Infrastructure Leader & Platform Architect • Fintech & Blockchain

Balakrishna Pydi

14+ years across Fintech, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Networking and Banking — designing, building and operating Kubernetes, cloud and DevOps platforms at production scale.

01 About

Senior infrastructure leader and platform architect with 14+ years shaping the systems that run critical financial, blockchain and enterprise platforms. I set the technical direction on production infrastructure — cloud strategy, Kubernetes platforms, observability, security posture and reliability targets — and stay hands-on with the architecture so the plan actually matches what ships.

I've led cross-functional engineering initiatives across fintech, blockchain, cybersecurity, telecom and banking — partnering with product, protocol and backend teams on architecture reviews, network upgrades, capacity planning, disaster-recovery strategy and incident post-mortems. My job is often the bridge between what the business needs and what the infrastructure can reliably deliver.

My default is to codify everything: Terraform for infrastructure, Ansible for hosts, Helm/GitOps for workloads, Prometheus + Grafana for what's actually happening. I build small senior teams around clear runbooks, tight feedback loops, and production systems that fail quietly and heal themselves — because on-call quality is the truest measure of an infrastructure organisation.

02 Skills

Kubernetes & Platform

  • Kubernetes
  • Talos
  • Matchbox
  • Rancher / TKGI / kubeadm
  • Cilium
  • Istio
  • Helm
  • ArgoCD
  • Crossplane
  • Nomad

Cloud & Virtualisation

  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Azure
  • VMware
  • OpenStack
  • Packer
  • vCenter / ESXi / iDRAC

IaC & Automation

  • Terraform
  • Atlantis
  • Ansible
  • AWX
  • Puppet
  • Chef
  • Vault
  • Docker

CI/CD

  • GitLab CI
  • GitHub Actions
  • Jenkins
  • Maven
  • Harbor
  • Codacy
  • Velero

Observability

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Loki
  • Promtail
  • ELK / Kibana
  • Nagios
  • Monit
  • Zabbix

Storage & Networking

  • Ceph / RADOS / RBD / CephFS
  • rook-ceph
  • Longhorn
  • GlusterFS
  • NFS
  • HAProxy
  • Nginx
  • Squid

Languages

  • Python
  • Go
  • Bash / Shell
  • Core Java
  • Windows Batch

Backend & Data

  • Flask
  • Django
  • Kafka
  • RabbitMQ
  • Celery
  • Oracle / MS SQL / SQLite
  • MongoDB
  • Cassandra

Blockchain

  • Ethereum (execution & archive)
  • Arbitrum
  • Fraxtal
  • Reth / Consensus clients
  • Public RPC infra

03 Experience

  1. Senior Infrastructure Engineer — Frax

    Remote • Fintech / Blockchain • Nov 2024 — Present
    • Designed and operated high-availability blockchain RPC infrastructure with built-in redundancy and automated failover.
    • Performed rolling upgrades and zero-downtime maintenance for RPC nodes across multiple networks.
    • Deployed public RPC endpoints for Ethereum (archive), Arbitrum and Fraxtal on Kubernetes.
    • Managed Fraxtal testnet and mainnet — stability, security and performance under production load.
    • Built Kubernetes-based blockchain node platforms — execution, consensus and archive nodes.
    • Custom alerting for chain-health signals: block lag, block-processing failures, stalled chains.
    • Ran the observability stack (Prometheus / Grafana) for infrastructure and chain metrics.
    • Managed and optimised AWS RDS backends for Grafana.
    • Defined strict Kubernetes network policies for secure public RPC exposure.
    • Automated deployment via GitOps and Kubernetes-native tooling.
    • Led incident response and root-cause analysis for RPC outages and chain degradations.
    • Authored runbooks and operational documentation for blockchain + Kubernetes infra.
  2. Core Infrastructure Engineer — Kraken

    Remote • Fintech / Blockchain • Jul 2022 — Nov 2024
    • Led exchange DR setup and data-centre migration projects.
    • Kafka cluster setup — ACLs and public ingress enablement.
    • Ceph cluster management: deploys, configuration, monitoring, performance tuning. Integrated Ceph with Nomad and Kubernetes.
    • Federated Nomad clusters across data centres and AWS regions. Built an in-house Golang tool for Nomad spec rendering; Jinja2 templator for specs.
    • Built and maintained HashiStack (Consul, Vault, Nomad) on AWS and DC infrastructure.
    • Automated Vault rekey — PGP-encrypted unseal-key distribution to large groups.
    • Enabled Atlantis on GitLab projects with AWS dynamic credentials; Okta-group SSO for AWS account access.
    • Automated AMI builds using Packer for MariaDB clusters; weekly MariaDB restore tests via Python + AWS Lambda, Slack notifications.
    • Ran company-wide audits for backup/restore evidence for Vault, Consul, GlusterFS KYC volumes.
    • Designed and executed DR failover strategy for critical services.
  3. Team Lead — DevOps — Fortinet

    Hybrid • Cybersecurity • Dec 2020 — Jul 2022
    • Led a DevOps team driving executive-priority infrastructure projects.
    • End-to-end server setup in the data centre — ESXi, iDRAC, vCenter provisioning.
    • Terraform-driven VM spin-ups + bootstrap scripts.
    • Built self-hosted Kubernetes clusters via Rancher, TKGI and kubeadm; storage via GlusterFS, NFS, rook-ceph and Longhorn.
    • Deployed Harbor, AWX Tower, Loki, Codacy, Velero, Dex on Kubernetes via Helm.
    • Python tool for building kubeadm clusters via Terraform; migrated services from Rancher to kubeadm.
    • Blue-green clusters and HA enablement across all services; Windows worker-node integration.
    • Python tool for deploying GitLab runners on Kubernetes with customised configs.
    • Enabled full daily backup of Kubernetes clusters. Bitbucket → GitLab repo + pipeline migration.
  4. DevOps Specialist — Amdocs (client: Bell Canada)

    On-site • Networking • Sep 2019 — Dec 2020
    • Deployed ONAP micro-services across multiple Kubernetes clusters (INT, QA, PROD).
    • Developed key SDWAN and BID solution features; CDS implementation for BID service.
    • DevOps prime across Bell teams; built pre-prod environment mirroring prod (IPAM, TACACS).
    • Gerrit → GitLab migration and CI/CD implementation.
  5. Technical Leader — Altran (client: Cisco)

    On-site • Networking • Nov 2017 — Aug 2019
    • Built CI/CD pipelines on AWS and GCP; automated Ops manual tasks via CLI + API frameworks.
    • Common CLI frameworks for Cisco network servers; Flask-RESTful APIs backing them.
    • Python scripts for log traversal and failure reporting; bots for restful ops.
    • Docker POCs for service hosting.
    • Led a team of four in strict Agile — user stories, DOD, sprint planning, standups, code reviews.
  6. Senior Software Engineer — Société Générale

    On-site • Banking • Jan 2016 — Oct 2017
    • Jenkins build automation — new jobs, plugin management, master/slave setup across apps.
    • Build lifecycle from GitHub check-in to package delivery via Jenkins pipelines + Maven.
    • Puppet-based configuration across many hosts; environment provisioning + DB refresh via Jenkins.
    • L2 application support for Dev/UAT pre-prod, RCA + problem management, transversal ops (VM setup, upgrades, migrations).
    • POC for Docker on test environments.
  7. Specialist — HCL Technologies (client: Deutsche Bank)

    On-site • Banking • Jun 2012 — Dec 2015
    • Led the CG → HCL project transition; BAU guidance, deployments, config changes, environment refreshes and releases.
    • L2+ senior support for 10+ major applications; escalation point for user-reported incidents.
    • Automated health checks and standard tasks via shell scripting; monitoring alerts configuration.
    • Ran Informatica workflows; SME across multiple applications; wrote KB articles for critical resolutions.

04 Education & Certifications

B.Tech, Computer Science & Engineering

J.N.T.U Kakinada, India

EXIN ITIL® Foundation

IT Service Management • 2015

Oracle Certified Professional

Java SE 6 Programmer • 2014

05 Contact

Happy to talk about infrastructure, blockchain platforms, or a specific problem you're trying to solve.