Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Timeline
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Ali Syed

Summary

Cloud and Big Data Platform Engineer with 8+ years of expertise in designing, securing, and optimizing enterprise cloud and data environments. Deep hands-on experience across AWS, Azure, and Hadoop ecosystems, with proven success in automation, security, and cost efficiency initiatives.
Proficient in Terraform, Ansible, Azure Policy, AWS IAM, CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions), Hadoop administration (HDFS, YARN, Hive, Spark), and cloud observability platforms.
Certified AWS Solutions Architect – Associate, committed to driving platform resilience, security, and operational excellence in hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.

Overview

8
8
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Senior Cloud & Big Data Platform Engineer

Manulife
03.2020 - Current
  • Designed and deployed secure Azure infrastructure environments, configuring Virtual Machines, VNets, Storage (Blob, Files) with best practice security and redundancy.
  • Automated build, deployment, and monitoring pipelines using GitHub Actions and Jenkins, reducing deployment times by 40%.
  • Administered a multi-tenant Hadoop cluster (HDFS, YARN, Hive, Spark) using Cloudera Manager and Ambari, with performance tuning and proactive incident management.
  • Enhanced cluster security by configuring Kerberos authentication and integrating Apache Ranger for fine-grained access control.
  • Implemented Azure Monitor and AWS CloudWatch solutions, achieving 99.99% system uptime and improving incident response times by 30%.
  • Automated production-to-DR data synchronization, backups, and node recovery processes using Bash scripting, improving recovery time objectives (RTO).
  • Secured cloud workloads by implementing Azure Firewall, DDoS Protection, and Web Application Firewall (WAF).
  • Collaborated on multi-account governance using Azure Blueprints, AWS Organizations, and Landing Zone setups.

Big Data Platform Administrator

Visa
02.2018 - 03.2020
  • Installed, configured, and maintained multi-node Hadoop clusters using Cloudera CDH and Hortonworks HDP distributions.
  • Led infrastructure patching, capacity planning, and security hardening initiatives, reducing critical vulnerabilities by 25%.
  • Developed Ansible Playbooks to automate cluster configuration and node commissioning/decommissioning tasks.
  • Resolved access, ingestion, and job scheduling issues across 100+ users, improving cluster throughput and reducing job failure rates.
  • Implemented resource optimization strategies (Fair Scheduler, Capacity Scheduler) to balance heavy data ingestion and analytics workloads.
  • Migrated traditional ingestion pipelines to Sqoop and Oozie frameworks for better performance and error handling.
  • Integrated Kubernetes and Docker for running containerized applications alongside Hadoop workloads.

Linux Systems Administrator

T-Mobile
01.2017 - 01.2018
  • Provisioned, configured, and maintained Linux (RHEL, HP-UX) servers across production and development environments.
  • Supported high-availability configurations (Red Hat Cluster Suite, Oracle RAC) and critical database environments.
  • Improved server monitoring by developing custom Nagios plugins, reducing downtime by 15%.
  • Configured core services like DNS, DHCP, NFS, LDAP, and implemented IPv4/IPv6 networking.
  • Conducted system performance tuning (CPU, memory, storage), successfully identifying and remediating bottlenecks.

Education

Master of Science - Computer Science

Governors State University
University Park, IL
12-2016

Bachelor of Science - Electrical, Electronics And Communications Engineering

JNTU
Hyderabad, India
04-2013

Skills

  • Cloud Platforms: Azure (Virtual Machines, VNet, Defender for Cloud, AKS), AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, VPC, CloudFormation)
  • Big Data Platforms: Hadoop (HDFS, YARN, Hive, Spark), Cloudera, Ambari, Kerberos Authentication, Security Hardening
  • Infrastructure Automation: Terraform, Ansible, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
  • Security & Governance: IAM, Conditional Access, Encryption, Azure Policy, AWS Security Hub, CloudTrail
  • Monitoring & Observability: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, AWS CloudWatch, Grafana
  • CI/CD & DevOps: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps
  • Cost Management: Azure Cost Optimization, AWS Trusted Advisor
  • Scripting: Bash, Python basics for cloud automation
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Azure SQL Database, SQL Query Optimization (basic)
  • Containerization: Kubernetes (AKS Focus), Docker Basics
  • Compliance: CIS Benchmarks, GDPR, ITIL Foundation

Certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

Timeline

Senior Cloud & Big Data Platform Engineer

Manulife
03.2020 - Current

Big Data Platform Administrator

Visa
02.2018 - 03.2020

Linux Systems Administrator

T-Mobile
01.2017 - 01.2018

Master of Science - Computer Science

Governors State University

Bachelor of Science - Electrical, Electronics And Communications Engineering

JNTU

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Ali Syed