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Khawar Abbasi

@khawarabbasi

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Senior cloud network engineer specializing in OpenStack, OpenShift, and cloud-native networking solutions.

Ireland

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What I'm looking for

I seek senior engineering roles in cloud/platform teams where I can drive OpenStack/OpenShift reliability, automation, and scalable networking while mentoring teams and improving SLAs.

I am a Senior Cloud Network Engineer with deep expertise in OpenStack and OpenShift, delivering large-scale, highly available cloud infrastructures and automation for enterprise customers.

I have led design and operations for multi-datacenter OpenStack deployments, built Kubernetes SR-IOV and SR-IOV device plugins, and contributed open-source work for Intel RDT and container networking projects while driving NFV/SDN PoCs and production rollouts.

I hold multiple Red Hat and Cisco certifications and bring a hands-on approach to incident RCA, upgrades, orchestration (Ansible), and enterprise networking to improve stability, performance, and SLA compliance.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Cloud Network Engineer

Current

Computacenter

Jul 2021 - Present (4 years 2 months)

Served as SME for Red Hat technologies, managing OpenStack/OpenShift operations and L2/L3 support for Moderna; led OpenStack operations across 10 US datacenters and managed Ceph clusters to ensure HA and SLA compliance.

OpenStack OpenShift Ceph Ansible Monitoring (PRTG Sensu)

Technical Lead / SW Architect

Intel Corporation

May 2017 - Jun 2021 (4 years 1 month)

Led design and development of Intel RDT for cloud and SDN/NFV, authored open-source Intel-CMT-CAT contributions, and developed SR-IOV Kubernetes plugins to improve container networking performance.

Resource Director Technology SR IOV Kubernetes Golang Ansible Collectd SDN NFV OpenStack

Technical Lead / Senior SW Developer

Intel Corporation

Nov 2015 - Sep 2018 (2 years 10 months)

Architected SDN/NFV solutions for the VirtuWind 5G project, implemented Service Function Chaining and OpenStack/ODL integrations, and deployed OpenStack Kolla for industrial virtualisation.

NFV OpenStack OpenDaylight Heat Service Function Chaining Docker Ansible

PhD Researcher

GWDG

Feb 2015 - Nov 2015 (9 months)

Contributed to the NEPHELE EU research project developing scalable optical SDN architectures, integrated SDN controllers with OpenStack, and implemented northbound/southbound controller extensions.

OpenStack ONOS OpenDaylight Ryu Controller Research

Software Developer

Ericsson

Dec 2011 - Jan 2015 (3 years 1 month)

Developed SDN-enabled VNF orchestration for Deutsche Telekom, evaluated cloud orchestration frameworks, and built Linux-based prototypes with DPDK and Open vSwitch for service chaining.

Open vSwitch DPDK Java Orchestration Automation)

Network Support Engineer

Nayatel

Oct 2009 - Aug 2011 (1 year 10 months)

Provided L1/L2 support for DSL and FTTH services, managed BRAS/BNG and DSLAM configurations, and troubleshooted routing protocols and MPLS VPNs to maintain broadband service delivery.