Chris Gilbert

Staff Engineer · DevOps & Platform Engineering

[email protected] 07976 761514 Nottingham, UK linkedin.com/in/chrisgilbert42 blog.gilbert.cloud github.com/chrisgilbert

Summary

Staff Engineer with 20+ years’ experience in infrastructure, platform engineering and DevOps. I specialise in AWS serverless architectures, infrastructure-as-code, and building the tooling and practices that let small teams ship safely at speed. Currently leading both DevOps and data engineering at Jumptech, a green-tech SaaS platform serving customers including British Gas, Scottish Power, EDF, and Chargepoint across the UK, US, and Europe. I think in systems, by understanding not just how infrastructure works but why it fails, where complexity hides, and how to build things that don’t wake people up at 4am.

Key Skills

  • AWS (Lambda, ECS, DynamoDB, Redshift, S3, Glue, Step Functions, Bedrock)
  • Terraform / OpenTofu
  • GitHub Actions / Jenkins
  • Docker / Kubernetes (CKA certified)
  • Python
  • TypeScript / Node.js
  • dbt / Fivetran
  • Monitoring & Observability
  • AI/LLM deployment (data sovereignty, GDPR compliance)
  • Linux (LFCS certified)

Experience

Staff Engineer — Jumptech

DevOps & Data Engineering · Dec 2021 – Present · Remote, UK

Technical lead across infrastructure and data at a SaaS clean energy installations platform serving major energy and automotive customers including British Gas, Scottish Power, EDF, Chargepoint, and OVO across the UK, US, and Europe.

  • Architected and maintained a fully serverless AWS platform (Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway) supporting the core product
  • Led migration to multi-account AWS architecture with VPC isolation, significantly reducing blast radius and improving security posture
  • Designed and implemented Terraform CI/CD workflows in GitHub Actions, enabling safe, peer-reviewed infrastructure changes
  • Conducted comprehensive AWS cost analysis identifying £20k/year in savings
  • Implemented DORA metrics to bring visibility to engineering performance — deployment frequency, lead time, and change failure rate
  • Introduced Twingate zero-trust VPN, replacing traditional network access and reducing attack surfaces
  • Managed penetration testing programmes: supplier sourcing, scoping, and remediation planning
  • Migrated CI/CD from Jenkins to GitHub Actions, including preview environments for faster developer feedback
  • Led backup and disaster recovery planning across all production systems
  • Contributing to AI/LLM integration evaluation, including data sovereignty and GDPR compliance requirements for enterprise customers and secure deployment using AWS Bedrock
  • Built the data engineering function from scratch: dbt, Redshift, Fivetran, AWS Glue, Step Functions
  • Project work has been the primary basis for six-figure R&D tax credit claims for two consecutive years

Senior Engineer — Hudl

Jan 2020 – Dec 2021 · Remote, UK

Senior Engineer on the platform team at a global sports technology company serving professional and collegiate teams worldwide.

  • Led the build-out of a new Amazon ECS microservices platform, improving deployment reliability and performance
  • Developed custom deployment tooling on AWS Lambda
  • Implemented CI/CD pipelines using TeamCity and GitHub Actions
  • Drove performance optimisation using RUM monitoring and CDN architecture
  • Led migration of SQL Server from EC2 to RDS, migrating millions of users with only 1–2 hours of planned downtime
  • Planned early-stage migration of MongoDB to Amazon DocumentDB

Infrastructure / Software Engineer — Hudl

Jun 2015 – Jan 2020 · Remote, UK

  • Managed web-scale AWS infrastructure supporting hundreds of millions of video views
  • Worked across EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, MongoDB, Nginx, C#/.NET
  • Performance measurement and optimisation at global scale

Servelec-Corelogic

2005 – 2015

Progressed from DBA through infrastructure engineering to Lead Technical Architect at Corelogic (later Servelec, then The Access Group), a platform serving dozens of local authorities and NHS trusts.

Lead Technical Architect / Project Manager (2014–2015). Led introduction of DevOps practices, automated deployment pipelines, and monitoring across customer environments.

Senior Infrastructure Engineer (2012–2014). Server infrastructure and build pipelines for the Mosaic product. Bridged infrastructure, DBA, and development teams.

Database & Application Server Administrator (2005–2012). SQL Server and Oracle databases across dozens of local authority and NHS customers. Cross-platform: Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris.

Earlier Roles

2002 – 2005

AIX System Administrator — Software Dynamics (2005). Critical infrastructure for Nottinghamshire County Council, PowerVM virtualisation, Oracle on UNIX.

Technical Assistant / Database Designer — Nottinghamshire County Council (2002–2005). Implemented Corelogic Frameworki social care system — the role that launched my career in infrastructure.

Awards

  • Joint Jump’tech’er of the Year 2024
  • Dominate Award Winner (Hudl)

Certifications

  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
  • Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS)
  • Data Engineering Zoomcamp
  • Professional Scrum Master (PSM1)
  • Oracle Certified Associate
  • In progress: HashiCorp Terraform Associate, AWS Solutions Architect Associate

Education

BSc Computing with Psychological Studies (2:1) — The Open University, 2010–2014

Writing