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Hello there, I am Ioannis

Ioannis Pistolas

DevOps Engineer at IGT

As a dedicated DevOps engineer, I am driven by a passion for technology and a commitment to continuous learning. I stay current with industry trends and advancements, approaching every project with a mindset of continuous improvement. Beyond my professional work, I enjoy experimenting with new technologies and automation techniques in my homelab environment. Here, I explore and test new tools to streamline and optimize processes. With a proven track record of successful DevOps implementations and a dedication to ongoing growth, I am confident in my ability to contribute meaningfully to any team or organization looking to enhance their technology infrastructure and operations.

Experiences

1
Senior DevOps Engineer
iSoftBet/IGT

May 2024 - Present, Central North Business Centre, Level 5, Sliema

With extensive experience and a portfolio of over 400 games, premium online casino software developer iSoftBet is at the vanguard of games innovation. IGT offers tailor-made gaming solutions, from games and technologies to comprehensive management tools and sophisticated ePayment integration. In 2022, International Game Technology (IGT) completed the acquisition of iSoftBet.

Responsibilities:
  • Modification of the Terraform/Terragrunt code to add extra functionality
  • Create environments to deploy applications on AWS in an automated way using Terragrunt and Ansible/Packer
  • Implement Kafka-based event streaming architecture using Kinesis and Logstash for S3 retention
  • Support in On-Call rotations
DevOps Engineer
Raketech

August 2023 - April 2024, Soho office the strand

Raketech is an online affiliate and content marketing company, with expertise in delivering comparison services, online guides, communities and social media products for the online gaming, sports and consumer finance industry.

Responsibilities:
  • Contribute to the development of Raketech’s platform for creating data driven product development
  • Automate workflows to speed up project development
  • Ensure performance and availability of cloud infrastructures
  • Monitor, prevent and resolve incidents across the systems and assets
  • Work closely with Dev team to optimize CI/CD workflows
  • Support in On-Call rotations
2
3
DevOps Engineer
Betsson Group

September 2022 - August 2023, Tax Biex, Malta

Betsson Group is one of the world’s largest gaming groups, at the heart of entertainment for over six decades.

Responsibilities:
  • Create and provision new servers for our infrastructure
  • Manage multiple WordPress installations
  • Automate site deployments and create automation scripts
  • Create Documentation for current procedures
Melita LTD

April 2018 - August 2022, Madliena, Malta

An internet provider that provides Internet, Phone, Mobile and TV services to more than 75% of Maltese households.

Senior Core Network Engineer

June 2020 - August 2022

  • Annual and weekly Budgeting and Forecasting
  • Statistical Analysis of network usage
  • Liaising between Cable and Marketing Department
  • Automating commands for engineer intervention for mistake/error minimization
Core Engineer

June 2019 - June 2020

  • Allocating physical and virtual resources
  • Configuring MFA using Cisco Duo and Checkpoint Firewall
  • Training new recruits
  • Responding to night interventions/on-call
  • Consulting Legal department on user indiscretions
Junior Core Engineer

April 2018 - June 2019

  • Migrating 50% of the network to the new DOCSIS platform
  • Installing and configuring MySQL, Syslog-ng, Kea DHCP, Grafana and pmacct
  • Designing Custom Perl Scripts using SNMP and SSH to monitor servers/routers
  • Generating daily/weekly reports
4
5
Internship
Prisma Electronics SA

May 2015 - November 2015, Alexandroupolis, Greece

Prisma Electronics provides technology-based solutions for businesses and organizations. Through its R&D and technical divisions Prisma Electronics designs, develops, and manufactures a wide array of IT, smart-grid and wireless-based systems, and integrated electronic components.

Responsibilities:
  • Creating MySQL database for new company platform
  • PoC of displaying the data of MySQL using Syncfusion
  • Researching Cloud Computing developments

Skills

AWS
AWS

Experience with EC2 instances, ELB, VPC, RDS, WAF, AGA, and S3 with intelligent tiering. Skilled in troubleshooting connectivity issues and establishing secure tunnels between Azure and AWS for Active Directory synchronization.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes

Solid foundation in Kubernetes container orchestration, including deployment management, troubleshooting, and basic cluster administration.
Docker
Docker

Custom Images creation, containers orchestration with Docker Compose and Swarm. Image optimization. Usage of containers to monitor host and other containers.
Terraform/Terragrunt
Terraform/Terragrunt

Proficient in working with Terraform and Terragrunt to create scalable AWS environments. Experienced in building and modifying existing templates and modules while maintaining DRY principles for infrastructure automation.
Jenkins
Jenkins

Experienced in creating robust CI/CD pipelines with reusable functions and components. Skilled in troubleshooting pipeline failures and optimizing build processes for efficient deployments.
Linux
Linux

Installation and administration of Ubuntu and CentOS/Rocky servers. Configuration and hardening of server according to provided specs. Troubleshooting of performance issues
Bash
Bash

Living and breathing on Linux CLI, automating tasks using bash commands and simple (quick) scripts.
Ansible
Ansible

Usage of community playbooks and creation of new ones for configuration of servers, Cloud Providers, software updates etc.
Grafana
Grafana

Setting up and configuration of Grafana server both as service and container. Custom panel creation for displaying metrics.
OpenSearch/Filebeat
OpenSearch/Filebeat

Configured Filebeat for log collection and shipping to OpenSearch clusters. Experienced in setting up visualization dashboards for system monitoring.
GitLab Runners
GitLab Runners

Hands-on experience installing GitLab runners on self-managed infrastructure, integrating with SaaS GitLab, and developing deployment pipelines for production environments.
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka

Skilled in troubleshooting Kafka connector issues and monitoring system resources. Experience with MSK, Kinesis, and Logstash for reliable message retention and processing on S3.
Vector/Syslog-ng
Vector/Syslog-ng

Configuration for log scraping and shipping to ingester, both from host and containers.
Loki
Loki

Combination with Vector/Syslog for storing logs and displaying in Grafana.
Cloud-Init
Cloud-Init

Proficient in creating cloud-init scripts for automated server provisioning and initial configuration across various cloud platforms.
NGINX/Apache
NGINX/Apache

Configuration of webserver, proxy operation, SSL termination
Zabbix
Zabbix

Installation and configuration of Zabbix server and clients. Creation of scripts monitoring custom metrics
Mysql
Mysql

Creation and management of databases and tables for different projects. Migration of Databases between server, troubleshooting and fine tuning.
Azure
Azure

Proficient in creating and configuring secure tunnels between Azure and AWS for seamless Active Directory synchronization and cross-cloud communication.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare

DNS management, cache and SSL certificates configuration for different domains,Cloudflare WAF rules an zero trust configuration and Active Directory authorization. Troubleshooting performance issues with site speed and cache performance.
FreeIPA
FreeIPA

Experience managing users and groups through Ansible automation, implementing fine-grained access controls and identity management solutions.
Crowdstrike
Crowdstrike

Configuration of sensor for Linux, Windows and MAC endpoints/servers. Checking the alerts/incidents and cleaning infections. Connecting AWS,GCP and Azure for collecting cloud misconfigurations.
Networking
Networking

Advanced network configurations architect as part of ISP infrastructure. Troubleshooting of low and high level issues. Knowledge of advanced networking concepts.
Portainer
Portainer

Orchestration and management of Docker containers.
Proxmox/VMWare
Proxmox/VMWare

Virtual Machines and containers creation using both Hypervisors. Creation of internal and external networks, volumes and user management.
pfSense/Checkpoint FW
pfSense/Checkpoint FW

Installation and configuration of firewalls. Rules creation for allowing or blocking traffic. Installation of services like WireGuard, OpenVPN etc. Configuration of MFA for Checkpoint
Cloud Providers
Cloud Providers

Creation VMs, Firewalls and services on DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Contabo and Linode. User access management and firewall rules configuration. Usage of APIs for task automation.
Cisco
Cisco

Setup and configuration of Enterprise Routers and Switches, cabling and physical mounting in racks.
PHP
PHP

Usage of PHP to automate of user creation, installation and updating of plugins on Wordpress. Automating API interaction with Cloud Providers.
Perl
Perl

Creation of scripts for monitor infrastructure using SNMP, parsing current router configuration and creation of new configuration commands based on few user inputs/arguments.
Wordpress
Wordpress

Site creation and management. User and plugin configuration from GUI and wp-cli. Troubleshooting issues and site migration on new servers.

Education
University of Western Macedonia - Department of Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
August, 2010 - March, 2018
MSc. Information and Telecommunication Engineer

Achievements

1,000 Mbps internet available nationwide