Pablo Avalos

Cloud Systems Engineer & AWS Solutions Architect

📍 London, UK • 🛡️ Eligible for UK Security Clearance (SC/DV)

Email Me

Hey there. I'm a computer engineer and Kubernetes specialist with around 17 years of experience keeping distributed systems stable, secure, and scaling nicely.

Lately, I’ve been focusing heavily on AWS Cloud Architecture and platform engineering—essentially making sure infrastructure behaves, deployments are automated via Terraform, and compute costs don't get out of hand. I treat everything—from massive data platforms to modern AI pipelines—simply as core, reproducible backend services.

☕ Grab a coffee. Below is a quick summary of what I build and how I work.

Certifications I Actually Use

AWS Solutions Architect (SAA) Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) HashiCorp Terraform Associate Elasticsearch Certified Engineer Cloudera YARN SME

The Toolkit

Cloud & Infra

AWS (VPC, EC2, Lambda, Step Functions, S3, IAM, Bedrock), Terraform, Kubernetes (EKS), Docker, Linux, CI/CD.

Code & Backend

Python (FastAPI, Flask), Node.js, Next.js, React, C++, RESTful APIs, Test-Driven Development.

Data & Systems

Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Hadoop, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Vector Storage, Data Pipelines.

Where I've Been Working

Cloud & Backend Solutions Architect

2025 - Present

Independent Consulting

Designing cost-optimized cloud platforms, declarative infrastructure templates, and API layers for enterprise clients.

  • Deployed reproducible, modular AWS infrastructure environments using Terraform with custom multi-AZ network topologies.
  • Built a serverless cloud orchestration layer using AWS Step Functions, Lambda, and EBS to manage intensive EC2 Spot Instance workloads, driving down compute costs.
  • Designed automated, multi-model pipelines (Claude & Nova) optimized for token efficiency, hooked into S3-backed vector storage.
  • Built responsive internal tooling dashboards with Next.js / React to expose underlying cloud metrics to stakeholders.

Support Engineer

2021 - 2026

Elasticsearch Ltd.

Diagnosed, debugged, and optimized massive distributed architectures for global enterprise customers.

  • Resolved complex distributed system failures across multi-node Elasticsearch clusters.
  • Leveraged deep Kubernetes expertise to debug containerized networking, storage, and security postures.
  • Partnered directly with backend core dev teams to turn production failures into permanent product fixes.

Premium Support Engineer / Tech Lead

2017 - 2021

Hortonworks / Cloudera

  • Lloyds Bank Dedicated Lead (2019-2021): Acted as the sole on-site technical authority for their mission-critical big data platforms.
  • Eliminated execution bottlenecks across massive horizontal-scaling platforms (Hadoop, Hive, YARN).
  • Served as global SME for Apache NiFi/MiNiFi routing across complex network topologies.

Support Engineer - High Availability Storage

2011 - 2017

Oracle

  • Managed technical escalations globally as Cluster Technical Coordinator.
  • Built a custom Python/Linux backend automation script to optimize shift resource allocation, removing manual tracking overhead.

Education

Computer Engineering Studies

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV)

Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (UTFSM)

Languages

🇬🇧 English: Professional / Advanced

🇪🇸 Spanish: Native

🇧🇷 Portuguese: Conversational