Profile
About Me
I'm a Head of DevOps based in Johannesburg, where I spend my time on cloud architecture, automation and modernising infrastructure that's overdue for it. I like building systems that keep working when nobody is watching them.
Most of my energy goes into closing the gap between development and operations, so teams can ship faster with less friction. I'm currently working through TOGAF to round out the enterprise architecture side.
Out of the office you'll find me running the streets of Johannesburg as co-captain of Pirates Road Running Club, working towards official marathons in every major South African city, as well as back to back Comrades marathons (my first being in June 2026) and a Washie 100 miler (committed for 2027).
Credentials
Education & Certifications
Education
BSc Informatics
University of South Africa
Completed 2025 | 73.40% Average
AWS Certifications
TOGAF 10 Enterprise Architecture Foundation (in progress)
Toolkit
Technical Skills
Cloud
Infrastructure as Code
CI/CD
Containers
Monitoring & Observability
Systems & Web
Data & Messaging
Languages
Security
Track record
Experience
Head of DevOps
Exonic Solutions
July 2022 to Present
- › I set the DevOps direction across our client projects, covering both the strategy and the hands-on delivery
- › Built fully automated CI/CD pipelines on AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild, with security scanning throughout and Dependency-Track watching our software supply chain
- › Brought Infrastructure as Code to the whole organisation with AWS CDK and SST, so environments come from code rather than a runbook
- › Distilled our well-architected AWS shapes (VPC, Aurora, Cognito, Lambda config) into a reusable IaC layer on SST that client projects now start from
- › Led our adoption of AWS Control Tower and Landing Zones, with AWS Organisations and IAM Identity Centre keeping multi-account governance and access sane
- › Helped Exonic earn AWS Service Delivery Program status for Serverless
- › Architected a serverless real-time auction platform: live WebSocket bidding, FIFO SQS keeping bids in order, Aurora Serverless v2 underneath
- › Delivered a digital-harms and misinformation reporting platform with AI-assisted review, OCR and perceptual-hash duplicate detection, cut over from a legacy system with a careful dual run
- › Architectural lead for Toyota South Africa's move from a legacy VM estate to containers on Azure Web Apps, Container Apps and Front Door
- › Moved a division of the University of Pretoria from on-prem into AWS, with production now running on Elastic Beanstalk
- › Run production Linux environments end to end: NGINX and Apache, MySQL and PostgreSQL, Prometheus and Grafana
- › Mentor junior and intermediate engineers and help them grow into the next roles
IT Operations Manager
Ascendis Consumer Brands
July 2021 to July 2022
- › Owned IT end to end: services, systems, networks and the budget
- › Pulled the compute of five companies into one managed colocation facility
- › Ran the IT project portfolio and advised on digital and e-commerce strategy
Group Systems Specialist
Ascendis Management Services
June 2019 to June 2021
- › Rolled out group-wide mobile connectivity that cut mobile data spend by 40%
- › Negotiated IT equipment deals that saved over R1 million and turned CAPEX into OPEX
- › Wrote the group IT policies and saw them through to implementation
Divisional IT Manager
Ascendis Pharma
May 2016 to June 2019
- › Kept IT running for 250 users and managed the service providers behind it
- › Looked after the MRP and ERP systems and owned the IT budget
- › Untangled IT during the divestment and sale of a manufacturing site
System Administrator to IT Manager
Akacia Healthcare
September 2011 to May 2016
- › Owned IT for 400 users, covering services, maintenance and troubleshooting
- › Led the IT integration into Ascendis after the acquisition