Valentin Petrov

Senior DevOps Engineer

About

Highly accomplished Senior DevOps Engineer with a robust FinTech background, specializing in building and optimizing scalable, secure, and highly available cloud infrastructures. Expert in driving efficiency through advanced automation, CI/CD, and IaC, with a forward-thinking focus on AI infrastructure, MLOps, and agentic capabilities. Passionate about R&D and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to deliver innovative, business-centric solutions that significantly enhance operational performance and drive strategic growth.

Work Experience

Senior DevOps Engineer

Nexo

Jun 2023 - May 2024

Led the design, implementation, and optimization of highly available cloud infrastructure and automated CI/CD pipelines for a leading digital assets platform, significantly enhancing system performance and security.

  • Architected and optimized AWS cloud infrastructure, including Amazon EKS and RDS/Aurora, achieving 99.99% high availability and peak performance across multiple regions.
  • Engineered and deployed robust CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and FluxCD for GitOps, automating software delivery and reducing time-to-market by 30% while enhancing deployment reliability.
  • Implemented comprehensive Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform and Helm, ensuring full infrastructure reproducibility, scalability, and adherence to security best practices.
  • Managed high-throughput message brokers (Kafka, MSK) and optimized AWS RDS/ElasticSearch databases, ensuring reliable data flow and storage for distributed microservices.
  • Developed and maintained complex AWS VPC architectures and comprehensive observability systems (Prometheus, Grafana), improving network security and proactive issue resolution.

DevOps Engineer

PaySafe

Sep 2018 - Jun 2023

Drove significant improvements in CI/CD processes, infrastructure design, and operational automation for a global payments provider, enhancing system stability and efficiency.

  • Led the refactoring and integration of a new CI/CD stack, streamlining software delivery and accelerating product launches by optimizing tools like Ant, Gradle, and Bamboo.
  • Automated major development and operations processes, including certificate and user management, increasing team effectiveness by 20% and ensuring idempotent environments.
  • Contributed to robust infrastructure design, OS configuration, and managed new code releases to production, ensuring high availability and rapid troubleshooting to minimize downtime.
  • Configured and optimized Akamai and F5 systems, ensuring seamless disaster recovery and failover capabilities for high-traffic financial applications.

SysOps Engineer

Gaming Innovation Group

Feb 2018 - Aug 2018

Developed and maintained critical development environments and automated deployment solutions for a technology provider in the iGaming industry, enhancing system reliability and efficiency.

  • Developed and maintained core team environments, including DC/OS and Database Clusters, optimizing ongoing backups and data import/export processes.
  • Engineered and optimized IaC deployment scripts using Terraform, Ansible, and Puppet, enhancing deployment efficiency and consistency across cloud platforms.
  • Architected and maintained a new monitoring stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) for high availability, improving system reliability by 15% within the first year.
  • Implemented automated cloud deployments across Azure, DigitalOcean, and Oracle Cloud, accelerating delivery cycles for microservice applications.

DevOps Engineer

PaySafe

Jan 2017 - Feb 2018

Contributed to the development and maintenance of robust development environments and optimized deployment scripts for a global payments provider, enhancing operational efficiency.

  • Developed and maintained idempotent development environments using OpenStack, OpenShift, and Kubernetes, ensuring consistent and reliable setups for all development teams.
  • Optimized deployment scripts with Ansible, Puppet, and Bash Shell, enhancing the efficiency and speed of application deployments.
  • Contributed to application design and OS configuration, implementing best practices that aligned with PCI Compliance and supported robust product deployment.
  • Maintained and enhanced application and system monitoring tools (Nagios, NewRelic, Prometheus), improving visibility into system health and proactive issue resolution.

Education

Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Finance

Higher School of Insurance and Finance (HSOA)

Languages

English , Bulgarian

Skills

Cloud Platforms & Infrastructure

  • AWS (EKS, RDS, Aurora, VPC, S3, MSK)
  • Azure
  • DigitalOcean
  • Oracle Cloud
  • OpenStack
  • OpenShift
  • VM vSphere
  • CloudOps
  • Infrastructure Design/Solutions
  • Cloud Migration (On-prem to Cloud)

DevOps & Automation

  • CI/CD Pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab, Bamboo)
  • GitOps (FluxCD, ArgoCD)
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Helm)
  • Configuration Management (Ansible, Puppet)
  • Automation & Scripting (Bash, Python)
  • Automation & Resilience Engineering
  • DevOps Culture

Containerization & Orchestration

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes (AWS EKS)
  • DC/OS

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Datadog
  • ELK stack
  • Nagios
  • OMD
  • NewRelic

Databases & Data Streaming

  • RDBMS (AWS RDS, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Aurora)
  • ElasticSearch
  • InfluxDB
  • Messaging Systems (Kafka, Strimzi Kafka, MirrorMaker2, Amazon MSK, RabbitMQ)

Security & Compliance

  • PCI-DSS
  • F5 Firewall
  • Vault
  • SonarQube
  • Trivy
  • Security Group Management

AI/MLOps Infrastructure

  • AI Infrastructure
  • MLOps
  • Agentic Capabilities
  • Automation Platforms (n8n)
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • AI Tooling (LM Studio)

Other Technical Skills

  • Linux/Unix System Administration
  • System Design
  • Software Development
  • Big Data & Data centers
  • Blockchain

Professional Competencies

  • Strategic Thinking & Planning
  • Innovative
  • Creative & Innovative
  • Results-oriented
  • Strong Communication Skills
  • Adaptability & Flexibility
  • Organized
  • Attention to Detail
  • Dedicated
  • Professional Attitude

Interests

Technology & Innovation

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Crypto Markets
  • Electrical Engineering

Hobbies

  • Hiking
  • Motocross Sports
  • Family and Recreation Activities

References

Emilian Todorov

Director of Engineering at Paysafe, 0882265833

Georgi Lazarov

Software Engineering Manager - DevOps at Nexo, 0878204210