customer environments across production AI workloads
- Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer @ H2O.ai
- Production AI infrastructure
Esham Aaqib
Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer for production AI infrastructure.
Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer at H2O.ai with experience in Linux, cloud infrastructure, automation, CI/CD, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes. Currently pursuing an MSc in Cybersecurity and Forensics, with a focus on building secure, scalable systems.
cloud cost reduction while maintaining production SLAs
VPN-related IT ticket reduction after WireGuard and Tailscale migration
years across DevOps, Linux administration, and platform engineering
Platform systems
Infrastructure stack, mapped like a control plane.
Built around the work that matters most in production: scalable AI platforms, secure service-to-service traffic, repeatable infrastructure, GPU serving, and cost-aware operations.
Showing all 9 platform achievements.
Multi-tenant AWS Managed Cloud
Own and operate H2O.ai's production managed cloud serving Predictive, GenAI, and Agentic AI workloads across multiple EKS clusters and 100+ customer environments.
AWSEKS100+ environments
Istio Ambient migration
Led migration of all production clusters to Istio Ambient mode during beta, becoming one of the early enterprise adopters and improving mesh efficiency, security posture, and observability.
Istio AmbientEnvoyZero-trust mesh
Terraform control plane
Led migration of Control Tower, networking, SSO, and IAM Identity Center from CloudFormation to Terraform, improving infrastructure consistency, auditability, and governance.
TerraformControl TowerIAM Identity Center
GenAI stack on Kubernetes
Containerized and deployed H2O.ai's full GenAI stack on Kubernetes, authoring Helm charts for repeatable deployment and configuration management.
KubernetesHelmGenAI platform
vLLM inference endpoints
Configured and optimized vLLM inference endpoints on GPU instances for high-performance LLM serving in production.
vLLMGPU inferenceLLM serving
Bottlerocket GPU enablement
Built a custom Bottlerocket AMI with NVIDIA Fabrics Manager for AWS p4d instances before official support existed, then maintained the solution for over a year.
BottlerocketNVIDIAp4d
Auditable access
Designed and implemented time-bound, auditable production access for Support engineers across EKS clusters and AWS accounts, enabling secure customer-environment debugging.
IAMOktaAudit trail
Reliability pipelines
Developed and maintained CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application deployments using Terraform, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Bash, and YAML automation.
GitHub ActionsJenkinsBash
Cloud cost optimization
Monitored and optimized AWS resource utilization, achieving roughly 30% cloud cost reduction while maintaining production SLAs.
FinOpsAWS Cost ExplorerSLA-aware
Operator stack
Tools I reach for in production.
The full toolchain behind the platform work: clouds, orchestration, mesh, identity, observability, and AI/ML serving. Hover any pill for a quick read on where it shows up day to day.
Cloud
AWS
Azure
GCP
AWS Cost Explorer
FinOps
Containers & Mesh
Kubernetes
Docker
Helm
Istio
Envoy
IaC & CI/CD
Terraform
OpenTofu
CloudFormation
GitHub Actions
Jenkins
GitOps
AI / ML Infra
vLLM
HuggingFace TGI
NVIDIA GPU
Networking & VPN
Tailscale
WireGuard
Twingate
DNS & LB
Observability
Grafana
Coralogix
Prometheus
Identity & Security
Okta
Auth0
SOC 2
FedRAMP
Upwind
Languages & OS
Python
Bash
YAML
Linux
Bottlerocket OS
Experience log
From Linux systems to production AI platforms.
Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer / H2O.ai
Help manage and operate H2O.ai's multi-tenant AWS Managed Cloud, working across architecture, reliability, and cost for Predictive, GenAI, and Agentic AI workloads.
DevOps Engineer / H2O.ai
Owned and operated production AWS Managed Cloud platforms for Predictive, GenAI, and Agentic AI workloads.
- Ran multi-tenant AWS Managed Cloud across multiple EKS clusters and 100+ customer environments.
- Led Istio Ambient migration for all production clusters during beta.
- Migrated Control Tower, networking, SSO, and IAM Identity Center from CloudFormation to Terraform.
- Containerized the full GenAI stack on Kubernetes and authored Helm charts for repeatable deployments.
- Optimized vLLM GPU inference endpoints and custom Bottlerocket AMIs for p4d workloads.
- Built auditable, time-bound production access for Support engineers.
- Maintained CI/CD pipelines and reduced AWS spend by about 30% while preserving SLAs.
DevOps Engineer Intern / H2O.ai
Deployed regional WireGuard relays, led Tailscale migration, reduced VPN tickets, and supported SOC 2 readiness.
Linux Systems Administration & DevOps Training Program / WSO2
Completed intensive DevOps and Linux systems training, including geo-distributed GCP infrastructure with Terraform.
Academic track
Where the theory comes from.
Active MSc research feeds back into the day job: cloud-native security automation aligned with the Istio and Kubernetes work I run in production.
MSc, Cyber Security and Forensics
University of Westminster · United Kingdom (Remote)
Research on AI-driven Istio service mesh security automation — applying reinforcement and supervised learning to detect and mitigate threats in Kubernetes environments.
IstioKubernetesRL / SLCloud-native security
BSc in IT, Computer Systems and Network Engineering
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology · GPA 3.29
Foundations across systems, networking, and distributed infrastructure — including the LoraLeaf LoRaWAN smart-irrigation capstone.
NetworksSystemsIoTLoRaWAN
Project deck
Research, field systems, and DevOps products.
AI-Driven Istio Security Automation
Developing an AI-driven approach for Istio service mesh that uses reinforcement and supervised learning to detect and mitigate Kubernetes security threats.
LoraLeaf
Modular smart irrigation system using LoRaWAN and Arduino, collecting soil sensor data and predicting irrigation decisions for low-power agriculture deployments.
OpsVortex
All-in-one DevOps platform concept centered on operational workflows, infrastructure visibility, and deployment control surfaces.
Open channel
Got an EKS, Istio, or GenAI infra problem?
The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn — happy to trade notes on EKS, Istio Ambient, AI inference, and cloud-native infrastructure.