# Arash Haghighat

Site Reliability Engineer and platform consultant. Fifteen years keeping critical infrastructure reliable: cloud platforms, Kubernetes, and the practices that keep systems resilient. Now as a tech lead and trainer.

- Email: hey@a12t.co
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a12t
- GitHub: https://github.com/irLinja
- Telegram: https://t.me/irLinja
- Working with me: https://github.com/irLinja/rtfm (the rtfm manual)
- CV: https://a12t.co/cv/ (Markdown: https://a12t.co/cv.md, PDF: https://a12t.co/files/CV-Arash-Haghighat.pdf)

## Proof

- **15+**: years in infrastructure
- **Kubestronaut**: all five CNCF Kubernetes certifications
- **−40%**: cloud cost reduction, monolith to Kubernetes
- **Head of Infra**: at a fast-growing logistics scaleup

## Skills

- **Infrastructure:** Cloud or on-premises, I design, implement, and maintain robust infrastructures. AWS, GCP, and Azure, with solid Proxmox experience and IaC in Terraform and Ansible.
- **Cloud native:** Building cloud-native applications, managing orchestration with Kubernetes, Helm, and Harbor, and driving GitOps workflows with Flux across the container lifecycle.
- **Development and CI/CD:** From GitLab CI and CircleCI to end-to-end testing and supply chain security, I architect and maintain build pipelines and platform services.
- **Observability:** Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK Stack. I design monitoring and alerting strategies that give teams real-time insight into system health at scale.
- **Platform engineering:** Self-service tooling, golden paths, and developer onboarding. I build internal platforms that improve DevEx and help teams ship faster.
- **Reliability:** SLOs, incident response, chaos engineering, disaster recovery, and compliance. I build the practices and culture that keep systems resilient.

## Professional milestones

### Consultant, Tech Lead, and Trainer (2023 to present)

I lead platform and reliability engagements at enterprise scale, serving as Tech Lead on mission-critical multi-region landing zones and container platforms.

I build compliance automation, self-service infrastructure, and help organizations adopt modern engineering practices.

I train teams on SRE, platform engineering, and developer experience, combining hands-on IC delivery with team leadership.

### Head of Infrastructure and Operations (2019 to 2021)

I led cross-functional engineering teams at a fast-growing logistics scaleup, owning the full stack from CI/CD to observability and high availability.

I drove a 40% cost reduction through cloud migration and Kubernetes adoption, moving from monolith to microservices.

I also led the expansion into new countries on GCP, scaling infrastructure and performance to match the pace of the business.

### Site Reliability Engineer and Tech Lead (2013 to 2018)

I pioneered SRE and DevOps practices at enterprise companies in telco and finance, often as the first hire in these roles.

I built teams from the ground up, shaped engineering culture, and developed deep expertise in Linux, automation, and production operations.

It was an exciting time of rapid growth, turning new disciplines into core capabilities.

### Software Engineer (2010 to 2013)

I kicked off my career as a Software Engineer, focusing on mobile and embedded systems, all while finishing up university.

I joined the university's ACM team and took part in programming contests, which sharpened my problem-solving skills.

## Certificates

- **Kubestronaut**: Cloud Native Computing Foundation. All five Kubernetes certifications. Verified on Credly: https://www.credly.com/badges/ccf45199-8ebb-49e8-9357-20a7642fcb69
- **Cilium Cluster Mesh**: Isovalent. Advanced multi-cluster networking with Cilium. Verified on Credly: https://www.credly.com/badges/538c4791-edce-4be4-9bb9-c8f741307684

All certifications: https://www.credly.com/users/arash