SUNIL NERELLA
Senior DevOps & Platform Engineer
Senior DevOps and Platform Engineer with 11+ years of experience designing production cloud platforms across AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, DevSecOps, and reliability engineering. I build automation-first infrastructure that improves release speed, governance, observability, and operational confidence.
About Me
Platform engineering for systems that have to stay up.
I specialize in building the infrastructure, automation, and delivery systems that let application teams ship faster without losing operational control. My work spans EKS migrations, Terraform automation, GitOps, CI/CD modernization, observability, DevSecOps, FedRAMP ATO support, and cloud cost optimization.
The common thread is production discipline: repeatable infrastructure, clear release paths, measurable reliability, strong audit posture, and self-service workflows that reduce toil.
Years Experience
Deployments
Platform Reliability
Cloud Cost Savings
Experience Timeline
Enterprise cloud and platform leadership
Cisco
Senior Cloud Ops Lead Engineer
- Built production EKS platforms for enterprise workloads.
- Led ECS to EKS migration programs with standardized release patterns.
- Created Terraform automation for cloud infrastructure provisioning.
- Modernized CI/CD workflows across multiple application teams.
- Advanced platform engineering, AWS cost optimization, and FedRAMP ATO readiness.
Featured Projects
Production problems, platform-grade solutions
Selected work has been anonymized where needed, while keeping the architecture, operational impact, and results concrete.
Enterprise Kubernetes Platform Migration
Legacy VM-based deployment infrastructure caused inconsistent releases, manual scaling, slow recovery, and high operational overhead.
Solution
- Designed and migrated production workloads to AWS EKS.
- Built Terraform modules for VPC, IAM, EKS, networking, and environment baselines.
- Implemented Helm and ArgoCD GitOps delivery with Jenkins automation.
- Added Prometheus, Grafana, and CloudWatch monitoring.
Result
- Reduced deployment time by 70%.
- Improved scalability and high availability.
- Standardized deployments across environments.
- Reduced manual operational effort.
AI-Powered DevOps Operations Assistant
Engineers spent significant time searching documentation, troubleshooting recurring issues, and answering repetitive operational questions.
Solution
- Developed an AI operations assistant using Amazon Q.
- Integrated platform documentation, runbooks, and infrastructure knowledge.
- Enabled natural-language access to Kubernetes, deployment, and troubleshooting guidance.
- Automated common operational tasks.
Result
- Reduced troubleshooting time by 50%.
- Improved developer productivity.
- Accelerated onboarding for new engineers.
- Reduced dependency on senior platform engineers.
GitOps Multi-Environment Deployment Platform
Dev, QA, stage, and production deployments required manual approvals and inconsistent release procedures.
Solution
- Implemented GitOps architecture using ArgoCD and Helm.
- Created reusable Helm charts and promotion workflows.
- Added rollback mechanisms and deployment validations.
Result
- Enabled single-click deployments.
- Reduced release failures.
- Improved deployment consistency.
- Enabled self-service releases for development teams.
Cloud Infrastructure Automation Framework
Cloud provisioning was manual, error-prone, and inconsistent across teams and regions.
Solution
- Designed reusable Terraform modules.
- Automated VPC, EKS, IAM, load balancer, security group, and storage provisioning.
- Integrated Terraform execution into Jenkins pipelines.
- Implemented remote state management and repeatable environments.
Result
- Reduced provisioning from hours to minutes.
- Improved auditability and compliance.
- Eliminated manual configuration drift.
- Enabled repeatable multi-region deployments.
Kubernetes Observability & Reliability Platform
Production incidents required manual correlation of logs, metrics, traces, and alerts, increasing MTTR.
Solution
- Built centralized observability with Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, Fluent Bit, Promtail, and OpenTelemetry.
- Created standard dashboards, alert rules, and operational runbooks.
- Implemented SRE monitoring practices.
Result
- Improved incident detection.
- Reduced MTTR by 40%.
- Increased production visibility.
- Shifted teams toward proactive monitoring.
Automated Multi-Region Cloud Deployment Framework
Multi-region deployments involved repetitive manual steps and inconsistent validation.
Solution
- Developed deployment automation using Terraform, Shell, Perl, and Jenkins.
- Automated provisioning, instance creation, deployment, health validation, accessibility checks, and rollback.
- Supported parallel deployments across cloud regions.
Result
- Reduced deployment effort by more than 60%.
- Improved deployment reliability.
- Accelerated release cycles.
- Standardized cloud deployment procedures.
3D Kubernetes
Animated cluster topology
Control plane, worker nodes, pods, and service mesh links rendered as a live Three.js scene.
Control plane coordinates workload state and policy.
Worker nodes host resilient application pods.
Network links show service discovery and ingress flow.
Motion hints at autoscaling, scheduling, and continuous operations.
Architecture Gallery
Reference architectures for real platform work
Interactive cards expand into deployment, GitOps, and infrastructure automation flows.
Production EKS Platform
Internet-facing workload path with ingress, microservices, data services, and observability.
Production EKS Platform
Internet-facing workload path with ingress, microservices, data services, and observability.
GitOps Release Flow
Git-driven promotion from commit to production with validation and rollback controls.
GitOps Release Flow
Git-driven promotion from commit to production with validation and rollback controls.
Terraform Landing Zone
Repeatable account and environment provisioning with remote state and policy-aware modules.
Terraform Landing Zone
Repeatable account and environment provisioning with remote state and policy-aware modules.
Tech Stack
Hands-on across the platform surface
AWS
5/5 proficiency
Terraform
5/5 proficiency
Kubernetes
5/5 proficiency
Docker
5/5 proficiency
DevSecOps
5/5 proficiency
Jenkins
5/5 proficiency
Linux
5/5 proficiency
Bash
5/5 proficiency
GitHub Actions
4/5 proficiency
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
4/5 proficiency
MLOps
3/5 proficiency
Python
3/5 proficiency
Go
2/5 proficiency
Services
Focused help for teams running cloud platforms
AWS Infrastructure Audit
Terraform Development
Production Kubernetes
EKS Migrations & Upgrades
CI/CD Pipelines
Cloud Cost Optimization
Interview Mentoring
Blog
Writing for platform teams
Production EKS Best Practices
The controls that separate a demo cluster from an operable production Kubernetes platform.
Terraform Patterns For Platform Teams
Module boundaries, remote state, promotion workflows, and review controls that scale.
Cloud Cost Optimization Without Breaking Reliability
A practical operating model for right-sizing, autoscaling, commitment coverage, and accountability.
AI Assistant
Ask the portfolio
A local assistant answers from Sunil's blogs, services, projects, and platform background.
Platform AI Assistant
Local knowledge base from blogs, projects, and services
Ask me about Sunil's EKS work, Terraform patterns, CI/CD, cloud cost optimization, services, or blog topics.
Testimonials
What colleagues say
Sunil's guidance and support in implementing AWS infrastructure provisioning were truly admirable. His patience, calm approach, and dedication helped the team meet deadlines.
Praveen Bhavikatti
Colleague
Sunil is a great collaborator, methodical and logical in his approach. His holistic view of the ecosystem helps him take effective decisions.
Ayush Jain
AI First Strategy | Impactful Leadership | Continuous Learning
Sunil is proactive, result oriented, responsible, and technically strong. He has exceptional troubleshooting and analytical skills.
Lakshmikumar Koppaka
Senior Technical Specialist at Nokia
Sunil contributed early to end-to-end CI automation and became a key DevOps team member. His problem-solving approach is comprehensive and commendable.
Somasundaram Muthukrishnan
Program Manager at Nokia
GitHub Activity
Open work and infrastructure examples
The site links to GitHub directly and is ready for a live GitHub API contribution graph when a token is added.
github.com/sunilnerella23
Terraform, Kubernetes, cloud automation, app experiments, and deployment tooling live here.
View GitHubCertifications
Cloud, Kubernetes, and infrastructure credentials
AWS Solutions Architect
Certified Kubernetes Administrator
HashiCorp Terraform Associate
Contact
Let's build something amazing.
Available for platform engineering consulting, AWS infrastructure reviews, EKS migrations, Terraform development, CI/CD modernization, and interview mentoring.
Book a Consultation
Use the booking page for Calendly scheduling, or send a direct email if you prefer.