# Nathan Zelalem Kebede

Nathan Zelalem Kebede is a remote worker on Himalayas, Software Development Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS), based in Ethiopia.

Source: https://himalayas.app/@nathanzelalemkebede

```text
Software engineer building scalable APIs, cloud systems, and LLM-powered features.
```

| Detail | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Availability | Looking for a job |
| Location | Ethiopia |
| Authorized to work in | Ethiopia |
| Job categories | Back End Developer, Software Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, DevOps Engineer |
| Skills | Java, Kotlin, Python, SQL, fastAPI, REST, Amazon Athena, Amazon EMR, Amazon EventBridge, AWS Lambda, AWS CDK, GCP, Terraform, GitHub Actions, CI CD, Docker, Git, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Micrometers, Pytest, Unit Testing, PostgreSQL, Microservices, Distributed Systems, Message Queues, API Design, Datadog, GitHub, Spring Boot, Cloudwatch, DynamoDB, RAG |
| Website | https://nathanzk.github.io |

## What I'm looking for

```text
I'm looking for a remote backend or platform engineering role focused on distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or API services. My background is in Java/Kotlin, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, and GCP, with production experience from AWS S3 at Amazon.

Based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (UTC+3), open to worldwide remote roles. Available as contractor or employee.
```

## About

```text
I’m a Software Engineer who enjoys building production-ready systems that reduce operational risk while improving performance and user impact. Most recently, I worked on the S3 team at Amazon WebServices (AWS), focusing on safer deployments and faster incident response.

At AWS S3, I helped build a pre-production stage for the S3 Express One zonemetering workflow to validate changes before rollout. I reduced operational overhead by designing and implementing an Object Cleanup Lambda, and I built a debug mode with structured logging and an operational runbook to reduce RCA time during incidents.

Earlier, at Africa to Silicon Valley (A2SV), I collaborated with frontend and mobile teams to develop APIs using Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and REST—growing the user base from 110 to 1,100 and messages from 3,000 to 30,000 in seven months. I also integrated LLMs and image generation models into AfroChat, and implemented RAG with LangChain and Unstructured, improving retrieval efficiency from 25% to 80%.

On my current focus, I’m building an RDBMS-backed message queue with Kotlin, Spring Boot 3, PostgreSQL, Docker, and Terraform on GCP. I’ve designed for high throughput (296% gain, 57% P95 reduction), handled real reliability issues like a Linux OOM kill and connection problems, and instrumented the service with Micrometer/OpenTelemetry for measurable performance and alerting.
```

## Experience

### Software Development Engineer

[Amazon Web Services (AWS)](https://himalayas.app/companies/amazon-web-services-aws). Dec 2024 - May 2025

```text
Built a pre-production validation workflow for the S3 Express One Zone metering process, enabling safer production rollouts. Reduced operational overhead with an Object Cleanup Lambda, created a debug mode with structured logging and runbooks to reduce RCA time, and supported reliability through 24/7 on-call for S3 metering and Intelligent-Tiering.
```

Skills: AWS-Lambda, Canary-Validation, Operational-Runbooks, Incident-Response, S3

### Software Engineer

Africa to Silicon Valley (A2SV). Oct 2023 - Sep 2024

```text
Developed Python/FastAPI REST APIs with the frontend and mobile teams, growing the user base from 110 to 1,100 and messages from 3,000 to 30,000 in seven months. Integrated LLM and image generation into AfroChat and implemented LangChain-based RAG, increasing new messages by 17% and improving tabular data retrieval efficiency from 25% to 80%.
```

Skills: Python, fastAPI, PostgreSQL, REST-APIs, Image-Generation, LLM

## Education

### Addis Ababa University

Bachelor of Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering. 2018 - 2023. Grade: CGPA: 3.67; Great Distinction

```text
Earned a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Addis Ababa University from 2018 to 2023, graduating with Great Distinction (CGPA: 3.67).
```

## Tech stack

- Apache Spark
- AWS IAM
- Amazon CloudWatch
- Amazon S3
- GitHub
- GitHub Actions
- PostgreSQL
- Gmail
- Spring Boot
- Terraform
- Python
- Java
- Kotlin
- FastAPI
- Grafana
- OpenTelemetry
- Amazon DynamoDB
- SQLAlchemy
- Datadog
- AWS Lambda
- pytest
- Docker
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- SQL
- k6

To contact Nathan Zelalem, message them from this profile with a Himalayas employer account: [Hire on Himalayas](https://himalayas.app/hire).

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