Cloud, releases and operations: hands-on experience with Azure and AWS.
I have worked mainly with Azure and AWS, and to a lesser extent with Google Cloud. My contribution depends on how the project is organised: application development and integration, working with a platform team, or managing environments and releases directly.
AzureAWSTerraformRelease pipelinesMonitoring
Cloud platforms
I work on cloud-hosted applications and integrations, with responsibilities that vary by project.
My most significant experience is on Azure and AWS. I have used application and infrastructure services to connect systems, process data and make application behaviour observable. In larger projects, specialists manage the platform; in others, I also handle configuration, releases and environment monitoring.
Two working contexts
01
Platforms with restricted production access
In projects with strict security requirements, a dedicated team manages production.
When I cannot access the production environment or databases directly, logs and monitoring tools are essential for spotting anomalies and tracing their causes. This calls for careful logging and traceability from the development stage onwards.
On some projects, I have helped prepare configurations with Terraform so that infrastructure changes could be versioned, reviewed and coordinated with the release process.
My contribution
Investigating issues through logs and monitoring
Application logging and traceability
Working with the teams responsible for the platform
Infrastructure configuration with Terraform where appropriate
02
Managing environments and releases directly
On other projects, I am more closely involved in operations, from development through to production.
I have configured release pipelines, including those that update several different services such as applications, Dynamics and Service Bus. I have worked across development, test, staging and production environments, monitoring services and investigating anomalies.
Depending on the project, integrations and data flows have involved Azure Functions, Service Bus and Stream Analytics, alongside network components such as Azure Firewall and Application Gateway. I have also used Entra ID for identity and Azure Synapse for data workloads.
Activities and services
Pipelines and releases across several environments
Monitoring and issue diagnosis
Integration: Azure Functions and Service Bus
Data: Stream Analytics and Azure Synapse
Network and identity: Firewall, Application Gateway, Entra ID
Development and release processes
Tools are useful when they fit how the team actually works.
I have used Azure DevOps, Jira and SonarQube in very different organisations: from teams using work items as shared notes to structured Agile programmes spanning multiple teams. I have worked with both frequent releases to test environments and testing concentrated at the end of a sprint. In some cases I helped configure tools and pipelines; in others I joined established processes and worked with the teams responsible for them.
I describe how I take responsibility in a project in more detail on the how I work page.
Related experience
Three projects show different contexts and roles.
C-01 — Managed business services: backend development and technical coordination on a cloud platform with microservices, messaging and IoT data.
C-05 — Finance: .NET applications on AWS and automated releases with Terraform.