Eduard Catalin Dragu

Platform Engineer

Milan, Italy

Experience

Feb 2024 – Present

Platform Engineer · Milan, Italy

Reduced provisioning time of cloud environments on GCP and Azure by ~70% through IaC, CI/CD pipelines and repository templating integrated into delivery workflows
Led optimization initiatives targeting GKE clusters and CloudSQL instances, reducing development environment costs by ~60% through automated scaling-down mechanisms and spot instances
Led a strategic initiative to enhance the availability and scalability of ~200 applications on GKE by fostering the adoption of PDBs, anti-affinity rules, and HPAs
Implemented comprehensive backup configurations for all critical PaaS and IaaS solutions across GCP and Azure
Contributed to a revamp of existing monitoring systems by identifying and integrating new KPIs aligned with technical and business requirements

Mar 2022 – Feb 2024

Cloud Engineer & Cloud Architect · Milan, Italy

Led end-to-end implementation and migration of ~30 applications to GCP for a major banking institution, ensuring ECB compliance via repeatable IaC and PaaS services (GKE, CloudSQL, GCS, Memorystore)
Drove GKE standardization and best-practice adoption across multiple domains, delivering ~30% more optimized deployments through HPAs, refined resource allocation, and probe configuration tuning
Fostered the adoption of Chaos Mesh to identify and resolve architectural failures, strengthening system robustness by ~30% on average
Contributed to a multi-region disaster recovery plan implementing failover capabilities against zonal and regional failures
Mentored and technically upskilled ~10 colleagues, facilitating onboarding and enhancing team capabilities
Managed client technical communication as primary point of contact with client management

May 2020 – Mar 2022

System Engineer · Milan, Italy

Contributed to the migration of ~20 legacy on-premises applications to Azure and GCP using re-platform and re-build techniques to ensure seamless transitions
Supported architectural shift from VMs to cloud-native microservices for ~10 applications, reducing operational overhead through PaaS adoption
Supported FinOps initiatives resulting in ~30% cost savings through instance sizing optimization for databases and VMs
Ensured secure and standardized provisioning of foundational cloud services on Azure and GCP by translating security requirements into repeatable deployment patterns

Sep 2017 – May 2020

Infrastructure Specialist · Brunello, Italy

Contributed to the expansion of proprietary data centers, deploying ~5 new vSphere clusters across multiple locations
Oversaw expansion of a European customer infrastructure with ~40 new physical servers alongside a system-wide upgrade to vSphere 6.5
Collaborated on automating patch management for ~8,000 systems (~5,000 Windows VMs and ~3,000 Linux) using WSUS and Spacewalk
Implemented Commvault disaster recovery, establishing recovery copies for 150+ customers and securing 10,000+ VMs

Cloud

GCPAzureAWS

Containers & Orchestration

Managed Kubernetes (GKE, AKS, EKS)KubernetesDocker

IaC & Automation

TerraformFluxCD

DevOps & Tooling

GitGitHubGitLabJenkinsAtlassian Suite

Languages

GoPythonBash

Operating Systems

LinuxWindows

High-school Diploma of Computer Science

Italy · 2012 – 2017