GitOps, Istio mTLS, Vault, and OPA gates
Design targets RPO < 5 min · RTO < 15 min · zero manual prod deploys
FinGuard multi-cloud architecture diagram showing AWS primary and GCP disaster recovery Architecture Diagram
AWS EKSGCP GKETerraform ArgoCDIstioGitHub Actions VaultPrometheusOPA Gatekeeper
  • Architected production-grade multi-tenant banking infrastructure across AWS (primary) and GCP (DR), with automated cross-cloud failover designed for RPO < 5 min and RTO < 15 min.
  • Built full GitOps pipeline (GitHub Actions → ArgoCD) with canary deployments (10% → 50% → 100%), automated Trivy/Semgrep security scanning, and Cosign image signing — zero manual deployments to production.
  • Implemented zero-trust networking via Istio service mesh (mTLS), OPA Gatekeeper policy-as-code, and HashiCorp Vault for dynamic DB credential rotation every 24 hours.
  • Enforced PCI-DSS and SOC 2 compliance through automated policy gates, immutable audit trails, and per-tenant PostgreSQL database isolation via Terraform.
PCI-DSS SOC 2 Multi-Cloud GitOps

Lab Management System Reference Architecture

Multi-Tenant Healthcare SaaS on AKS

Problem HIPAA isolation for hospital and lab tenants
Solution AKS + KEDA + Spot nodes and GitOps
Design targets scale-to-zero on Spot nodes · p99 < 100ms · 99.97% uptime
Lab Management System architecture diagram for a multi-tenant healthcare SaaS on Azure AKS Architecture Diagram
Azure AKS.NET Core 8Helm IstioKEDAAzure DevOps Azure Key VaultTerraform
  • Designed HIPAA & ISO 27001-compliant multi-tenant SaaS platform for hospitals and research labs, with full isolation at compute, data, and identity layers.
  • Implemented KEDA-driven autoscaling (0 → 20 pods) triggered by Azure Service Bus queue depth, running on Spot nodes to cut idle compute cost.
  • Designed for p99 API response time < 100ms and 99.97% uptime SLA via AKS with HPA, PodDisruptionBudgets, and Azure Front Door.
  • Provisioned full infrastructure with Terraform (AKS, Azure SQL, Redis, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage) and deployed via Helm + ArgoCD GitOps pipeline with blue/green canary strategy.
  • The same event-driven, scale-to-zero pattern (KEDA + Spot nodes) that inference workloads need — elastic capacity that follows real demand instead of idling on fixed nodes.
HIPAA ISO 27001 <100ms p99 99.97%

Secure Hybrid VoIP Platform

Telecom — Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure & VoIP (Dubai)

Azure AKSTerraformAzure DevOps Site-to-Site IPSec VPNFreeSwitch VoIP NSGsK8s NetworkPolicies
  • Architected production AKS infrastructure connected to on-premises systems in Dubai via an Azure Site-to-Site IPSec VPN, provisioned entirely with Terraform and Azure DevOps.
  • Deployed and operated a FreeSwitch VoIP stack alongside the Kubernetes workloads over the hybrid link.
  • Enforced defense-in-depth network segmentation with NSGs at the Azure network layer and Kubernetes NetworkPolicies at the pod layer.
Hybrid Cloud Network Isolation IaC

108 Core Technologies

Consultancy

  • My consultancy — cloud and AI engineering for SMEs, with direct client ownership and no handoffs.
Cloud AI Engineering
Approach

In Progress / Roadmap

What I'm actively building depth in next — not yet shipped to production

Learning

LLM Serving & Fine-Tuning Lab

Hands-on lab exploring vLLM for model serving and fine-tuning with LoRA/PEFT.

Learning

GPU Scheduling & Distributed Training

Deepening my Kubernetes background into GPU-aware scheduling and distributed training workloads.

Why work with me

Why Work With Me

100% Remote-Ready

5+ years working remotely with teams in Canada, USA, and worldwide. Async-first, timezone-flexible, and self-managed.

7 Cloud Certifications

Certified across all 3 major clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) plus Terraform. I don't just talk the talk.

Proven Results

99.9% uptime on production Kubernetes, standardised CI/CD, and eliminated configuration drift. My work is measured in business outcomes.

Security-First Mindset

PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001 — I build compliance into the infrastructure from day one.

Clear Communication

Regular updates, documented decisions, and no jargon. You'll always know exactly where your project stands.

Long-Term Partner

I don't just deploy and disappear. I provide knowledge transfer, documentation, and ongoing support.

Let's build reliable infrastructure together

Whether you need a one-off fix, a fixed-scope package, or a monthly DevOps retainer — let's build something great together.

Book a call Connect on LinkedIn
Education

Education

Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

Virtual University of Pakistan May 2018 – September 2022 CGPA: 3.2 / 4.0
Consulting

Book a Free Consultation

Need help with cloud architecture, DevOps strategy, or infrastructure optimization? Let's talk!

30 Minutes

Free one-on-one consultation call

Google Meet / Zoom

Virtual meeting at your convenience

100% Free

No obligations, no hidden charges

What We Can Discuss

  • Cloud Migration Strategy (AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Kubernetes Architecture & Deployment
  • Real-Time Data Streaming (Kafka & Spark)
  • Lakehouse Architecture & dbt Modeling
  • Vector DB & Metadata ETL for Enterprise RAG
  • CI/CD Pipeline Design & Optimization
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Ansible)
  • DevSecOps & Security Compliance (PCI, SOC 2, HIPAA)
  • Cloud Cost Optimization (FinOps)

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Contact

Get In Touch

Have a project in mind or want to discuss cloud infrastructure? Let's connect!

Email

hello@numaniftikhar.com

Phone

+92 301 000 7414

Location

Lahore, Pakistan (working worldwide)