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Ali Merar

@alimerar

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Senior DevOps and Site Reliability Engineer specializing in cloud-native infrastructure and automation.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek roles where I can lead cloud-native reliability and automation efforts, reduce operational toil, and build secure, scalable platforms with strong observability.

I am a Senior DevOps and Site Reliability Engineer with 9+ years designing and scaling cloud-native infrastructures for global enterprises, specializing in AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD automation. I focus on reliability, observability, security, and reducing operational toil through automation to enable teams to deliver high-performing applications at scale.

My recent work includes leading cloud reliability modernization and self-healing architectures, achieving 99.99% uptime, 60% reduced MTTR, 3× deployment frequency, and substantial cost optimizations. I have a strong track record building reusable Terraform modules, automated CI/CD pipelines, centralized observability, and secure credential management to meet stringent compliance while improving deployment velocity and system resilience.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Site Reliability Engineer

Current

Apple

Jan 2024 - Present (1 year 9 months)

Led GiftSystems cloud reliability modernization on AWS with Terraform and CDK, achieving 99.99% uptime and reducing MTTR by 60% while tripling deployment frequency via GitHub Actions and Jenkins.

AWS Terraform CDK Kubernetes GitHub Actions Jenkins Datadog Python

Senior DevOps Engineer

Apple

Apr 2023 - Jan 2024 (9 months)

Built Data Lab AWS/Kubernetes platform for ML workloads, enabling 70% faster environment provisioning and reducing release cycle time by 50% through Terraform-driven automation and CI/CD.

AWS Kubernetes Terraform Jenkins Gitlab CI Prometheus ELK Datadog Docker

Senior DevOps Engineer

Motorola Solutions

Jan 2019 - Apr 2023 (4 years 3 months)

Migrated CommandCentral to AWS hybrid cloud increasing availability to 99.98% and implemented CI/CD with canary and blue-green deployments, cutting deployment failures by 90%.

AWS Terraform Ansible Jenkins Gitlab CI Kubernetes ELK Prometheus CI CD

DevOps Engineer

Bosch

Oct 2017 - Jan 2019 (1 year 3 months)

Deployed IoT cloud infrastructure with Terraform and CloudFormation, automating 80% of provisioning and improving uptime to 99.95% with Kubernetes self-healing patterns.

AWS Terraform CloudFormation Jenkins Docker Kubernetes Grafana Vault IoT

Cloud Engineer

Sears

Oct 2016 - Sep 2017 (11 months)

Migrated eCommerce systems to AWS with Terraform and Ansible, achieving 99.9% uptime during Black Friday and reducing provisioning time by 90%.

AWS Terraform Ansible EC2 RDS Jenkins Cloudwatch Splunk CI CD

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

University of Illinois Chicago

Bachelor of Science, Physics

2013 - 2016

Completed a Bachelor of Science in Physics with coursework supporting analytical problem solving and quantitative modeling applicable to engineering and systems reliability.