Open to opportunities

Saul de Ponte

@sauldeponte

Senior DevOps and Platform Engineer building production Kubernetes platforms, GitOps pipelines, and AI inference infrastructure.

Spain

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a senior DevOps/Platform role where I can stay hands-on with Kubernetes, IaC, and GitOps, lead teams, and build secure production pipelines—ideally including AI/LLM infrastructure and measurable platform reliability.

I’m a Senior DevOps and Platform Engineer with 10+ years across AWS, GCP, and Azure, specializing in Kubernetes, IaC, GitOps, and production AI/LLM platforms. I’ve stayed deeply hands-on while leading delivery across complex, security-sensitive environments.

As a Chapter Lead, I manage an 8-engineer DevOps team and keep the technical bar high for CI/CD, cloud security, and IaC. I also run performance reviews, onboarding, and the DevOps interview process while coordinating delivery across a shifting portfolio.

In parallel, I’ve run DevOps across up to 5 concurrent blockchain and fintech client projects—taking systems from proof of concept to hardened production. I architected and deployed an AI platform on AWS EKS with GPU node groups and vLLM inference, integrated LiteLLM as a single API entry point, automated workflows with n8n, and built a pipeline pulling models from HuggingFace into S3 with zero manual steps.

I pushed GitOps across the engineering org with ArgoCD and GitFlow, then hardened pipelines across all projects using Trivy and Snyk for PR-time CVE detection, cert-manager for TLS rotation, and External Secrets Operator to remove plaintext credentials—delivering zero production security incidents since rollout. I also keep cloud costs lean with dynamic scaling and automation that spins environments up for hackathons and back down automatically.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

DevOps Chapter Lead

Current

IntellectEU

Jun 2022 - Present (4 years)

Led an 8-engineer DevOps chapter (interviews, onboarding, performance reviews) and ran DevOps across up to 5 concurrent blockchain/fintech client projects from PoC to hardened production. Architected an AWS EKS AI inference platform with zero manual steps, and pushed org-wide GitOps using ArgoCD—achieving zero production security incidents since rollout.

Kubernetes GitOps Terraform CI CD Helm Security Scanning (Trivy Snyk)

DevOps Engineer

Barrabes

Jan 2022 - Jun 2022 (5 months)

Built Terraform IaC foundations on AWS from scratch for multiple clients, replacing manual console-driven setups with version-controlled, repeatable deployments. Reduced risk from configuration drift that previously drove incidents.

Terraform AWS Infrastructure as Code Configuration Drift Version Control Cloud Migration AWS Provisioning

Senior DevOps Engineer

Kairos DS

Jan 2020 - Jan 2022 (2 years)

Embedded as a DevOps consultant for Banco Santander’s ATM technology division, owning CI/CD pipelines and production deployments for ATM-domain microservices on Jenkins and OpenShift. Delivered 100% compliance with mandated maintenance windows over two years and automated pod cleanups during garbage-collector alerts with a Telegram bot.

Jenkins OpenShift CI CD Microservices Release Management Regulated Environments Maintenance Window Compliance

DevOps Engineer (Consultant)

Altran

Dec 2018 - Nov 2019 (11 months)

Supported Ericsson’s 5G rollout across Spain by keeping Jenkins CI/CD pipelines running and managing Gerrit access to ensure correct branching and safe merges during critical national rollout periods. Owned multi-environment deployments for Securitas Direct using XLDeploy and custom scripts to keep release cycles consistent across dev, test, and pre-prod.

Jenkins Gerrit CI CD Branch Control XL Deploy Environment Management

IT Analyst (Professional Services)

Jun 2018 - Dec 2018 (6 months)

Acted as go-to escalation point for WiZink Bank and Grupo Prisa, handling AVAYA VoIP platform incidents and managing ITSM workflows. Helped prevent service issues from becoming SLA breaches for two high-profile enterprise accounts.

Avaya Incident Management SLA Management Escalation Handling Enterprise Support

NSOC / DevOps Engineer

Fon Technology

Aug 2014 - Jun 2018 (3 years 10 months)

Automated manual testing of 30 captive WiFi portals using a Python + Selenium tool, reducing the job from 9 hours/day to under 1 hour and saving ~8 hours of repetitive work daily. Kept large-scale AWS WiFi infrastructure running 24/7 with Zabbix, Cacti, and Grafana, responding to incidents before ISP partners noticed them.