Balázs Páldi
- Budapest, Hungary
- DevOps Architect at Shiwaforce
- Hungarian (native), English (B2)
- Based in Budapest · Prefer hybrid
- LinkedIn · Credly · DevOpsTales · Shiwaforce
About
I help engineering organisations move from ad-hoc infrastructure work to operable cloud-native platforms: clear ownership, automated delivery, observable production, and security controls teams will actually use.
As a DevOps Architect at Shiwaforce, I work with enterprise customers across banking, telecom, and pharma — assessing maturity, designing target operating models, implementing platforms, and enabling teams through training. I collaborate daily with developers, architects, and consulting colleagues: translating constraints into pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and runbooks rather than handing over a cluster and walking away.
I publish hands-on guides on DevOpsTales covering Kubernetes networking, GitOps, policy, and platform engineering.
Selected work
Public writing that shows how I think about production platforms:
- AI for DevOps — agentic AI for platform engineering and SRE workflows
- Best Practices for Keeping Kubernetes Clusters Secure — security baseline for production clusters
- Separating Kubernetes Ingree into DMZ — DMZ ingress without Cilium external workload
- Kubernetes Egress Gateway Options with Cilium — egress patterns for locked-down clusters
- Kubernetes Multicluster with Cilium Cluster Mesh — multi-cluster connectivity and trade-offs
Community projects
Open-source Kubernetes tools I maintain under devopstales:
- trivy-operator — continuous image scanning and admission control with Trivy
- KubeDash — Python-based Kubernetes dashboard for cluster observability and ops
Professional Experience
DevOps Cloud Architect — Shiwaforce / DevOps Natives
Mar 2024 – Present · Budapest, Hungary · Enterprise consulting (banking, telecom, pharma)
- Own platform architecture for customer Kubernetes and cloud engagements from design through handover
- Drive DevOps maturity for Egis: assessment, strategy, and delivery of cloud-native operating models
- Partner with engineering and consulting teams at OTP on platform, CI/CD, and infrastructure standards
- Deliver GitLab CI/CD and platform enablement for MBH Bank and Lexholding
- Deliver Kubernetes training for engineering teams at Telenor and Telekom
- Set reusable infrastructure and delivery standards across consulting engagements (IaC, pipelines, observability, security baselines)
DevOps Cloud Engineer — Shiwaforce
Oct 2023 – Mar 2024 · Budapest, Hungary · Platform automation
- Replaced manual environment setup with Terraform-driven VM provisioning for Kubernetes workloads
- Codified Kubernetes install and lifecycle with Ansible so clusters were repeatable across projects
- Automated Shiwa Enterprise CMS installation for consistent product environment delivery
DevOps Engineer — Shiwaforce
Nov 2017 – Oct 2023 · Budapest, Hungary · Hybrid on-prem and multi-cloud
- Designed and ran a highly available Proxmox VE platform with Proxmox Backup Server — including backup and recovery for production workloads
- Built and operated production Kubernetes estates across OpenShift, upstream Kubernetes, and RKE2
- Delivered cloud Kubernetes on EKS, AKS, and GKE for customer and internal workloads
- Established build/deploy pipelines in GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket, and Bamboo
- Standardized environment creation with Terraform, Ansible, Chef, and Helm
- Worked with developers on delivery friction: pipelines, environments, networking, policy, and platform reliability
System Administrator — ITware Kft.
Jun 2015 – Nov 2017 · Budapest, Hungary · Software delivery environments
- Operated Linux and middleware for software development and system integration projects
- Supported the shift toward containers, microservices, and cloud-oriented delivery
Skills
| Depth | Area | Technologies |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Containers & orchestration | Kubernetes, OpenShift, RKE2, Helm |
| Primary | Networking & policy | Cilium, Calico, eBPF, network policies, service mesh |
| Primary | Infrastructure as code | Terraform, Ansible, Helm |
| Primary | CI/CD & GitOps | GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Argo CD / Flux, Kyverno |
| Strong | Cloud | AWS (EKS), Azure (AKS), GCP (GKE) |
| Strong | Virtualization & backup | Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server |
| Strong | Observability & security | Prometheus/Grafana ecosystem, Datadog, admission policy, image signing |
| Familiar | Other tooling | Bitbucket Pipelines, Bamboo, Chef |
Top certifications
Highest-signal badges for platform, networking, and delivery roles. Full wallet on Credly.
| Certification | Issuer | Year |
|---|---|---|
| IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Professional Certificate | IBM / Cognitive Class | 2026 |
| GitLab Solutions Architect Core Verified Associate | GitLab | 2023 |
| Kubernetes Operators Advanced | IBM / Cognitive Class | 2026 |
| Prompt Engineering for Everyone | IBM / Cognitive Class | 2026 |
| Certified Calico Operator - AWS Expert | Tigera | 2025 |
| Certified Calico Operator - Azure Expert | Tigera | 2025 |
Education
Bachelor of Science (BSc), Engineering Information Technology
Dennis Gabor College · 2010 – 2014