About Leslie
I’m a Senior DevOps & Platform Engineer with over 14 years of experience helping organisations build secure, scalable cloud platforms and modern delivery pipelines.
My expertise is centred around Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform and GitOps. I design and implement production-ready platforms that enable engineering teams to deploy faster, operate more reliably and reduce infrastructure costs without compromising security or performance.
Recently I architected and delivered a complete Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) platform for a global enterprise, reducing annual infrastructure costs by 68% while improving deployment speed, resilience and operational visibility through Azure DevOps, Argo CD, Terraform and modern observability tooling.
My background as a software engineer allows me to bridge the gap between development and operations. I work comfortably across application architecture, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, container platforms, security, networking and cloud architecture, helping teams solve complex technical challenges from design through to production.
Core expertise
- Azure & Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Kubernetes & Container Platforms
- Terraform & Infrastructure as Code
- Azure DevOps & GitHub Actions
- GitOps with Argo CD
- Platform Engineering
- Cloud Architecture
- DevSecOps & Kubernetes Security
- Performance Optimisation & Cost Reduction
- Observability with Prometheus, Grafana & Istio
I’m available for remote engagements, with on-site availability in Southern Norway.
English
Native or bilingual
Norwegian
Conversational
Can work on-site
Kristiansand (up to 50km)
Experience
- Cordell Consulting ENKPlatform Engineering ConsultantDIGITAL AND ITJanuary 2022 - Today (4 years and 6 months)Kristiansand, Norway‣ Designed and delivered a production Azure Kubernetes Service platform end to end, owning infrastructure, networking, service mesh, and the application layer for a $250M+ revenue enterprise and delivering a production ready platform within 21 days of kickoff.‣ Cut infrastructure spend by 68% (from $120K to $38K per year) by migrating a managed PaaS to self-managed AKS, projecting 80%+ savings in subsequent years, and absorbing traffic at the CDN edge to keep steady-state footprint minimal.‣ Built CI/CD pipelines with Azure DevOps, ArgoCD, Helm, and Kustomize that reduced deployment time by about 50%, automated manifest updates through GitOps with approval gates, and removed manual steps such as Redis cache purges and Next.js recaching.‣ Hardened the platform around CKS and Microsoft Advisory practices with Kubesec manifest scoring, nightly CVE scans across code repositories, RBAC, secrets management via Azure Key Vault, Kyverno policy enforcement, and container security.‣ Managed Azure infrastructure as code with Terraform, modularising modules, using remote state, and enabling repeatable, version-controlled platform deployments across system, production, and staging node pools.‣ Stood up a Prometheus and Grafana observability stack for telemetry, alerting, and Istio traffic control, and pivoted from Azure Front Door to Fastly during an Azure incident with zero lasting impact.‣ Implemented multi-layer caching with Fastly CDN, Varnish, and Redis plus gzip compression, supporting tens of thousands of daily visitors across roughly 7 languages while keeping cluster load low.‣ Built automation and scripting across Bash, PowerShell, Python, and TypeScript, and maintained GitHub Actions pipelines to support platform engineering and operational workflows.
- Old Moon Digital,Senior Full-Stack DeveloperDIGITAL AND ITJanuary 2018 - December 2021 (3 years and 11 months)Canada‣ Delivered 50+ complex legacy platform migrations for the American Hospital Association and built hybrid headless React and Drupal JSON API architectures for media, telecoms, and municipal clients.‣ Operated autonomously as a senior contractor, embedding into client teams and delivering enterprise integrations including Marketo, SOAP, and Redux-Saga without additional support.‣ Built a document generation platform for the New York State Department of Transportation and a large Marketo integration for gated content, while contributing to platform migrations including Zenoss.
- ImageX Media,Senior Full-Stack DeveloperDIGITAL AND ITJanuary 2016 - January 2018 (2 years)Canada‣ Delivered Acquia Site Factory deployments for educational institutions including YMCA and Trinity University as part of the ImageX engineering team.‣ Contributed to enterprise Drupal delivery for institutional clients, building maintainable web platforms in a team environment and gaining exposure to large-scale site factory operations.
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Education
- National Diploma in ComputingHastings College of Arts & TechnologyNational Diploma in Computing
- B.A. LinguisticsUniversity of KentB.A. Linguistics
Certifications
- KubestronautThe Linux Foundation2025
- KCSA: Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security AssociateThe Linux Foundation2025