Emrah BASDEMIR
Chicago
Summary
Having hands-on experience across DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, and AWS architecture, with a strong track record of collaborating with application, QA, and security teams to build resilient, production-ready platforms.
Overview
8
8
years of professional experience
5
5
Certifications
Work History
Lead Site Reliability Engineer
Option Clearing Corporate
Chicago
06.2023 - Current
- Managed and supported 100+ downstream vanilla Kubernetes clusters centrally through Rancher.
- Collaborated across 20+ AWS accounts, supporting on-prem to cloud workloads and driving cost optimization initiatives.
- Served as a core member of the Incident Response / Environment Management Team, performing first-level remediation and opening vendor support cases as needed.
- Worked directly with multiple vendors including HashiCorp, Rancher (SUSE), Confluent, AWS, and Splunk to troubleshoot, escalate, and resolve platform and application issues.
- Managed incidents and operational workflows using ServiceNow and Jira, ensuring proper tracking, escalation, and resolution.
- Designed and implemented OpenTelemetry-based metrics pipelines to reduce data volume flowing into Splunk, optimizing observability costs and signal quality.
- Configured multiple OpenTelemetry metric processors to selectively include and exclude metrics for Confluent Kafka and HashiCorp Vault.
- Defined and implemented Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) using Terraform to standardize reliability metrics across applications.
- Deployed applications using Harness CD, architecting services, pipelines, environments, templates, and override configurations.
- Managed and secured application secrets using HashiCorp Vault and CyberArk, enforcing best practices for credential storage and access control.
- Configured and maintained GitHub, Artifactory, and Kubernetes connectors to support CI/CD and deployment workflows.
- Troubleshot and resolved Helm chart issues, providing deployment support and ensuring reliable Kubernetes releases.
DevOps Engineer
Datassential
Chicago
08.2022 - 04.2023
- Designed and provisioned Amazon EKS clusters across multiple AWS accounts using Terraform, enabling scalable and consistent Kubernetes environments.
- Built reusable Terraform modules for AWS services including EC2, S3,EBS, VPC, Transit Gateway (TGW), NLB, ALB, and RDS, reducing duplication and accelerating infrastructure delivery.
- Containerized legacy applications from the ground up, modernizing deployment workflows and improving portability and reliability.
- Integrated AWS SSO with JumpCloud SSO, providing seamless, centralized authentication and access across cloud and enterprise applications.
- Managed IAM roles, policies, and permissions, enforcing least-privilege access and strengthening security and compliance.
- Deployed and managed applications using Helm charts, standardizing Kubernetes releases and configurations.
- Introduced Argo CD for GitOps-based deployments and led knowledge-sharing sessions to onboard and upskill the team.
- Developed a universal Jenkins shared library to standardize infrastructure deployments and CI pipelines, improving consistency and maintainability.
- Owned and maintained Bitbucket repositories for infrastructure-as-code and application deployments, enforcing branching strategies and code quality standards.
DevOps Engineer
Delta Airlines
Chicago
01.2021 - 08.2022
- Implemented end-to-end monitoring and logging using OpenTelemetry (OTEL) Collector, providing real-time visibility into application and infrastructure performance.
- Partnered with application teams to containerize legacy workloads, enabling cloud-native deployments and smoother CI/CD pipelines.
- Installed and managed essential Kubernetes add-ons including Metrics Server, CNI, and CSI drivers, ensuring cluster observability, networking, and persistent storage.
- Deployed and configured Splunk Observability and OpenTelemetry to collect, process, and analyze metrics for proactive performance monitoring.
- Provisioned, configured, and monitored AWS services (EC2, S3, EBS, ELB, RDS) using Terraform and Ansible, ensuring consistency and scalability across environments.
- Worked within Agile/Scrum methodologies, supporting rapid iteration from initial prototyping through enterprise-grade testing and production release.
DevOps Engineer
Comcast
Philadelphia
05.2018 - 01.2021
- Monitored system performance and availability using Splunk, LogicMonitor, and AWS CloudWatch, proactively identifying and resolving infrastructure and application issues.
- Automated build and deployment workflows using Jenkins, with supporting Python, Bash, GitHub, and Docker, enabling reliable and repeatable CI/CD pipelines.
- Implemented configuration management with Ansible to maintain consistent and reproducible environments across deployments.
- Developed and maintained Bash automation scripts to streamline routine operational tasks and improve efficiency.
- Created and maintained technical documentation, including runbooks and procedures, to support knowledge sharing and team onboarding.
- Actively participated in incident response and on-call support, troubleshooting system outages and minimizing downtime.
- Supported web server configuration and maintenance, ensuring stable, secure, and performant application hosting.
Education
Bachelor of Science - International Trade
OKAN UNIVERSITY
ISTANBUL07-2016
Skills
- Kubernetes management
- Cloud infrastructure
- Incident response
- Observability implementation
- Metric optimization
- Terraform provisioning
- Agile methodologies
- CI/CD automation
- Team collaboration
- Technical documentation
- Containerization technologies
- Configuration management
- Linux administration
- Infrastructure automation
Certification
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Accomplishments
Awarded Individual Excellence recognition in Q3, and Q4, 2024, accompanied by an Amazon gift card.
Timeline
Lead Site Reliability Engineer
Option Clearing Corporate
06.2023 - Current
DevOps Engineer
Datassential
08.2022 - 04.2023
DevOps Engineer
Delta Airlines
01.2021 - 08.2022
DevOps Engineer
Comcast
05.2018 - 01.2021
Bachelor of Science - International Trade
OKAN UNIVERSITY