Chris Mazanec
Technical Consultant
- botvo3@x.chrismazanec.com
- chrismazanec.com
- Bratislava (SK)
A highly skilled and solutions-driven DevOps Engineer with extensive experience in cloud architecture, automation, networking, and security. Adept at solving complex technical challenges by leveraging cross-disciplinary expertise across DevOps, Linux, cloud computing, and infrastructure as code. Experienced in designing and implementing modern monitoring stacks, optimizing AWS cloud infrastructure, and improving scalability and automation. Proven ability to deliver high-impact solutions in fast-paced environments while maintaining operational excellence and ensuring best practices in DevOps and cloud engineering.
Work Experience
DevOPS Engineer
- Introduced Terraform to streamline infrastructure as code (IaC), enhancing automation, scalability, and operational efficiency
- Designed, built, and configured a highly available and modern monitoring stack using Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki, improving system observability and reliability
- Solving complex challenges by leveraging cross-disciplinary expertise in networking, Linux, DevOps, cloud, and security
- Serving as an AWS Cloud Architect, optimizing cloud infrastructure for cost efficiency, security, and high performance
- Daily tasks include: leading and working on projects, DevOps scripts maintenance/development, supporting team and customers, working on tasks/incidents, infrastructure planning, creating and updating documentation, communication with partners, security audits and others
DevOPS Lead
- Ansible to Terraform migration for AWS infrastructure automation, making IaC code more stable, cleaner, and faster while also expanding the use of Amazon’s cloud tech, such as EC2, ELB, Route53, RDS, Lambda, CloudFront, EFS, EBS, IAM, ECR, ECS, S3, DynamoDB, and ElastiCache
- Led a successful migration from EC2 to ECS Fargate across different architectures and spot instances, optimizing for cost efficiency and performance. Implemented auto-scaling strategies and Grafana-based monitoring solutions while ensuring smooth containerization of applications using Docker
- Migrated a multi-source mesh MySQL server to MariaDB, running on EC2-backed ECS with GTID replication, automated Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, backup automation, and integrated AWS Secrets Manager for secure credential management
- Upgraded the company’s VPN infrastructure by migrating from OpenVPN to WireGuard, significantly improving speed and security while utilizing AWS Lambda for dynamic route management
- Simplified and redefined Jira workflows and processes, set up automatic ticket transitions for the team to minimize administration overhead and boost productivity
DevOPS Engineer
- Maintained and improved Thomson Reuters World-Check infrastructure used by banks around the world, took part in a successful migration to RedHat 7, global DNS migration to Akamai and many others
- Lead Bratislava and Vienna data-centre migration and consolidation project, consisting of initial analysis, design planning, hardware purchasing, physical servers relocation, VMs/containers consolidation, complete network infrastructure makeover, public IP range migration, servers/storages/applications settings consolidation, regions VPN cross-connect, and many others. Utilizing both opensource and proprietary technologies/vendors such as HP, Dell, VMware, Proxmox, Cisco, Freenas, RedHat, Docker, and many others mitigated many single points of failure - leading to robust, transparent, secure and redundant infrastructure
- Rewritten Ansible automation codebase implementing automation best practices, utilizing AWS and Proxmox dynamic inventories, rendering code more readable, reusable and efficient
- Utilizing automation enhanced Nagios monitoring, covering blind spots which provided better overall infrastructure overview and more accurate and timely alerting. Migrated to Sensu/Uchiwa/Grafana providing more modern and flexible monitoring stack
DevOPS Engineer
- Responsible for administration and failure-free status of high-load/traffic websites/systems, with traffic as high as 15Gbit/sec, 60.000 concurrent connections and ~1mio visitors/day
- Took part in successful video servers to CDN offload project, leading to better customer experience all around the world
- Proactively improved and simplified overall eco-system by fixing and making redundant DNS, transition to .in domains, expanding monitoring and many others
- Mitigated copycat sites lowering our traffic by several Gbit/sec saving uplink costs
Senior IT Operations Engineer
- Supported Linux, Windows and network infrastructure, many parts virtualized
- Designed and performance-tuned internal HA banking infrastructure utilizing dedicated cloud technologies with network storages, various web/application servers and replicated database clusters
- Deployed monitoring systems from the ground up, developed custom plugins, leading to fast reaction times and decreased downtimes
- Demonstrated problem-solving skills and strong analytical thinking, contributing to very fast handling of problem situations whether individually, or within the team
Linux/Unix Systems Administrator
- Held responsibility for availability and status of First Data banking sector infrastructure
- Installed and supported Linux and Solaris servers, working on incidents, provided on-call support for production servers, prepared systems for PCI audit
- Remotely and many times personally participated in various international projects in the UK and Germany, contributing to resolving complex issues and finishing projects on time
- Maintained old and deployed new components into data-center infrastructure (both local and remote)
Senior Infrastructure Engineer
- Acted as a System Architect / Administrator managing company’s whole infrastructure consisting of more than 150 Linux/Windows servers and Cisco-based network infrastructure (PIX, ASA, 29xx switches)
- Introduced VMware virtualization, designed and built ESXi infrastructure with multipath iSCSI storages
- Delivered fully redundant Shoutcast solution used by BBC radio UK bringing zero downtime, which contributed to gaining a contract for all UK BBC radio stations, customer and listeners satisfaction
- Projected and deployed various web and streaming servers HA projects using Linux clustered load balancers and virtualization used for worldwide 24/7 content delivery
- Enhanced Nagios/Cacti system monitoring company’s devices/services which decreased SLA times
Systems/network administrator
- Responsible for Linux infrastructure and overall setup of Datalock WAN and LAN
- Designed and deployed business continuity project for hundreds of users of Slovak MOT test centers utilizing Linux LVS and Oracle DBs/Application Servers
- Improved security implementing central jabber server, applying extensive spam filtering/antivirus system
- Introduced Kickstart deployment system which reduced installation times
Systems administrator
- Managed company’s and partners’ servers, AD domain, and services
- Introduced Linux infrastructure/services leading to increased reliability and stability
1st line support specialist
- Supported and monitored HP customer’s 24x7 infrastructure for the EMEA region
- Held responsibility for applications/servers status, running HP-UX, Linux and Tru64