My Journey
From watching network alarms as an intern to designing cloud platforms today. This is how it happened, and what I picked up along the way.
-
Jan 2016 to Apr 2016
Where it started
Intern, Network Operations Center · Mobilink (PMCL)
My story starts in January 2016. I had just finished my degree in Telecommunication and had no real idea what a job would feel like. I got a three month internship in the Network Operations Center at Mobilink. My work was to watch RAN terminal alarms on Huawei, Ericsson, and ZTE equipment across the 2G and 3G networks. When something came up, I called the technicians on site, got the checklist completed with them, and put together the downtime reports we shared through the day.
The bigger thing I took from those three months was not technical. It was how people work in a professional setting. I learned how to communicate clearly, how to hand a problem to someone without dropping it, and how to stay calm on the phone when something was down. That was my first real lesson: the systems are only half the job, the people and the process are the other half.
-
May 2016 to May 2017
Learning the craft at Intech
Intern, then System & Network Engineer · Intech Process Automation
While I was at the NOC I was also doing an MCSE training to understand how office IT actually works. After I finished the course, it helped me land an internship at Intech Process Automation. I met really great people and mentors there, and they took the time to polish me and help me grow.
I got promoted to System and Network Engineer. I looked after hardware, software, and network devices, handled user accounts and access, managed Kaspersky endpoint security, and kept the Avaya VoIP systems running. Intech was mainly a Microsoft shop, but I kept noticing the Linux systems, and that is where my curiosity began. The more I dug into it, the more interested I got. I knew I wanted to work with Linux and get good at it, so I went and did my RHCSA and RHCE training.
-
May 2017 to Feb 2020
Going all in on Linux
System Administrator · Synavos
Since Intech was mostly Microsoft based, I wanted a place where I could work with Linux full time. I found that at Synavos. Almost everything there was open source. The only thing they paid for was Gmail, and the rest, including their own product, which was the main business, they had built themselves. I joined as a System Administrator and finally got to work with Linux every day. I administered RPM and Debian systems, ran KVM virtual machines, configured Samba for file sharing, and monitored everything with Nagios and NTOPNG.
The best part was the people. I worked with some really talented Linux experts who trained me well and gave me the foundation I still rely on. I was there for about three years, and that is where I stopped being someone who just knew Linux and became a Linux engineer.
Synavos is also where I got my first real taste of automation. There was a report that used to take about three days to put together, and I automated the whole thing down to roughly one hour. That was the moment I realized I could automate the tedious work and make life easier, and it gave me the confidence to keep doing it everywhere I went after.
-
Feb 2020 to Feb 2021
A short stop at GCS
System Engineer · GCS
After about three years at Synavos, an opportunity came up at GCS and I took it. For a year I gave remote support, administered Digium SwitchVox VoIP systems, and helped improve our patch and vulnerability management with the security team. The team I worked with had really good soft skills, and being around them gave me the opportunity to grow my own — communication, collaboration, and handling people with patience all became stronger during this time. The work was good, but it was a night shift and I was not comfortable with it. So when the next chance came, I moved on.
-
Feb 2021 to Sep 2024
Joining U-blox
Information Technology Specialist · U-blox
I joined U-blox in February 2021 as an IT Specialist, and this is where everything I had learned started to come together. Early on I maintained Linux systems across RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS, and automated the repetitive work with Bash, Python, and Ansible. I started connecting AWS services like EC2 and S3 to our on-prem infrastructure, managed VMware ESXi, and looked after the core Linux services like SSSD, DNS, Samba, NFS, HTTP/HTTPS, and SSH. I kept our documentation in Confluence, and when incidents happened, including recovering systems after security breaches, I led the response and added preventive controls so we would not get caught the same way again.
-
Sep 2024 to Mar 2026
First promotion, SME Linux
Promotion SME Linux · U-blox
That work led to my first promotion at U-blox, to SME Linux in September 2024. My focus moved from keeping systems running to designing them. I built and managed enterprise Linux infrastructure for round the clock availability, retired legacy environments, and moved workloads to modern platforms. I automated a lot of the admin and provisioning with Bash, Ansible, and Terraform, which improved our efficiency by about 70 percent. I containerized workloads with Docker and AWS ECS, worked on CIS based security hardening with proper IAM and encryption, and joined the Change Management Board. I also rolled out LogicMonitor for proactive monitoring, which cut our downtime. On top of that, I got to lead and mentor the Linux team, and pass on the same kind of help my mentors at Intech and Synavos gave me.
-
Mar 2026 to Present
Second promotion, Senior Cloud Engineer
Promotion Senior Cloud Engineer · U-blox
In March 2026 I was promoted again, this time to Senior Cloud Engineer. I am the go to person for our Linux and AWS operations, and I design AWS architectures that are secure, reliable, and cost efficient. I build serverless solutions with AWS Lambda and set up reusable patterns with the AWS CDK in Python. I led a cost optimization effort across multiple accounts that cut our spend by about 50 percent, and tightened our governance with least privilege IAM. I also keep improving our GitLab CI pipelines and our CloudWatch monitoring so we can release faster and handle incidents more safely.
The craft in between
When I look back at these years, the pattern is simple. Curiosity, good mentors, and always wanting to learn more. The same patience I use when I design infrastructure is the patience I use in photography. Waiting for the right light, planning the shot, and paying attention to the small details. The engineering and the time outdoors balance each other, and each one makes me better at the other.
Where I am headed
I am still doing what I started doing on that NOC floor. Watching systems closely, fixing problems before they grow, and helping the people around me do good work. The scale has changed from network alarms to cloud platforms, but the idea is the same. Next, I want to keep getting better at cloud architecture and automation, keep mentoring, and keep working on problems that are worth staying curious about.