# Evelyn (@kandake.africa)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/kandake.africa
Headline: Platform Techie, Director of Northsky Social Cooperative

## About

I am a technical leader specialised on cloud computing platforms having worked with AWS since 2011. I wear a variety of hats but my primary focuses are promoting a product mindset with people managers and engineers by pivoting from focusing on daily technical work towards having a product vision to guide our planning and strategies.

Enabling teams with a vision provides guiding principals to drive their work towards meaningful customer focused results and enables the organisation to react more quickly to changes in the industry.

## Experience

- **Help Desk Coordinator at Pemco Corporate Computer Services** (2008 – 2009)
  •	Provided tier-1 support to corporate customers
  • Supported internal customer applications
  • Restructured Hummingbird Document Management Repository
  • Worked with Telecom group to support phone system switch-over for call centers
- **Operations Engineer at Microsoft Xbox at Siemens Information Systems Ltd** (2010 – 2010)
  Monitored Xbox Live infrastructure
- **Help Desk Technician at Insightful Corporation** (2006 – 2007)
  •	Provided desktop support to Seattle office and remote staff
  • Performed administrative functions such as active directory management
  • Built-out secondary active directory domain for testing including SQL 2005 database servers, Exchange 2003 servers, application servers
  • Inventoried IT storage room then worked with Directory of IT to identify assets for donation
  • Worked with local charity group to donate retired hardware
  • Setup inventory system for tracking company assets
  • Worked with network and system administrators to create and configure Windows Server 2003 VMs inside VMware ESX for deployment
- **Lead Desktop Support Analyst at Tibco Spotfire** (2010 – 2011)
  Mix of Desktop Support, Server Administration, and the usual duties of being the IT department for an office.
- **Software Tester at Swype Inc.** (2010 – 2010)
  Provided software and language testing for Swype software across a variety of devices. Wrote test plans and provided usability feedback.
- **Improvisational Actor at Bake This - English Improv Theatre** (2016 – 2018)
  Performer with Munich's first English speaking theatre improvisation group.
- **Head of Platform at enmacc** (2024 – present)
- **Help Desk Coordinator at Alaska Airlines** (2009 – 2010)
  •	Provided second-tier support to all company divisions
  • Overhauled IT Help Desk website by reworking ASP.NET pages to reduce load times and simplify cosmetic changes
  • Reworked IT Request forms workflow by surveying managers and directors
  • Wrote batch and VB scripts to provide tools for optimizing workstation performance to field support technicians
  • Performed remote in-depth malware removals
  • Worked with held desk staff on team projects
  • Maintained Outages notification web application and worked with multiple IT departments to update outage response policy
  • Awarded Extra Mile award for exceptional customer service by Director of IT Customer Service
- **Cloud Architect at Nordcloud** (2015 – 2016)
  Cloud Migrations / Systems Integration / Cloud Infrastructure Design / DevOps
  • Design and architect solutions such as Service Discovery for customers on AWS
  • Assist customers in migrating docker based architectures to the cloud
  • Educate customers on AWS best practices and Infrastructure as Code
  • Design and implement PCI compliant environments in AWS
  • Work with customers to redesign their on-premise architecture for the cloud and create hybrid solutions
  • Plan and execute lift and shift migrations to the cloud
  • Implementing Build/Deployment pipelines for the cloud
  • Promoting DevOps culture within companies to reduce time to market of new features
  • Design and implement resilient self-healing environments on AWS
  • Develop python deployment tools and write puppet modules to enforce configuration state
  • Extensively working with Linux based systems
- **Sr. Cloud Operations Engineer at Tibco Spotfire** (2011 – 2015)
  Operations Support / Systems Integration / DevOps
  • Build out infrastructure on AWS
  • Work with product management to develop cloud strategies
  • Create and maintained development pipelines for Spotfire Engineering and developed escalation processes with Spotfire Support
  • Work closely with Engineering Directors and Architects to develop cloud architecture to enhance product offering
  • Leverage Jenkins/Salt to automate deployment of environments within AWS
  • Lead a global cloud ops team of 6 engineers across USA, Europe, and India to plan and execute projects
  • Identify critical bugs and work with engineering to develop and deploy hotfixes
  • Migrate critical production environment from Rackspace to Amazon AWS
  • Train groups within TIBCO on cloud architecture (covering support, engineering, and professional services)
- **Principal Platform Engineer at AutoScout24** (2021 – 2024)
  • Coordinated M&A Platform tech integration processes with 2 CTOs of +80 organizations
  • Worked with acquisition to bring "platform as product" and establish platform processes for 45+ engineers org
  • Established process to measure developer satisfaction with platform products and utilised feedback to establish data driven quarterly product improvements
  • Performed architecture reviews of data engineering products and systems
  • Re-architected EMR cluster to provide 50% reduction in presto query times while reducing costs +$20k/year
  • Acted as product owner for internal cost tracking product to map out improvements to stabilize AWS and product cost analytics pipelines
  • Manage relationship between Autoscout24 and AWS •Planned and led organization wide AWS cost reduction effort across 30+ teams, reaching EOY 15% spend reduction target
- **Director at Northsky Social Cooperative** (2025 – present)
- **Platform Engineering Manager at AutoScout24** (2024 – 2024)
  • Manage team responsible for critical core infrastructure platform products such as Kubernetes cluster, Shared Networking, and Frontend Composition
  • Plan goals and initiatives with engineering/product management within platform engineering leadership team
  • Develop long term vision for infrastructure domain of platform engineering
  • Collaborate with Tech leadership and engineering teams to identify opportunities for improvement in platform products
- **Senior Principal Technical Cloud Architect at TIBCO Software Inc.** (2016 – 2021)
  • Design and architect solutions for TIBCO products and solutions
  • Work with product management to develop cloud strategies
  • Develop tooling and frameworks with Terraform, Troposphere and Jenkins to enable Engineering and Operation teams
  • Led several tech organizations on developing cloud native features and distributed applications
  • Perform security audits of product infrastructure
  • Architect and deploy Multi-Cloud solutions across AWS/Azure
  • Streamline compliance audits by developing security framework for assessing production readiness by unifying audit framework and reducing audit frequency necessity.
  • Manage DevOps incubator virtual teams
  • Develop/maintain Slack bot integrations and serverless CI/CD solutions

## Education

- **Bellevue College** (2006 – 2008)
- **High School Graduate Pullman High School** (2001 – 2005)

## Skills

- Security
- Data Analysis
- ITIL
- Java
- Quality Assurance
- Linux
- Software Development
- Operating Systems
- Test Planning
- Technical Support
- Testing
- Strategic Thinking
- Team Management
- Improvisational Comedy
- Project Management
- Vendor Management
- MySQL
- Unix
- XML
- Computer Hardware
- HTML
- Requirements Analysis
- SQL
- Windows
- Troubleshooting
- Product Management
- Strategic Planning
- Management
- AT Protocol

## Certifications

- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate — Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com/certification/)
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional — Amazon Web Services (https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-professional/)

## Projects

- **TIBCO Spotfire Cloud 2.0.0** — http://spotfire.tibco.com/products/spotfire-cloud

## Publications

- Eh — kandake.africa (https://kandake.africa/hello-world)
- Stratos: Lets get Technical — chipnick.com (https://chipnick.com//stratos-lets-get-technical)
- A Model for addressing privacy on ATproto — chipnick.com (https://chipnick.com//stratos-community-privacy)

## Languages

- Arabic
- English (native)
- German (professional_working)

## Other profiles

- github: https://github.com/ashex
- dns: https://chipnick.com
- dns: https://atverkackt.de
- bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/evelyn.northsky.team