Wayne
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Microservices • Cloud‑Native • DevOps

I design and deliver resilient microservice platforms and the automation to run them.

CTO and software engineering leader. 38+ years in microservices, architecture, and DevOps—building teams (15–25+) and platforms with CI/CD, GitOps, and SRE rigor.

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Executive Summary

CTO & Engineering Leader with 38+ years building and scaling software organizations across finance, security, and cloud-native platforms. I lead medium to large product and platform teams (15–25+) through the full lifecycle—from architecture and delivery to SRE-grade operations—creating secure, observable, and developer-friendly systems.

  • Team Leadership: Built high-performance, cross-functional squads (dev, QA, SRE, security) with paved-road tooling, golden-path templates, and KPI/SLO-driven execution.
  • Platform Architecture: Drove migrations from monoliths to microservices with GitOps, progressive delivery, and a secure software supply chain.
  • Business Outcomes: Delivered regulated banking/payments platforms, accelerated time-to-market, and reduced MTTR via incident runbooks and actionable observability.
  • Operating Model: Mentored EMs/tech leads, instituted clear ownership (Platform vs Product), and codified DoD, SBOM, and policy-as-code across environments.

Currently serving as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Surion , guiding product strategy, platform reliability, and R&D velocity.

  

Skills & Core Strengths

Generic Approach

Microservice Orchestration Architecture Domain‑Driven Design (DDD) Kubernetes (K8s) & variants Dev ≃ Deploy Cloud, BareMetal, Hybrid, DIY CI/CD (GitLab, GitHub, ArgoCd, Versioning) Infrastructure as code (Iac) Linux Automation, Frameworks, Networking Observability (Prometheus,Grafana,etc) Security & Zero‑Trust basics Coaching & Team Enablement Code & Infrastructure Debt Management

Specific Architecture Principles

  • API first Ethos
  • Composability over complexity; explicit contracts (OpenAPI, gRPC).
  • 12-Factor Methodologies.
  • Immutable infrastructure.
  • Paved-road.
  • Fail‑fast on CI; progress with feature flags.
  • Observability by design: SLOs, RED/USE, actionable alerts.
  • Security as code: policies, SBOMs, least privilege.

Specific Toolchain Highlights & examples

  • Kubernetes (MicroK8s/K3s), Helm/Kustomize, NGINX Ingress, cert‑manager.
  • Argo CD, GitLab CI, Tekton; Docker/Podman; BuildKit & SBOMs.
  • Terraform (libvirt, cloud), Ansible, Packer.
  • PostgreSQL/MySQL, MinIO/S3, Redis, Kafka/NATS.
  • Hashi Vault, OpenID Connect, OAuth2 proxies.
  • Bare-metal & DIY cluster Virtualization.

Experience Snapshot

CTO / VP(engineering) at Surion Current

Complete re-engineering of corporate legacy platforms

  • Generic: Took control of the whole technical infrastructure and solutions space for the CEO
  • Architecture: Converted Monolith solution to Hybrid MsO solution.
  • Development : Took the lead role, instantiated the 12Factor principles in team - successfully handed over to lead developer once architecture was deemed sustainable, extensible and extendable.
  • Ensured golden-path templates: repo scaffolds, pipelines, and dashboards.

Principal Engineer / Architect Recent years

Microservice platforms on Kubernetes with GitOps, multi-env CI/CD, and SRE practices.

  • VP role as head of engineering. Hired, built, lead and handed over large (18-26) software engineering team.
  • The high rate-of-change in this corporate necessitated the creation of active code-debt and skills-deficit managerial principles.
  • Designed service mesh-ready architecture; standardized telemetry.
  • Designed & Implemented golden-path templates: repo scaffolds, pipelines, and dashboards.

DevOps Lead Prior

Scaled delivery with IaC, automated cluster provisioning and policy.

  • Provisioned multi‑node clusters via Terraform + Ansible; codified RBAC.
  • Drove MTTR down with incident runbooks and chaos testing.

Senior Software Engineer Earlier

Delivered high-reliability systems across distributed and embedded domains.

  • Led refactors from monolith to microservices with clear boundaries.
  • Mentored teams on testing strategy, code review, and architecture.

Selected Projects

GitOps Platform Accelerator

Argo CD • Kustomize • Policy‑as‑Code

  • Multi‑env repo layout with app‑of‑apps pattern.
  • Bootstrap scripts for cluster add‑ons (ingress, certs, dashboards).
  • Compliance guardrails with signed images and drift detection.

Microservice Migration

DDD • Event‑driven • Observability

  • Refactored core monolith into bounded contexts.
  • Established contracts (OpenAPI/gRPC) + consumer tests.
  • End‑to‑end tracing and service‑level SLOs.

Edge‑to‑Cloud CI/CD

K3s/MicroK8s • Secure supply chain

  • Offline‑capable runners, SBOMs, and provenance attestations.
  • Progressive delivery with canaries and feature flags.
  • Declarative secrets and zero‑downtime upgrades.

Teaching, Speaking & Writing

Mentorship & Curriculum

DevOps, Kubernetes, GitOps

  • Designed hands‑on curricula for microservice orchestration.
  • Hands‑on mentoring of real‑world SDLC and GOP (Goodness of Plan).
  • Led workshops on Terraform, MicroK8s, and Argo CD.

Publications & Talks

Architecture • SRE • Automation

  • Guides on platform engineering and paved‑roads.
  • Playbooks for incident response and postmortems.

Let's Build, Re-Engineer & Modernize your solution

Open to principal leadership & architectural roles, advisory work, and short-term turnarounds.

I have a strong preference for teams serious about automation, quality, and observability.

Contact me

I will respond here ..

LinkedIn

If viewing the pdf - see My website (https://waynephilip.com)

Also for the pdf -- see linkedin @ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayne-h-philip/)

  • I have multiple references & proprietary demonstrations.
  • Advanced automation demonstrations would require SSH tunneling access.