Experience
Senior Linux System Administrator, Silent Push
04/2024 – 01/2026 | Reston, United Stated (Remote)

Responsible for building and operating scalable infrastructure supporting a cybersecurity intelligence platform processing large volumes of internet telemetry and threat intelligence data. Focus on reliability, observability, and performance optimization across distributed production systems.

Key responsibilities:

  • Infrastructure Operations: Designed, deployed, and maintained Linux-based production infrastructure supporting large-scale data collection, processing, and analytics systems.
  • Observability: Implemented and maintained monitoring and alerting systems enabling proactive detection of infrastructure and application issues.
  • Performance Optimization: Analyzed system bottlenecks across compute, storage, and network layers to improve performance and stability of high-throughput data pipelines.
  • Private Cloud Infrastructure: Operated and optimized Proxmox based environments supporting distributed services and data processing workloads.
  • Incident Response: Diagnosed and resolved complex production incidents involving networking, system performance, and service reliability.
  • Security Operations Support: Worked closely with security and research teams to ensure infrastructure supported large-scale threat intelligence analysis and data ingestion.
  • Cross-Team Collaboration: Partnered with engineering and data teams to improve deployment processes, system reliability, and operational visibility.
  • Linux and Observability Architect, Aurobay
    07/2022 – 02/2024 | Göteborg, Sweden (Remote)

    Led the implementation of a modern, highly available Linux infrastructure in a greenfield environment during a corporate carve-out. Built core operational capabilities including monitoring, automation, and hybrid cloud integration to support rapidly scaling production systems.

    Key Responsibilities:

  • Infrastructure Development: Designed and deployed a reliable and scalable hybrid infrastructure supporting the company’s separation and independent operations.
  • Observability: Implemented distributed Zabbix monitoring from scratch with predictive alerting for production-critical systems. Developed custom templates for both modern and legacy platforms and introduced the Grafana stack for unified observability and alert deduplication.
  • Rapid Scaling: Scaled the environment from a single server to hundreds Linux systems within two years across SUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Oracle Linux.
  • Hybrid Cloud: Integrated VMware and Azure services, addressing complex networking, storage, and hypervisor challenges while improving infrastructure flexibility and resilience.
  • Technical Leadership: Acted as internal SME for Linux and Zabbix, delivering training sessions and establishing internal knowledge sharing.
  • Security and Performance: Administered Oracle 19c servers, implemented security hardening, and performed performance tuning across infrastructure components.
  • Incident Management: Resolved complex infrastructure, networking, and security incidents while supporting Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters in production environments.
  • Krzysztof Kotkowicz Linux, DevOps and Observability Expert
    Email
    [email protected]
    Phone
    +48 506 14 88 00
    Location
    Lisbon, Portugal (willing to relocate)
    LinkedIn
    Linkedin Profile

    20 years of experience designing, operating, and scaling reliable environments. Strong focus on automation, observability, and high-availability. Experienced in diagnosing and resolving complex issues.

    Founder of an IT services company recognized by Clutch as one of the top cybersecurity and managed IT services providers in Poland.

    Continuously developing expertise and tracking emerging technologies.

    Technologies
    Linux

    Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, SuSE, HPC, slurm, OpenMPI

    Observability & Telemetry

    Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Pyroscope, Tempo, Faro, Alloy, Zabbix, OpenTelemetry, Logstash, Kibana

    Databases & Data Platforms

    MySQL, MariaDB, Percona, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, ClickHouse, Redis, MongoDB

    IaaC & Automation

    Terraform, Ansible, Shell Scripting, Github Actions, Jenkins, Red Hat Sattelite

    Containers & Orchestration

    Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift

    Cloud & Virtualization

    Microsoft Azure, AWS, Proxmox, VMware, OLVM

    Storage & Backups

    Fibre Channel, iSCSI, GlusterFS, ZFS, Ceph, Lustre, Veeam, Bacula & Bareos, Proxmox Backup Server, XtraBackup

    Networking

    TCP/​IP, Ethernet, RDMA, RoCE, Infiniband, HAProxy, iptables, ebtables, tcpdump, wireshark

    Founder and CEO, Angry Bytes
    01/2013 – 05/2022 | Warsaw, Poland (Remote)

    Founded Angry Bytes in 2013 as a freelance Linux administration practice that evolved into an international managed infrastructure and cybersecurity services provider serving clients across Europe, the United States, and Japan. Combined executive leadership with hands-on infrastructure engineering, delivering secure and scalable environments for diverse production workloads. The company was recognized by Clutch as one of the leading cybersecurity and managed IT services providers in Poland for three consecutive years.

    Key Responsibilities:

  • Infrastructure Architecture: Designed and deployed secure, scalable, and highly available infrastructures across dedicated hardware, private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid environments.
  • Monitoring and Observability: Built advanced Zabbix monitoring with extensive custom templates, discovery rules, automated remediation, and event correlation. Integrated observability platforms including Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, and Datadog.
  • Automation: Developed and maintained extensive Ansible automation, significantly reducing customer onboarding time and minimizing configuration errors.
  • Private Cloud: Planned, deployed, and operated private cloud infrastructure based on Proxmox clusters, delivering secure and scalable virtualization environments.
  • Database Administration: Managed and optimized MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and Percona databases, resolving performance bottlenecks and slow query issues.
  • Incident Resolution: Diagnosed and resolved complex infrastructure, networking, and security incidents across diverse production environments.
  • Technical Training: Delivered internal training on open-source infrastructure tools and operational best practices.
  • DevOps Engineer Team Lead, Demandsphere
    06/2014 – 10/2019 | Columbus, United States (Remote)

    Joined Demandsphere, a search analytics platform tracking over 40 million keywords across multiple search engines. Progressed from Senior DevOps Engineer to DevOps Team Lead, leading major infrastructure redesign and large-scale data migrations to improve system stability, performance, and operational efficiency.

    Key Responsibilities:

  • Infrastructure Redesign: Planned and deployed a new production infrastructure on OVH dedicated servers, followed by a large-scale migration from Hetzner involving tens of terabytes of data.
  • Private Cloud: Designed and operated a Proxmox-based private cloud environment to support internal services and scalable virtualization.
  • Automation: Led the migration from Chef to Ansible and developed playbooks automating provisioning and configuration of new servers across the platform.
  • Large-Scale Data Operations: Administered and optimized a PostgreSQL cluster storing approximately 80 TB of data, focusing on performance tuning and efficient query handling for analytical workloads.
  • Infrastructure Strategy: Directed mid- and long-term infrastructure planning with emphasis on automation, monitoring, performance, and security improvements.
  • Incident Resolution: Diagnosed and resolved complex infrastructure, performance, and networking issues across high-volume data processing systems.
  • Technical Skillset
    Linux Systems Engineering
    • Linux Administration (RHEL, Ubuntu, SUSE, Oracle Linux)
    • Troubleshooting and performance analysis across hardware, network, kernel and application levels
    • Security hardening and auditing
    • Advanced system performance tuning and capacity planning
    • Lifecycle ownership and zero-downtime upgrade strategy
    Infrastructure and Cloud
    • Hybrid infrastructure (bare metal, private cloud, public cloud)
    • VMware and Proxmox virtualization
    • AWS and Azure cloud environments
    • Datacenter networking and large-scale server deployments
    • Hybrid cloud and on-prem integration
    • Resilience and failure-domain design
    • Production-grade standardization
    Observability & Telemetry
    • End-to-end observability architecture across hardware, network, OS and software layers
    • Grafana-based observability stacks (metrics, logs, traces, frontend)
    • Telemetry instrumentation with OpenTelemetry
    • Cross-layer signal correlation
    • Alerting strategy focused noise reduction
    Automation & IaaC
    • Infrastructure as a Code with Terraform
    • Configuration automation using Ansible
    • Deployment automation and environment reproducibility
    • CI/​CD pipeline integration
    Distributed Systems
    • Containerized workloads using Docker
    • Kubernetes and OpenShift operations
    • Distributed service architecture
    • High-throughput systems integration
    • Production incident management in large distributed environments
    Databases & Data Platforms
    • PostgreSQL large-scale cluster operation
    • MySQL, MariaDB, and Percona operation
    • Query optimization and large dataset performance tuning
    • Data reliability, backup strategies, and operational resilience
    ...and much more
    Linux Administrator, 4sync Solutions
    02/2012 – 02/2013 | Warsaw, Poland (On-site)

    Responsible for development and operation of server infrastructure supporting a cloud-based parental control service deployed inside ISP datacenters. The platform relied on transparent proxy servers analyzing up to 10 Gbps of network traffic in real time to filter and block access to adult content.

    Technology Stack: Gentoo Linux, LAMP stack, Proxmox, Zabbix, Memcached, Squid, Dell servers, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, Brocade switches

    Linux Administrator, Nasza Klasa sp. z o.o.
    05/2007 – 11/2007 | Wrocław, Poland (Remote)

    Responsible for server performance optimization at the largest Polish social network at the time, during a period of rapid user growth. Focused on improving scalability and stability of the production infrastructure supporting the platform’s core services. Through systematic performance tuning and infrastructure improvements, the environment was scaled to handle approximately 800,000 concurrent users by the end of the engagement.

    Volunteering
    08/2024 – Present

    I'm founder and organizer of a neurodivergent-focused online community designed as a safe, structured, and sustainable space for peer support and social interaction.

    Scope and impact:

  • Built and grew a Discord-based community to ~1,300 members, with sustained engagement of ~50,000 messages per month
  • Designed and enforced community rules, moderation policies, and escalation paths, balancing openness with psychological safety and clear boundaries
  • Actively moderated conversations and led conflict prevention and de-escalation efforts to maintain a healthy community dynamic
  • Established operational practices to ensure scalability, resilience, and moderator sustainability as the community grew
  • This role combines community governance, moderation, facilitation, and long-term operation of a highly active online space.

    06/2022 – 07/2024

    Board member and volunteer coordinator of the moderation team for one of the largest (40k members at that time) Polish-language support communities for adults with ADHD

    This role required strong communication, emotional intelligence, and the ability to make balanced decisions in high-emotion situations, while maintaining clear boundaries and consistent rules.

    Languages
    Polish — Native speaker
    English — C2
    Interests

    Outside of work, I’m deeply engaged in technology, creativity, and the culture of the internet.

    Internet

    I’ve been living on the internet since the mid-90s, with a deep technical and social understanding of how online ecosystems evolve. I care about digital culture, decentralization, online governance, and I'm deeply concerned about the direction the web is heading.

    Photography

    I’m an active photographer, sharing my work under open licenses. Some of my photos have been used by media outlets and public institutions, appearing on government websites and platforms reaching millions of viewers. I strongly believe in open access, knowledge sharing, and the long-term value of contributing to the commons.

    DIY

    I also enjoy hands-on DIY projects - 3D printing, designing practical everyday objects and gadgets, and building small hardware projects using ESP32, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi. I like understanding how things work, from low-level systems to physical devices.

    And yes - I’m unapologetically nerdy: LEGO, sci-fi literatures, board and video games, and a carefully curated vinyl collection.

    Declaration
    I hereby give consent for my personal data included in the application to be processed for the purposes of the recruitment process in accordance with Art. 6 paragraph 1 letter a of the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).