Ettore Ciarcia.

Experience

Download CV (PDF)The long version: history of my career →

About

I am a Cloud Engineer with a strong passion for containers and container orchestration. My career began as a system administrator, transitioning to the cloud introduced me to Kubernetes, which quickly became a focal point of my expertise. For the past few years, I have been deeply engaged with the CNCF ecosystem, consistently integrating open-source tools into my work. I specialize in designing and implementing cloud architectures guided by Infrastructure as Code principles, always aiming for the highest levels of automation and reproducibility.

Work

  1. Nov 2024 — Present

    Premium Engineer · SUSE

    Responsibilities include:

    • Deliver dedicated, high-tier technical support and architecture guidance for mission-critical enterprise environments running SUSE Cloud Native solutions
    • Troubleshoot, debug, and resolve complex issues across Kubernetes clusters, container runtimes, storage, and security layers to ensure minimal downtime and business continuity
    • Conduct deep-dive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for critical severity incidents (Severity 1/2) and collaborate directly with product engineering and open-source upstream maintainers
    • Perform cluster health checks, version upgrade assessments, and proactive maintenance to optimize client performance and operational resilience

    Technologies involved: Kubernetes, Rancher, NeuVector, Longhorn, Grafana, Prometheus, Velero, NGINX Ingress Controller, AWS, Azure, Terraform

  2. Apr 2023 — Nov 2024

    Kubernetes & Cloud Engineer · SIGHUP

    Responsibilities include:

    • Implemented CNCF technologies for clients across various industries, managing the deployment of networking, storage, monitoring, and disaster recovery solutions within Kubernetes clusters
    • I actively participated in a major Kubernetes upgrade campaign (25+ clusters) aimed at upgrading client clusters to the latest available versions (100+ version upgrades achieved with minimal downtime and without exceeding the error budget). This initiative provided me with an opportunity to significantly enhance my expertise across a wide spectrum of internal cluster services. I executed these operations on leading cloud providers, as well as on-premise environments utilizing vSphere.
    • I took part in overnight rotations for the 24/7 on-call service for critical clients and actively monitored live streaming services that experienced heavy traffic during live broadcasts (>2000 requests per second)

    Technologies involved: Kubernetes, Grafana, Prometheus, Velero, NGINX Ingress Controller, AWS, Azure, Terraform, Ansible, Kong Gateway

  3. Nov 2021 — Apr 2023

    Cloud Engineer · Epsilon

    Responsibilities include:

    • Proficient in infrastructure provisioning utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) policies across leading cloud providers via Terraform Cloud or with self managed state (25+ projects). Experience in designing and implementing pipelines for seamless container deployments on Kubernetes and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
    • Migrated an entire project and all its components from Docker Swarm (on premise) to Kubernetes (OKE) and created pipelines for each service to enable automatic build and deployment

    Technologies involved: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Linux System, AWS Services (EKS, ECS, ECR, EC2, VPC, Lambda,S3, CDN, Pipeline Stack, IAM), Oracle Cloud

  4. May 2019 — Feb 2021

    System Administrator · CSC Informatica

    Responsibilities include:

    • Set up cloud architecture with EC2 instances, AWS Lambda, Kafka, MongoDB, Nginx and ELK stack to map road accidents. Data collection using sensors on a RaspberryPi.
    • Managed the IT department of a clinic (140+ workstations) and the connections with the medical devices in the clinic’s laboratory. Migrated nearly all end-of-life devices to more supported versions. Network troubleshooting, experience Windows and Linux Server. User management and related privileges within Active Directory
    • Configured and managed firewalls for all company clients (15+ firewalls), including user profile management for approximately 150 users for VPN access. • Reorganized backup policies for many of the clients for whom I managed the storage aspect, implementing a 3-2-1 backup strategy from scratch

    Technologies involved: Linux, AWS (EC2, VPC, Lambda), Windows Server

Education

  1. May 2021 — Jan 2022

    Cyber Security

    University of Naples Federico II

    Final Project: honey net on AWS to track malicious users

    Check video →

  2. Sep 2015 — Present

    BE Computer Engineering

    University of Naples Federico II (on going)

Interests