# 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 in cloud computing platforms, having worked with AWS since 2011. Today I channel that experience into Eskahlay, a software consultancy I founded to build open-source, decentralised technology for communities whose safety depends on owning the tools they use — LGBTQ+ people and other marginalised groups in particular.

## Career

- **Director at Northsky Social Cooperative** (Mar 2025 - Present)
- **Founder at Eskahlay.com** (Jul 2026 - Present)
  Full-time · Remote
  Eskahlay is a software consultancy building open-source software with a focus on digital safety for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities. We build on the AT Protocol, in the open, so the tools we make can be maintained and operated by the people they serve without dependence on an organization.
  
  
  Providing consultations/workshops on topics around LGBTQIA+ and marginalized identities, developing community focused technology, digital safety, and data protection.
  
  Consulting for organizations around architecture, security posture, and team guidance is also available
- **Head of Platform at Enmacc** (Sep 2024 - Present)
  Munich, Bavaria, DE
- **Platform Engineering Manager at AutoScout24** (Jan 2024 - Sep 2024)
  Munich, Bavaria, DE
  • 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
- **Principal Platform Engineer at AutoScout24** (Sep 2021 - Jan 2024)
  Munich, Bavaria, DE
  • 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
- **Senior Principal Technical Cloud Architect at TIBCO Software Inc.** (Dec 2016 - Sep 2021)
  Munich Area, DE
  • 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
- **Improvisational Actor at Bake This - English Improv Theatre** (Jan 2016 - Feb 2018)
  Munich Area, DE
  Performer with Munich's first English speaking theatre improvisation group.
- **Cloud Architect at Nordcloud** (Jul 2015 - Dec 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** (Dec 2011 - Jun 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)
- **Lead Desktop Support Analyst at Tibco Spotfire** (Aug 2010 - Dec 2011)
  Mix of Desktop Support, Server Administration, and the usual duties of being the IT department for an office.
- **Operations Engineer at Microsoft Xbox at Siemens Information Systems Ltd** (Jun 2010 - Aug 2010)
  Monitored Xbox Live infrastructure
- **Software Tester at Swype Inc.** (Jun 2010 - Aug 2010)
  Provided software and language testing for Swype software across a variety of devices. Wrote test plans and provided usability feedback.
- **Help Desk Coordinator at Alaska Airlines** (Feb 2009 - Apr 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
- **Help Desk Coordinator at Pemco Corporate Computer Services** (Sep 2008 - Jan 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
- **Help Desk Technician at Insightful Corporation** (Sep 2006 - Nov 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

## Projects

- **TIBCO Spotfire Cloud 2.0.0** — http://spotfire.tibco.com/products/spotfire-cloud (Dec 2013 - Aug 2014)

## Talks & sessions

### [Convergence on Platforms ](https://sifa.id/p/kandake.africa/talk/convergence-on-platforms-3mxesa345pr2s)
As organisations grow, they need to be more nimble which leads to a desire to simplify, whether for developers or business. We typically see organisations stumble through accelerating development, implementing DevOps before pivoting to SRE. 
They copy what other organisations have done by implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence or adopting other models for merging development and operating functions. Eventually as the challenges around "You build it, you run it" become clearer a platform emerges. 
But how do these chaotic transformations lead to this convergence? Whether your platform serves developers or customers the foundational concepts heavily align. In this talk we'll look at the ways platforms emerge and the key considerations necessary for one to succeed. As we go through time to understand how convergence happens we will examine carcinisation and what elements of it can help us understand how organisations converge on a similar approach.

## Publications

- Atmosphere in a Box - All your sandbox needs — 50-shades.pckt.blog (Sep 2026) https://50-shades.pckt.blog/atmosphere-in-a-box-all-your-sandbox-needs-dwkr23r
- Retrofitting a Gameboy Color — local-low-tech.pckt.blog (Sep 2026) https://local-low-tech.pckt.blog/retrofitting-a-gameboy-color-wvea64p
- Building the Social Graph with Hubble and Jetstream — 50-shades.pckt.blog (Aug 2026) https://50-shades.pckt.blog/building-the-social-graph-with-hubble-and-jetstream-z8afdj6
- Stratos: Lets get Technical — chipnick.com (Mar 2026) https://chipnick.com/stratos-lets-get-technical
- A Model for addressing privacy on ATproto — chipnick.com (Jan 2026) https://chipnick.com/stratos-community-privacy

## Skills

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

## Credentials

- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional — Amazon Web Services (Aug 2018) https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-professional/
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate — Amazon Web Services (Jul 2016) http://aws.amazon.com/certification/

## Education

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

## Languages

- English (native)
- German (professional working)
- Arabic

## Links

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